we actually launching also TMS and CAT functionality so everything in one platform both the CMS the TMNS and the CAT in the same [Music] platform and welcome everyone to another episode of Slater Pod today we welcome Anna Albinson so Anna is the CEO of content management and localization platform Gridly hi Anna and thanks so much for joining today thank you for inviting me where in the world are you recording this from today actually we are recording from the center of Stockholm in Sweden gridley's headquarter is in Sweden but in south of Sweden but today I'm in Stockholm so south of Sweden any particular city or Gridley is founded of two guys in Helsing Bi is a city called in south of Stockholm so that's where we also have the headquarter but we have people around the world working for Gridley but the headquarter is based in Helsing south of Sweden helenboro south of Sweden yeah I was just talking to you before the podcast that I think in November I was in uh in Malme for a conference NTIF that a lot of people in this industry would know and it's always great to be back so you know probably I'm going to go back this year again yeah then you can come and welcome us in Helsingb yeah I will i will do there it's also fast right you land in Copenhagen you cross uh you cross over into Malm and then it's probably another what 30 minutes to Helen maybe even less yeah I think the the train from the airport might even take you to Helenborg it does um so Anna your professional background is in marketing and comms and tell us a bit more about your route to becoming CEO of Gridley which is in content management and and localization well I've had a lot of years within the SAS industry in general uh I actually started to work within SAS companies before I even knew what that really was uh I've been a working a lot within data and analytics mainly uh and I've been always into different kind of roles uh from the go-to market perspective so I've been working with sales and marketing and business development and I would say today marketing and sales might uh be almost the same for SAS companies different methods used to attract new customers and to engage with existing customers but uh I would say that I've been lucky to be able to work with companies like in the forefront uh mainly within data analytics because that also has brought me into relevant uh topics connected to gridly like working with this uh amazing technical platform but also coming early stage into AI did you have any exposure to translation localization multilingual content before or not much not at all actually uh I've had the struggle myself you know I've been in the content chaos uh I have seen uh the challenges that you face when you are scaling uh a SAS company or you know mobile app company into new markets so I feel the pain uh but the industry is new to me and you joined what about a year ago or yeah I joined like three months ago only so December I joined all right yeah so uh but you know also the recruitment process for becoming the CEO it takes a while so it's been you know uh almost around for a year so all right all right well uh a belated welcome to the world of you know localization multilingual content uh you will never be able to leave anymore so you're stuck now that's it um so tell us more about Gridley you mentioned SAS software as a service so is Gridley fully SAS like no services at all and just tell us a bit about Gridley in a nutshell you know clients areas kind of is it global is it is it maybe more focused on Europe and what's the origin name or origin of the name Gridly maybe we start with that at Gridley uh we love Excel we think that gives you a really good uh overview uh so the name Gridly actually comes from you know the design of a grid or a sheet in Excel or Google sheet so that's the way Gridley is organized and that's the way you know the UI looks like you are in a Google sheet or you know in some kind of grid um and the company is uh built of game developers for game developers uh and more than 80% of our customers they are within the gaming industry we have the the biggest gaming companies in the world as our clients customers like Warner Brothers Scopi Pokemon Roio Tencent uh so the founders they have worked within uh the gaming industry for many years and that's where why they also has developed this uh solution for other gaming companies uh so that's where we have our core um and what this it started it all started with like building a CMFS for gaming companies because you know they had really have the struggle as many other companies with scaling their content into uh many different markets uh they need to deliver an exper an an amazing experience for for the gamers to be relevant in the gaming industry so what uh the founders have been able to do with Gridly is to support that process for gaming companies today so we are really big within that industry uh and we have customers all around the globe but I would say that we most of them they are based in US or Europe we're also starting to grow in the Asian markets as well so how old is the company when was it founded originally so the company was finded founded about two years ago but it comes from another company that is named localized direct that is more like the LSP solution uh so these guys and a lot of people on the company has been working within the industry for a long longer period of time but then built the platform creating a new company and now uh Gridley is fully sour company today but Sweden isn't like a natural home for gaming right it's pretty good it's pretty okay uh we have a few really successful gaming studios but it might not be the largest market in the world but uh these guys that have built this