When Matt Weisman was studying abroad in Thailand, his first cousin, Jordan Orlick, came to visit and they ended up traveling to 26 countries throughout Asia.
The language barriers were challenging then, as well as on subsequent trips they took to countries where English isn't the primary language, Orlick said.
They especially found it difficult to make purchases in these countries. So they ultimately decided to start a company to offer language translation in real-time.
LetzChat, which was founded in 2010, is a B2B company that offers AI-powered language translations across multiple forms of corporate communication — including text messages, chat messages and website content — in more than 100 languages and dialects.
It launched its first product in 2018. Orlick serves as CEO and Weisman serves as president of the company.
Comcast and the NFL are two of LetzChat’s prominent customers. Last year, LetzChat graduated from Comcast’s NBC Universal SportsTech Accelerator, powered by Boomtown. It received a $50,000 investment, $25,000 from Comcast and $25,000 Boomtown.
To date, LetzChat has raised approximately $1.75 million, Orlick told L.A. Inno. The company saw revenue of $150,000 last year, he added.
Last football season, LetzChat provided subtitles for NFL's GamePass, which enables viewers to watch the NFL season live and on-demand. The startup is also working with Comcast to translate its SportsTech accelerator website into more than 100 languages.
LetzChat is also working on a pilot with the WWE and just finished integrating its translation software into NBC Universal's GolfNow to translate that website.
The startup's competition includes Rev.com, which takes audio and video files and has them transcribed by a marketplace of experienced transcribers.
There's also GlobeChat, based in Newport Beach, that delivers instant language translation for industries including the military and the government, as well as businesses.
Perhaps its biggest competitor is Google, which offers translation through its Google Translate product. Orlick, however, claims that LetzChat has a higher accuracy percentage than Google “across all languages.”
He also noted that LetzChat can detect the home language of a user’s device and translates based on that, not on an IP address.
Another differentiator, Orlick said, is LetzChat’s “seamless and fast integration.”
Its current translation products include a real-time website plug-in, subtitling, dubbing text messaging and emailGPT, which automatically formulates emails and can also translate them in real-time.
The company also has a presentation tool that enables a presentation to be understood in 100-plus languages, Orlick said.
