#74 Remote Simultaneous Interpreting With Interactio Co-founder Simona Andrijauskaitė

Interactio Co-founder and Chief Business Development Officer Simona Andrijauskaitė joins SlatorPod to discuss the Lithuanian startup’s journey.

Simona talks about how the pandemic boosted demand and changed their primary market, with institutions needing technology for multilingual communication. She relates how it was all hands on deck at the remote simultaneous interpreting (RSI) platform, as years of development were compressed into weeks.

She also reflects back on their recent USD 30m round and how they managed to raise one of the biggest series As in the language industry. She closes with the company’s plans to improve quality on all levels, including hiring top talent.

First up, Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, kicking off with Straker Translations’ announcement of a USD 15.5m capital raise.

Esther talks about the Language Industry Job Index (LIJI) that, after a five-month growth streak, shrank for the first time since January 2021.

Esther also unpacks the controversial new RFP for translation services released by the Dutch Ministry of Justice (est. contract value, USD 40m), which has drawn criticism from translators and interpreters.

Meanwhile, Florian reviews the continuing evacuation from Afghanistan of the US Department of Defense, a story picked up by this week’s SlatorSweep.

Chapters:
00:00:00 Agenda and Intro
00:02:33 Straker Translations’ capital raise
00:05:42 LIJI dips 5 points in June
00:07:44 USD 40m Dutch RFP
00:13:29 Afghan Interpreters returning to the US
00:16:14 Date for new SlatorCon Remote
00:17:41 Simona Andrijauskaitė joins the pod
00:18:13 Founder Story
00:24:09 Pivot to RSI
00:26:07 Interactio's offering
00:28:14 Interactio’s addressable market
00:31:28 Priorities throughout Covid-19
00:35:23 Key technical challenges
00:39:36 Objections from interpreters
00:45:00 Interpreter hubs
00:47:21 Working with Big Tech platforms
00:50:14 Fast emerging video conferencing platforms
00:51:55 Challenges for RSI from an operational perspective
00:54:23 Automated speech-to-speech technologies
00:56:43 Interactio's Series A and investors