company has worked for uh you know the global big gaming companies before and then they founded their own company trying to solve this content chaos thing uh and you know the localization process for gaming companies so that's where it comes from and that's where Gridly has its uh origin maybe walk us through like a key a key customer no need to name names right but like what problems does Gridly solve what are kind of the specialty areas because in the localization management system translation management system space I mean there's there's many many solutions there's many edge cases uh it's there's there's many you know specific features that companies would would excel at so what's kind of your USP there give us uh the rundown there yeah so we have customers from like you know smaller mobile games into the big AAA games and anything in between uh and their struggle is uh of course to scale into new markets they invest heavily in producing the game and then you know they really need to get their money back and then they want to become global uh they need to provide for the gamers they need to provide an amazing experience for the audience uh they have extremely high standards and advanced content pipelines uh for their content uh and they need to update you know their content frequently so it's a pretty complex uh localization content ops process I would say for the gaming industry and uh what we are doing within Gridly is of course to to host the content within our CMS tomorrow we're actually launching also TMS and CAT functionality so everything in one platform both the CMS the TMNS and the CAT in the same uh platform so that is pretty big for us i just we just had an internal launch with the whole company celebrating uh this success but within Gridly then you can really you know uh you have all your content from producing the content you handle the full content process the localization process you work with AI and machine translation but also of course all the people that needs to collaborate within Gridly for the big gaming companies it could be like you know 500 users or something you know working within Gridly at the same time on different tasks and topics uh all from you know the developers to the translators to the you know approval process the so all the collaboration is also handled within uh Gridly so we are moving from like a CMS uh into you know a full content ops solution by the launch we actually have tomorrow so it's pretty big for us yeah it seems pretty big do you have a name for that release or is it No it's just like it's the release we have yeah so tomorrow we will invite everyone uh that you know are on the grid channels to a virtual launch that everyone can join and to see the product features so it's on the grid platform we are adding two more modules not only the CMS and then you know you can have the full solution within the grid platform got it so we are really fast at producing podcasts but we're not going to be able to produce it today and release it so the tomorrow will still be tomorrow so by the time people watch this or listen to this it might be a couple of days ago uh so yeah it will definitely be there it will be there so go and check it out um Yeah cool so have you um you're talking about AAA so are these kind of your your ideal clients or would you also say well we don't care we also like to have 100 indie uh developers uh use Gridly or do you kind of want to move it more towards the AAA yeah we we have you know we can handle them all uh you know for some reason we have ended up with a lot of AAA games and I think because Gridley is a pretty advanced solution you know it can handle almost anything it's built of game developers for game developers so I think that's why we attract a lot of AAA games but we are also looking into you know customers within other industries as well not only within uh the gaming industry and the main reason for that is that we have had a lot of inbounds coming from other kind of industries as well that's how it all started you know looking into different kind of customers as well and now we have almost 20% of our customers outside of games as well so outside would be what like fintech edtech this type of stuff fintech and edtech is two really good examples they really have the need and uh gridly can really solve the need i would say that grid can solve almost anything and that might sometimes be too much for a customer that doesn't need everything so for us it's more about to make some customization into different industries to be able to also take care of customers outside of gaming and I think also a big difference for us is that within gaming uh you know the people that we are working with they are so professional in localization you know they can take the platform and start working on it directly but when we move outside of you know the professional localization managers area uh then sometimes we need to really you work with the customers to also support them a bit more to be on to have onboarding and maybe need other kind of services and support around uh the the platform and we do that in collaboration with other LSPs but within gaming I would say it's it's pretty easy for the customers to be onboarded they like the platform and they like that it is advanced and you can do almost anything for it for other industries we need to customize a little bit more but the intention is eventually after the handholding and the on boarding is complete like to let them and it's fully kind of self managed or yeah that's that's uh that's the the the vision for us so when we support customers with support of you know partnerships with other LSPs they are on on the platform they support them through the