Published 25 June 2020

The MyBrian start-up is keeping its promises

After a launch period of just over two years, the MyBrian translation platform can be proud of its initial positive results. The company, which specialises in providing professional express translation services, has successfully passed its first milestone and is attracting both users and translators alike, won over by a model that is both innovative and fair.

Created by Géraldine Godurowski (France) and Erin Salmon (New Zealand), the online solution has begun to establish itself with a vast number of companies (including large groups, SMEs and VSEs) as a flexible, high-quality, professional translation service, essential to their daily business.

From user-friendly innovation to “loyal” intermediary

Finalists in the 2018 Big Booster Programme in Lyon, the creators of MyBrian, won the support of a jury convinced of the opportunity this innovative and easy-to-use project presented, combining both human and cultural intelligence to provide high-performance professional translations.

The MyBrian founders’ initial promise was to provide an innovative translation service for a business clientele that was not only demanding in terms of quality and price but one that wanted to be in control of deadlines. Founder, Géraldine Godurowski, came up with the idea of creating an intermediary platform between the business user and the translator. She very quickly understood that providing a high-quality service also meant offering a high remuneration for professional, native-speaking translators.

One of the key factors of MyBrian’s success is a community of translators who are attracted by a tool that provides them with assignments, remunerated according to their level of expertise and reactivity, while respecting their freedom and independence.

Avoiding a frantic, unseemly rush to raise funds

In order to be competitive, the start-up made an ethical choice to reduce its margins and take a different route to the normal trend among start-ups, being one that measures success on an ability to raise private funds.

More tortoise-like in its values and vision, MyBrian opted to build its model on a solid basis and put its energy into expanding its client portfolio. The young company has sought to consolidate its structure by acquiring a loyal client base and a community of reliable, high-profile translators.

A segmented market ranging from Marketing to Legal services

The platform was initially created to simplify ordering urgent, often short and recurring translations. Marketeers and sales people, the original target audience, use this platform for professional communications that cannot afford to include any linguistic misunderstandings. Translations for sales presentations, websites and articles for social media are frequent requests.

However, the online service regularly receives requests from lawyers and law firms for sworn and/or legal translations, which require a high level of reactivity and legal expertise from translators.
This market segment is growing and the platform has adapted its offer to include secure, sworn translation services provided by qualified translators who have been carefully selected.

Areas of development into other linguistic fields

The MyBrian creators chose to focus on French/English and English/French translations in the first phase of developing their platform

However, a large number of requests for translations into other languages have encouraged this young company to extend its services into Spanish, German, Chinese and Japanese. This second phase would position MyBrian as a leader in rapid multilingual « self-service » translation.