Last updated - November 10, 2020
Today at ‘Expert Speaks‘, we have with us Augustin Prot, the Co-founder of Weglot, which allows you to make your website multilingual in minutes and to manage all your translations effortlessly.
In this interview, Augustin talks briefly about some of the top lessons he has learned, the importance of goal-setting and staying focused. He also mentions how this pandemic helps in Digitalization.
We thank Augustin for inspiring us with his words of wisdom. We hope you guys enjoy going through his informative answers.
Hello Augustin, Welcome to Learnwoo. Tell us something about your background and how exactly did you get involved with WordPress?
Hey all, I’m Augustin CEO and co-founder of Weglot, a tech solution to translate and display a website in different languages (used by 50k+ companies).
Prior to Weglot, I worked in finance, mergers and acquisitions, for 3 years. Then I met Rémy, co-founder and CTO of Weglot, who had the idea of Weglot.
When we started working together in late 2015 we did not know about WordPress at all. And it’s actually users who told us about WordPress. We had a JavaScript snippet at that time and we were trying to have people testing the product. When I asked them to install it, the classic answer was: “I’d love to but I don’t know how to add a JS snippet to my website, do you have a WordPress plugin to add your solution?”. We got that answer so many times that we decided to build a WordPress plugin to add Weglot to WordPress websites.
Tell us the idea behind Weglot? We checked you started your Journey from working in Bank for 3 years then how you came into this field so what inspired you to leave your job?
The idea behind Weglot is Rémy, co-founder and CTO of Weglot. When he was in charge of the website of his previous startup, he experienced many challenges: connecting a payment system, offering a powerful search, sending text messages to users.. He always found an easy to use solution to do that, Stripe, Algolia or Twilio for example. But when he had to make the website multilingual and translate it, he did not find one. It took days, with low value-added tasks technically speaking. A very frustrating experience. So he thought there should be a service that let you make any website multilingual in minutes.
On a personal level, I wanted to learn and more and build something, that’s how I got to meet Rémy. Then, I really liked the idea and vision he had at the time.
As the CEO of Weglot, you must have a lot of responsibilities and pressure. Which aspect of your work do you like the most?
Having to do many different things in a day, thinking about the short and long term, ultimately taking decisions and co-building the company’s story with Rémy.
What’s your normal routine? And this pandemic affects your routine life?
Before the pandemic, I used to come to the office every weekday. Since we’re locked down as I write, remote work from home in the new routine. I guess post-pandemic I would probably do more remote work.
Tell us the one product of we got you are really proud of and why? Also,In Weglot stage of growth, what are the top challenges to deal with?
Weglot is the only product we have and we’re very proud of it :), we’re super focused to offer the best in class solution to translate any website. Top challenges are keeping the growth pace and growing the team.
What are the Future projects of Weglot you are currently working on? Also, what important feature would you like to see in the future versions of WordPress?
We’re currently working on having URLs slugs translated, it’s already available for Weglot WordPress users and we’re getting nice feedback so far.
Outside work, what do you enjoy the most? And how do you manage work-life balance as it is quite difficult in today’s time?
I enjoy spending time with my family, sports and cooking. The work-life balance is not that difficult. At least for me, I try to be Weglot dedicated and focused on weekdays working hours and shifting to the family for the rest of the time. Obviously, I can’t help thinking about Weglot, even in my sleep but I think I like this.
Nowadays everyone is doing work from home but sometimes it’s difficult to maintain productivity so what are your productivity hacks in order to do what you do and keep moving forward?
I agree it can be challenging to remain productive when working from home. Have a good setup (chair, second screen, etc.), set routines, keep a weekly to-do list.
How do you see this COVID-19 Pandemic on the online Business especially WordPress market?
Overall the Pandemic condensed 2-5 years of digitalization in one, so it meant more businesses going online, totally or partially, so ultimately growing the web and mobile app development demand at an accelerated rate.
How did you manage to get Weglot to reach this level of success? What’s the secret behind this success only if you want to share?
There is no true secret, it’s a combination of different factors: great people (meeting the right person – Rémy co-founder of Weglot, and having an amazing team), dedication and focus, hard work and luck.
Any advice you want to give people who want to follow your path?
Launch fast and focus on user experience. But the advice might be to not look too much for the advice.
