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Václav Hodek
Founder and CEO · Localazy
Localization Developer tools
Hodek believes developers should be able to ship apps in many languages without the pain he faced translating his own, and Localazy now runs localization for hundreds of software teams.
“I struggled to translate my apps, so I built a localization platform,” reads Václav Hodek's line on the team page of Localazy, the Brno, Czech Republic company he founded in 2020 and runs as CEO. Localazy helps software teams translate apps, websites, and docs with AI, translation memory, and optional human review.
A Software Company and a Hobby App
Hodek ran his own software company, which built mobile apps and information systems for clients, CzechCrunch reported. “Although the money is coming in fast, you are not the one making the decisions,” he wrote on the Localazy blog, so he moved on. A small app he had built for himself to open the phone dialer over a photo of a business card became Floating Apps, a multitasking tool for Android.
Thirty Languages
Floating Apps grew to more than 7.5 million downloads on Google Play, CzechCrunch reported in 2020. Hodek translated it into more than 30 languages, which he says sped up growth tenfold, but he came to hate the work of managing translations and checking their quality.
Building Localazy
He started Localazy to fix that for himself and other developers, first helping Android developers crowdsource translations. The company has worked fully remote since its start during the pandemic, and its platform team is about 20 people, according to Localazy.
