From Idea to Innovation: The Journey of Startups and My Translation Research Platform

The definition of a startup company can be made as a brand-new company that has been established to create one-of-a-kind products or services that are exceptionally original so the customer cannot resist or replace them. The root of every startup company is innovation, discovering the deficits of already established ideas and products, or actualizing completely state of the art categories of goods and services. Big companies like Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google were startups at the beginning. The differences between a normal company and a startup and how a startup is funded and an explanation about my startup idea will be discussed in detail throughout this essay. 

Firstly, in general, a startup is similar to any other company. There are employees and an employer that are working to create a product or a service that customers would fancy. The difference is that the regular companies replicate what has been done before, trying to be more successful than their rivals. As an example, a restaurant owner can franchise an established restaurant, operating with an already set template and rules. On the other hand, a startup aims to create a completely different set of rules and policies. As an example, Blue Apron can be given. According to Wikipedia, Blue Apron is an American ingredient-and-recipe meal kit company. The startup offers boxes containing ingredients, and suggested recipes weekly. This company provides the same concept as a restaurant but it is more convenient and can be reached by tens of millions of customers, rather than thousands which most restaurants cannot even attain. Another key points that differentiate startups from other companies are speed and growth. With continuous feedback and user data, startups build on ideas extremely swiftly, as they usually aim for. Most of the time, a startup will start with a basic concept of a product that is called a minimal viable product, also known as an MVP. It will examine and modify the system until the product or the service is ready to be marketed to the public. In addition, the main goal of a startup is to enlarge their customer base as quickly as possible with the aim of establishing large market shares, which helps them to inflate more money, more briskly. 

Secondly, there are several ways that a startup can be funded. These are bootstrapping, seed funding, Series A, B, C, and D funding rounds, or becoming a public company. Bootstrapping is a circumstance in which the brain of the startup sets up the company with little capital in hand, mostly counting on outside investors. When an entrepreneur attempts to found and establish a company from personal finances, it can be exemplified as bootstrapping. Contrastingly to a normal company, rather than investing through angel investors, which are high-net-worth individuals typically investing to have a share on the company, startup companies rely on personal savings, and sweat equity to succeed. Sweat equity can be explained as a form of physical labor, mental struggle, and time-consuming contributions. For example, a bootstrapped company is likely to take preorders for the upcoming products, utilizing the funds to construct orders and to deliver them to the customers. Additionally, seed funding is any sort of money that helps a startup to initiate. It is not a loan, in contrast, to receive funds, owners give a share or some part of the profits to the investors. There are crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter, Wefunder, FundRazr, Indiegogo which can be useful when a startup needs financial resources. Furthermore, Series A, B, C, and D funding rounds are the processes of growing a business with an outside source. Series A funding is the first venture capital for a startup, it is extremely important and can be classified as a milestone for a company. While the capital that is given is so much larger than a seed round, the company has to exhibit an MVP, minimal viable product. According to Forbes, as of 2021, the Series A funding is around $22.2 million and around 10% of startup companies can raise a seed round, leading to a Series A investment. Moreover, Series B is more about the past development stage of the business, averaging around $33 million. The step includes private equity, crowdfunded equity, credit investments, and venture capitalists. Series B investors usually prefer convertible stocks, rather than common stocks due to the anti-dilution feature, which are clauses that allow investors the right to sustain ownership. Last but not least, Series C funding is the final stage of startup financing. This funding type highly relies on sales of preferred shares. Most of the companies that are in the phase Series C funding are not startups anymore, they are considered as sophisticated and successful companies, at their late stages of development, with reliable revenues and profits. As of June 2020, the Series C funding is around $59 million. On top of that, a startup might decide to become a public company and let outside money via an IPO, an initial public offering. 

I would like to incorporate the translation side of it with my own idea of a translation startup. As it is widely known, for a translator to execute the job at hand appropriately, they have to be familiar with the topic that they are working on. In addition to the research, it is also known that translators usually analyze the previously translated versions of the target context. These concepts can get extremely complicated very easily. My idea of a startup is a website that will help translators to do research conveniently and without any delay. After the login, individuals can research the subject that they are currently working on from a variety of articles, professional and technical journals, as well as books with no extra fees. There would be a “workspace” to store the articles, with citation recommendations. The AI of the website will collect the data from the articles and journals that have been visited and cited, to recommend potential texts that the translator can be working on. If the recommendations are wrong or not accurate enough, the translator can search for the specific text on the search engine, powered by countless numbers of libraries from universities and colleges all around the world. When it comes to funding the website, I probably would prefer a safe route and raise the money for the website on my own, if it is not enough, the crowdfunding platforms seem safe and trustworthy.

Taking everything into consideration, there are a plethora of differences between a traditional company and a startup, and how these types of companies are funded is crucial. A conventional company usually does not generate new ideas, they are based on improving already existing concepts and inserting themselves into the rivalry. On the other hand, a startup promotes unique archetypes in certain markets. They intend to grow as quickly as possible with nonstop user comments and establish all-new sets of rules and strategies. To kickstart a startup company, there are several ways such as bootstrapping, seed funding, Series A, B, C, and D or becoming a public company. While bootstrapping is when a startup initiates with little to no capital in hand, seed funding is any sort of money that will start off the company. Series A, B, C, and D funding rounds are more professional and complicated types of funding. The company has to demonstrate an MVP, and show how obsessively dedicated the whole team is to the project. As the company grows, the difficulty of being able to obtain the funding gets harder. My own translation startup idea is a website to assist translators in the research and analyzing aspect of the work. In my point of view, actualizing an idea in the form of a company is challenging and it requires a great deal of perseverance. Although it is hard to succeed, it must be incredibly rewarding to see one’s own idea begin appreciated by millions of people.