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6 Comments

How would you grow developer tool?

Hello, guys,

we are a small team of developers and over the past few years, we struggled with localizing our mobile apps. My hobby app grew to 8 million downloads and 30 languages, and it was real pain to add new features and keep the app localized correctly. I hated it. But it was important as, for example, the Japanese translation catapulted the app to the first place in Japan in Productivity for several days and bring over $2000 overnight.

The localization pain was the reason why we developed Localazy. It started as a bunch of scripts we used to make our lifes easier and eventually, we turned it into SaaS product to help also other developers in the same situation.

As for now, developers who tasted our product are happy and love it, but I would like to get more of them onboard.

I will be glad to hear about how you would approach this. We already have many different channels, but I may miss something.

  1. 3

    I think you have a valuable product on your hands.

    While I was doing my research for Zero to Users, I've identified a small number of founders mentioning "internationalization" as a major acquisition channel.

    You may want to even market your product not as a simple "app translation" but as a "way to reach 100x more potential users". You could demonstrate the size of the English market vs. the total market size of the languages you're covering. Also, post case studies of successful apps who've been able to reach more users.

    So app devs won't care much if you tell them "I'll localize your app". They'll be willing to listen more if you tell them "hey, you could easily reach 100x more customers by translating your app. And we make the translation process 100x easier than doing it manually".

    1. 1

      We are still working on the website and keep improving it. The similar message should be communicated on reworked homepage soon.

      We use the developer-friendly communication because it's the key difference from other localization platforms. They are usually made for enterprise, and simple devs and small technical teams feel lost. Also, they are trying to earn money, and don't have the sharing mindset as we developers :-).

  2. 2

    Awesome product, I've added it to my list of developer-first products. I just started it a few days ago, I hope it helps others too :)
    https://github.com/agamm/awesome-developer-first#localization

    1. 1

      Thans a lot! I appreciate it.

  3. 2

    First of all, congrats on your product!

    Here are some ideas for you.

    • Launch at ProductHunt. I couldn't find it there, so it looks like you missed that one.
    • Find subs on Reddit where your target audience hangs out. But be careful about promotion rules.
    • Find YouTube channels with audience and ask them for a promotion.
    • Scrape some GitHub emails and send a mail to developers you think might be interested. This is just an idea, I don't encourage anyone to do spamming.
    • Ask your current customers to recommend it to others.
    • Target software companies which might be interested, so they can push it to their R&D.
    • Find a newsletter with good developer audience, ask for promotion.
    1. 1

      Thanks a lot for the list.

      • ProductHunt is planned.
      • I'm a bit active on reddit, need to go deeper.
      • I will try YouTube, great tip!
      • Emails are, you know, not "moral".
      • We do! Our users already recommend it but the network effect is too small at the moment.
      • I will try. Thanks for tip.
      • Good idea. We were already featured in AndroidWeekly.
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