onboarding the integrations and all those kind of things and of course we would like to hand over the platform to the client at some extent when they feel that they are ready uh so uh that is probably where it will end up but you know it's you know I mean it's like it's like for every one of us who needs like you know hundreds of tools so just providing a tool to someone that is not interested or can't handle a tool it doesn't bring any value you know I think that for for SAS companies today we want them to be like you know only the platform solution and nothing else but I think that we also need to consider if we want to grow as a company to also support customers that might not be that mature in their localization or content ops processes yet that's a good uh kind of jumping off point now you haven't been um with the company for years right but like in the past couple of months have you seen some initial leads that are still very low on the maturity curve like the you know you mentioned Excel but like have you seen actual companies like still running localization off of a spreadsheet and now coming to you and saying "Hey you know I I DIYed this forever can can I can I on board can I use your system or not yet?" Yeah I have i've actually had a lot of dialogues with our existing customers but also potential new customers outside of the gaming industry so I put a lot of effort in there for the last three months i have like had probably 30 40 meetings with global companies that are not within gaming and that might not be that mature in their localization processes and I would say that you know my main conclusion from that is that each and everyone of the people that I have interviewed or had conversations with they feel the content pain if you are a global company with a global digital product you are struggling with content in general you feel you know that it's some kind of chaos and how to handle it in general I would say that they are today in Excel or in Google sheets with their processes and I would say that is not it's not a bad way to start right you know if you are like in one two three markets you might not have that you know heavy content you don't have that much content I think that Excel or Google sheet might be enough for one or two three markets maybe that's a good way to start but when the excel sheet is getting out of control that is when you need to start working in another way right so I think that is a really good you know sometimes I ask these people questions like uh where you know do you know where to find the latest version you know do you know if this is translated from AI or a country manager do you know who is responsible and the answer is almost always no and that is a problem for them but I think that you know Excel or Google sheet is better than nothing but when you are growing and moving into more markets and you increase your volume of content you definitely need a platform if you're going to work in an efficient way and feel that you have control uh over the content as well so I've seen a lot of different um you know ways of working lately but as I just started you know my main conclusion is that you know everyone in a global uh company with a digital product they need some kind of localization uh platform or services let's transition to AI and start with a data point that you posted about a couple of weeks ago on LinkedIn i think it was a chart about people being excited and not excited about AI and uh surprisingly the sweets were among the least excited and at the same time the most nervous about products and services that use AI uh now of course your market is global but what's up with the sweets Anna yeah what's up with the sweets what's up with the sweets no but I think that you know you you in Sweden in general we have a lot of you know successful companies within industries and you know tech companies like Clara and Spotify you know coming from uh Sweden and based in Sweden you know these companies of course they are developing and working a lot with AI and you know they are in the forefront but uh I've also recently met actually with the Swedish AI commission uh you know the government people working on putting you know Sweden you know in the forefront of AI and I I know that there are a lot of things going on there so from a political standpoint and you know from a company standpoint tech company standpoint I think that Sweden is you know it's okay and we are you know on pair with many other markets but I think that you know in Sweden and it might also hold true for for a lot of other countries we also need to realize that AI is not for everyone within society i think it can also be you know part of I think it's important to talk about inclusion when it comes to AI as well maybe you don't understand you know when you don't have the knowledge or you don't feel the need of using AI but I think it's also a lot about trust uh and I think it's the same holds for B2B right you know you you if you work with uh you know AI generated content you need to trust it you need to be able to track it you need to be able to have one source of tr truth you need to build in that trust and I think the same holds true for you know someone that is not working with AI in their daily life they might not feel the trust so I think that Sweden is uh you know it's it's okay and maybe also in the forefront when it comes to the company and the politics that we're putting in now but we also need to make sure that you know uh we don't we have inclusion from everyone uh you know living in our country as well and also on the language side I remember from that NTIF conference I'm I'm blanking on the name but there was a panel with two experts from the government