Why this Mexico-based entrepreneur chose to relocate start-up, family to Bloomington

What began as a dream in Mexico has been made into a reality in Bloomington.

A little over a year ago, Diego Achio was home with his wife in Monterrey, pondering an idea to reinvent how language translators connect with big and small businesses — without the cost and pain of the industry's standard middle man.

It was just an idea at the time — spurred by Achio's own experience as a professionally trained translator — until he eventually was connected with the leadership team at the Mill, an entrepreneurial center nearly 1,500 miles away in a small Indiana town. Through its programming, the Mill offered help that made Achio's idea seem possible.

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"They extended an invitation for me to relocate my entire business to Bloomington," Achio said, later adding, "That's when we thought like, ‘This is the opportunity that we were looking for — to grow our business and build this platform that we can't afford with our own money.'"

Achio and his spouse moved to Bloomington last February to work on their start-up, Traduality. Set to launch in November, the company offers a digital marketplace where translators and companies can be matched for various jobs and service opportunities, without the costly intermediary of a translation agency.

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Whether it's an executive with overseas business, a marketing manager looking to introduce a brand to a new demographic, or an engineer looking to use a technical manual from another country, many have faced a language barrier sometime in their professional life. That's when companies hire language translators, who are not only multilingual but are usually professionally trained in various translation.

Right now, businesses often must go through agencies to connect with a translator.

“The thing with agencies is that they're just a middleman and they usually overcharge customers up to 300% markup,” Achio said.

Then, on the other side, an agency historically underpays the translator for their services. Because the agency hosts all the offers, translators have no room for pay negotiation, according to Achio.

“(The translator agency) will basically say, 'We have this project. This is what we're going to pay. Do you take it?' If a translator comes and says like, ‘Oh, I would like to charge more because this is how I price my services.’ (The agency) will just go to the next one,” Achio said.

Through Traduality, companies and translators can find one another. A company creates a job listing with a price quote and can evaluate the various translators on the website based on their education, professional experience and recent accomplishments. Achio said Traduality will have a screening process for translators so those with a degree or professional training can sign up with three years experience while a multilingual person must have at least five years of professional experience. This direct connection also benefits the translator, who sets their own price and negotiates based on their experience and expertise. Traduality will collect a service fee from the translator and client for facilitating the transaction.

Right now, Traduality is taking orders via email, but it will soon be an automated matching system on a digital platform. The start-up has about 170 translators and has completed orders for 116 companies.

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When Achio and his wife resettled in Bloomington, they arrived with little more than a couple of suitcases.

"It's kind of funny," Achio recalled. "My plan was to get to Bloomington, like, get settled in a year's time, and start fundraising efforts and all that around this time now, actually. But then it was so fast. I mean, we got to Bloomington, we got invited to join the Mill cohorts, and after that, they were pushing us into fundraising right away."

Those key lessons in fundraising and cultivating business growth have been instrumental for Achio and his team.

"They just don't teach you that kind of stuff in Latin America," Achio said. "So it was really life changing.”

In addition to being part of the Mill's business incubators, Bloomington Remote and Mill Cohorts, Achio has also relied on the center's startup advisor for additional help, introductions, and other needs.

It's paid off. Earlier this summer, Traduality received a $100,000 investment from the gener8tor Milwaukee Accelerator. In addition to helping the development side of things, the investment has also helped Achio grow his workforce, which includes a handful of employees stationed in either Bloomington or Mexico.

"We feel very lucky to have been welcomed to Bloomington because we found it to be just in the right moment in both our size as a startup, but also in all the initiatives that the Bloomington government is taking into growing the startup ecosystem and helping startups succeed. It was like the perfect fit," Achio said.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Bloomington start-up gets $100k for language translation marketplace