#71 Unbabel CEO Vasco Pedro on Translation Productivity, Lisbon’s Startup Scene, Growth Plans

Vasco Pedro, CEO of Unbabel, joins SlatorPod to discuss the company’s growth journey — from identifying the initial use case to raising USD 60m in Series C funding in 2019, and beyond.

Vasco outlines Unbabel’s translation pipeline and underlying technology. He describes the importance of the human-in-the-loop model and the ability humans have to impact the output of machine learning (ML) models.

The CEO talks about the challenges of ‘going remote’ overnight in response to Covid. Vasco says culture plays an important role in attracting top talent globally in the highly-competitive AI / ML space.

Vasco also shares his experience with investors, such as Point72’s Sri Chandrasekar, lead investor in Unbabel’s Series C, who provide actionable insights on how to further scale the business.

First up, Florian and Esther discuss the launch of the flagship Slator 2021 Language Industry Market Report. The duo share highlights from the 80-page, newly-released Market Report, which features a wealth of insights and data.

They also tackle over a week’s worth of M&A, as Florian unpacks Big Language Solutions’ acquisition of US-based interpreting provider Language Link, and discusses the backstory to Big CEO Jeff Brink’s “tenacity, honesty, and desire” in closing the deal.

Esther talks about translation and interpreting provider Propio Language Services’s acquisition of Vocalink — also in the US — while in Germany, she highlights GEtraNet’s acquisition of Lingua-World. Florian closes by reviewing AI transcription agency Verbit’s acquisition of captioning provider VITAC.