as well and I think their job was to really make sure that it works in Swedish as well right and that yeah not just of course in English no and I think also to add on that topic we have we also have a few discussions now uh in Sweden and it this also holds true for other markets but it also you know when you live in a multicultural society you also have a big need for some kind of domestic localization right you need to be able as a government to provide you know important information in different languages you know maybe different cultures within a specific country as well so it's also you know within the specific country yeah as we're going multicultural the US is saying we have one national language which is English so which is probably going to be we're going to be covering this in a in a follow-up podcast hopefully this week still let's see interesting topic yeah big one um so in terms of AI lots of AI development foundation models you know four five six big platforms tons of open-source um and now you said you you launched also the the CAT functionality so how do you decide what to integrate how much do you even work on the AI or you just kind of integrate it like by an API or some other some other mod module how do you decide how and what to integrate there first of all when it comes to decisions on integration we listen to our customers you know uh so the needs from our customers is really important for us to be able to you know uh support them in the way that they would like to work and we would like to be a flexible solution for them when it comes to AI you know we work with most established players like OpenAI Deepel Amazon Google and those kind of uh companies uh of course and we integrate but uh the important thing for us is to give our uh customers the flexibility they need and that also holds true for the you know CMS and CAT uh functionality that we are building uh within our own platform now we have integrations with MemoQ we have integrations with phrase uh you know we will continue to have those integrations for the customers that would like to work in that way and only use the CMS uh functionality within gridly so that will still be there but what we have heard from our customers and that's the way we do run our product development is listening to our customers and having conversations with our customers is that they would like to have it in one single platform to make it easier to make it more efficient to lower the cost and to be able to store and work with the content in one place but it's you know it's a complex process so if you're still on MemoQ and Phrase and you would like to work with Gridly that will work totally fine going forward it's up to you we have the flexibility so now in in this AI world where everybody is integrating AI at a very kind of deep level everybody meaning like you know big companies big content uh flows h do you feel it may be a threat that companies are kind of integrating this at a very foundational level or do you feel there's always be there was there's always going to be a a need for a separate system on top to help with the multilingual aspect of it like how do you see that um kind you know the the big LLMs coming in at the very kind of foundation of it and then on top of that you have specific SAS layers for specific problems like localization so of course the LLMs they come with a huge value uh it's a huge value if you work on a localization platform or not they can give you an extremely high value uh but I think that you know for us it's not a threat uh for gridly that this is like 100% an opportunity and we talk about it a lot i think that the key word here is accountability you know you need to uh use the strength and the power of LLMs but you also need to be able to handle workflow management content governance version control you know all of those kind of things and today at least LM LLM you know they can't really orchestration process so you will still need uh that kind of functionality I think and I think it's extremely important but for us to integrate the L LMS in our platform of course gives us you know new capabilities that we can offer to our customers and they can also work in a more efficient and streamlined way so for me it's it's a huge opportunity and I think the LLMs to be work completely on their own for complex content processes uh I don't think that will happen uh you know in the nearest time at least so so you know I'm just amazed i almost get goosebumps when I see how AI can develop our platform and you know what it can give to our customers in combination uh with the uh functionality that we have within grid today so it's a really good combination uh for us it's also a very noisy environment kind of in the language AI marketplace you go on X there's always like a mind-blown emoji every day about something new coming out uh even in the you know kind of more narrower translation AI space localization it's very very competitive so let's talk about sales and marketing you said it you know in SAS it it's very hard to differentiate the two but like how do you run sales how do you run marketing what do you do what do you think works what doesn't work so the difference with Gridley and the other SAS companies that I have worked with before is that you know moving into those previous companies I had to change the business model from something into SAS that means that it was a heavy overload on the sales side of the goto market process and you need to really work on balance that out moving into gridly that is completely the opposite gridly is founded you know as a SAS company you know AI first company it makes the game plan completely different so we are you know almost 100% inbound