Andrew Smart: Giving the Language Industry a Bigger Voice

When Andrew Smart co-founded Slator, he banked on a major paradigm shift—and an industry-first—from the very beginning.

His hunch more than paid off. Slator is a business news, research, and advisory service for the language services and technology industry. Unlike most business segments, however, providers of translation, localization and globalization services had virtually no trade media to keep them informed at the time of Slator’s founding.

Andrew Smart, and his Slator co-founder, Florian Faes, believed there was an opportunity, not only to provide the $multi-billion language services industry with a reliable source of industry news, but also to monitor and report language-industry trends to a much broader business audience.

Today, Slator’s newsletter has thousands of subscribers as well as multiple platforms for promoting, researching, informing and advising language industry providers on ways to elevate their business.

Slator’s story is a fascinating example of how two people formed a company to serve an unmet need and succeeded by offering a higher level of journalism than the industry had ever seen before.

About our guest:

Andrew Smart is co-founder and Commercial Director at Slator, which provides news and research on the people, companies and deals that impact the language services and technology industry.

Andrew has years of experience as a senior executive with P&L responsibilities at both start-ups and multinational corporations across the media, internet, education and financial services industries. He lives in Bangkok and serves a broad range of clients globally. 

About NBN:

The NBN Entrepreneurship and Leadership podcast aims to educate, inform and entertain, sharing insights based on the personal stories of carefully selected guests—all in an informal atmosphere of unscripted conversations and open, personal accounts.

Find links to past episodes here.

About our Hosts:

Kimon Fountoukidis:

Kimon is the founder of both Argos Multilingual and PMR.

He founded both companies in the mid-90s with zero capital, and both have gone on to become market leaders in their respective sectors.

Kimon was born in New York and moved to Krakow, Poland in 1993. He is passionate about sharing his success with others and working entrepreneurs of all kinds to help them achieve their goals. Listen to his story here. On Twitter. On LinkedIn.

Richard Lucas:

Richard is a business and social entrepreneur who has founded or invested in more than 30 businesses, including Argos Multilingual, PMR and, in 2020, the New Books Network.

Richard has been a TEDx event organiser for years, supports the pro-entrepreneurship ecosystem, and leads entrepreneurship workshops at all levels. He was born in Oxford and moved to Poland in 1991, where continues to invest in promising companies and helps other entrepreneurs realise their dreams.

Listen to his story in an autobiographical TEDx talk. On Twitter. On LinkedIn.

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