Unlocking Global Success: The Power of SaaS Localization

Name: Unlocking Global Success: The Power of SaaS Localization
Uploaded: 2024-12-10T00:39:32+00:00
Duration: 1 min 17 s
Channel: Jason M. Lemkin
Description: In this excerpt, Jason Lemkin shares his experience as CEO of Adobe Sign (formerly EchoSign) competing with DocuSign, highlighting how most SaaS…

10 Dec 2024 · 1 min

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1:17

In this excerpt, Jason Lemkin shares his experience as CEO of Adobe Sign (formerly EchoSign) competing with DocuSign, highlighting how most SaaS companies delay product localization. He recounts forcing his team—despite resistance—to fully localize the application across all languages while the company was only generating $3‑4 million in revenue. The push was driven by feedback from major tech customers (Facebook, Google, Twitter, Groupon) who needed localized interfaces for contracts sent worldwide. The comprehensive localization enabled the company to win a wave of deals with global tech sales teams, illustrating that early, full‑scale localization can be a decisive competitive advantage for SaaS firms.

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I do ask a lot of CEOs that I, I don't do that many CEOs, but I do ask them, and I found that I'm shocked how late a lot of SaaS companies localize at all levels. Back in the day when I was running Adobe Sign, EchoSign, and we were competing with DocuSign, we fully, and it was a pain, right? It was full, we fully localized a 2-byte app all across the, every piece of it in every language under the world, and we did it around $3 to $4 million in revenue. The reason we did it, I had to push the team to do it as a CEO. The team didn't want to do it. They didn't see it. But when I started meeting with our top customer, we had a lot of tech customers back in the day. So we had Facebook and Groupon and Google and Twitter, and their sales teams were using us back in the day. They said, "I'm sending contracts to India." Maybe not India. "I'm sending contracts to France. I'm sending contracts to Germany. I'm sending contracts to Korea." And it would be great if all of the interface was localized. Okay? And we quickly realized we could win tons of deals in tech if we did this. So I forced the team to do it. And then we went on a run where we won like every sales team that was tech-focused that had a global sales force. Right? We just won every deal. So that's— I thought that's what everybody should do. Sometimes around 3, 4, 5—