leads today within Gridly that is the majority of the business that we do and where we spend our money we have a really skilled marketing team that is driving this driving the brand driving the lead generation as well and we have of course we have a sales organization as well but they often come into play when we have had you know when we have the inbound leads they start working on those so I would say it's almost almost like 100% inbound um and I think for us it works pretty well but it also uh for us then the brand becomes extremely important so within gaming we have this brand you know and everyone knows about Gridly but outside of gaming we have some work to do for other companies to also found us in this digital lang to find us in this digital landscape what channels do you think work best like in 2025 i mean is is like fullon Google SEO is that still huge do you feel there's maybe a bit of a dent by AI and people just asking you know CHP directly do you think events are are good do you go to like the big gaming conferences or maybe other conferences which channel you feel are are good no I think that what you need you know what I should you know working with digital companies working with AI working with the data analytics and marketing for many many years I should answer you know it's all about the digital world but it's not of course you know the SEO and you know how you work with Google and other uh engines is extremely important of course to drive traffic and and to be able to create awareness around your company of course but I think that the combination we are still like people even though we are a platform company it's people doing business with people for that you need to build relationships and for to be able to build relationships you need to also meet with real people so I love to have like you know customer meetings when they are needed uh you know we are also we will also have uh a heavy event agenda for this year we will participate in many of the big events because I think that you need you need to connect to a company as well it's not only a platform and a website and you know you also want to know the people working there and you want to feel trust for those people working there so I'm much for you know digital first but human relationships in combination with that I think is super strong and that is how we try to apply our go to market model at gridly and just a good old sales just sorry just to belver that point a little bit uh like good old kind of outreach sales do you feel like in in in something as complex as B2B SAS and and the the kind of the layer the complex uh solution that you provide do you think that has that has value still or not really like you do product like growth plus great online plus you go to events that'll cover it yeah I think but you might have to do some outreaches but I mean when I do outreaches on my own I do it within my network or people that has seen my personal brand on LinkedIn that are connected or I have seen something specific on LinkedIn and I really personalize that kind of outreach you know I'm also working myself a lot with sales but I think like pushing and pushing and pushing outbound uh I think that that is still working for a few companies for us it's not working very good and uh we do some outbound emailing uh but we try to stay really sharp really try to find the target audience really be sharp on that kind of email marketing but you know I can see on the results you know it's a huge we don't have that impact within that channel anymore uh if we are very precise if we do really good prospecting it might work still work yeah you're right i mean you have to be really laser focused otherwise you could send literally a million emails and and uh and who wants more emails now you want more emails nobody wants more emails no um all right let's talk a bit about like maybe the road map for 2025 beyond like what's in planned you just said you had a big release coming up by the time this comes out it's you know it's a couple of days uh ago so uh yeah maybe just remind people of the launch again but then also other things that you have planned for 2025 so the launch that we are doing now is the biggest launch in Gridless history so you know it's for us it's huge uh what it will do uh when we add CAT and TMS functionality uh to our CMS solution in one platform is of course that you know we can attract customers that needs all of those functionalities of course uh but we can also be more attractive when it comes to the area of AI so for the last year we have invested a lot in you know the CAT and TMS the dev team has been working almost only on this to be able for us to make this launch uh you know when the release is coming up you have a few weeks where you need to you know work on a few things when it's launched the feedback from the customers and so on but then for the rest of 2025 our main focus will be in the AI field we see that our customers they are asking for us they want to have better AI and machine translation they wants better solutions uh when it comes to context you know when it comes to consistency for AI to understand the context it is translating within and the consistency the area that it works in with you know glossery and translation memory memory and so on so our vision now for Gridley is to be a full-fledged platform within content operations and we really want to create a world where you know content flows seamlessly and when it's really you know AI powered uh as much as it can be so we will invest and focus on the AI area for the rest of 2025 all right well good luck with that very excited about that launch and thanks so much for joining today Anna thank you for having me [Music]