1. You are the CEO and co-founder of MotionPoint Corporation, a company whose relevance is soaring as its website translation and globalization solutions help clients penetrate new markets in their customer’s preferred language. You have demonstrated incredible industry foresight by leveraging the histrionic changes in the way companies are doing business today. When you shifted MotionPoint’s focus to website conversion, did you expect the explosive importance of a company’s website and the role of globalization in successfully growing a business?
We certainly saw the large macroeconomic drivers that were in place to create what we were confident would be a very large, rapidly-growing, long-term need — a need in the eyes of companies — and we knew that would translate into large, rapidly-growing long-term opportunity. We had the chance to position ourselves as the company best-able to meet those needs.
The key macroeconomic drivers I’m referring to are the increasing globalization of business, coupled with the importance of website content. What wasn’t obvious to many people back in 2000 was how websites would continue to increase in importance to companies over time.
2. By 2008, MotionPoint was listed in Inc. Magazine as one of the 500 fastest growing private companies in the United States. Your revenue growth over the past 3 years has grown over 550 percent and you recently won the South Florida Business Journal’s 2011 Business of the Year Award. Clearly, you have a proven business model which attracts top-shelf clients. What are some of the top companies using your translation solutions to help serve their customers around the world? What other clients would you like to have?
As a leader in our field, we’ve had the opportunity to work with companies that are leaders in their respective fields — Best Buy, Delta Air Lines, Verizon, Akamai, Ford … and outside the commercial sector, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Our ideal prospects are organizations that are serious about penetrating new markets and driving their business growth on a long-term basis. There are lots of companies and lots of industries that are not even scratching the surface of their business potential, when they consider the opportunity in other markets — particularly online.
While we’re really proud of what we’ve built so far, we’re excited about the opportunities that remain in front of us. We’re still very early in this business of helping companies penetrate new markets at home and around the globe.
3. In a struggling economy, many companies who require your translation and globalization services may think the cost of implementing your services is too much for their business. Can you describe in pedestrian terms some of MotionPoint’s patented technology which enables clients to break through new markets in their customer’s preferred language in 90 days with zero IT development? And how your global e-commerce program bolsters the value of this investment?
There are lots of instances in which penetrating a new market requires another language. MotionPoint’s key insight was fundamentally rethinking the right way to make websites available in other languages. Historically, companies had to endure a troublesome and expensive IT integration project if they wanted to create a new website for another market. We created a solution that eliminates all of that effort and expense. It’s really attractive, economically, for clients because it’s a fundamentally more efficient way of adding languages to websites.
A struggling economy certainly makes budgets tighter, and limits the number of projects the typical company can bring on, it also focuses companies on efficiency. That’s really helped us, because of the fact that our offering is much more efficient and affordable than the alternatives that existed before we created our tools.
4. MotionPoint manages websites in more than 30 languages for more than 500 clients. How do you determine how localized you should make your site when penetrating new markets?
The degree of customization by market really varies, depending on a wide range of factors — including the industry, the company, and the particular website. All of this is driven by the audiences that the website is serving.
For example: With a global airline, there might be a pretty large degree of customization that is appropriate and valuable to the client because the promoted routes — even on the home page — are going to speak to some of the real key travel opportunities, or destinations, that are attractive to that market. So there might be a lot of customization, even within a particular language, because different geographical markets are going to have very different needs … though they may share a common language.
A large retail site, on the other hand, may require considerably less customization because the core function of the site may be to provide product information and transaction capability online — and having information and user experience parity may be the most valuable aspect of the site for that particular company.
5. Prior to MotionPoint, you co-founded Convenience Products Corporation in 1992, which created a market for new technology in pre-paid calling cards and pre-paid wireless and was ultimately acquired by AT&T. Again you were on trend as the market exploded, growing from a 12 million dollar industry in the early 1990’s to a 650 million dollar industry by 1995. What can we look for next from you? And the future of the way we do business?
There are many commonalities between what we learned and saw in the prepaid calling card and wireless industries, and what was applied in creating MotionPoint. The prepaid industry really sensitized us to the changing demographics, both in the U.S. and worldwide — and how language played a key part within those changing demographics. Further, we learned a lot about the value of applying data-driven insights.
For example: In the prepaid days, there were “Call Detail Records.” This provided us with unbelievably large amounts of data, which we could analyze and provide insights into our clients, so that we — and they — could make their prepaid calling card programs more successful. One of the wonderful things about the web is that there are many opportunities to use data and analysis to drive the success of websites — and therefore business for clients. We’re applying many of those same principles. It’s foundational to what we do.
6. English is generally the official language of business; is it important to also be proficient in other languages to compete successfully around the globe?
English has certainly been the “language of business” within the United States in certain markets, but there are many markets where English hasn’t been the language of business.
This question gets right to one of the core tenets of globalization. Companies now have the ability to communicate more directly with consumers in lots of different markets — markets that might speak lots of different languages.
English might be the unofficial language of business, but it’s not always the language of consumers. Connecting with consumers in the language they’re most comfortable hearing doesn’t always mean doing so in the language that you’re most comfortable speaking.
7. What advice can you share with fledgling entrepreneurs looking to build a business in today’s world marketplace?
Follow your passion — make sure you do what you enjoy doing. When people do what they enjoy, they tend to be much more interested, and have a much higher level of proficiency at what they really enjoy.
I also encourage people to look at the way the world will be, which requires an intellectual willingness to let go of the way the world is. Determining the future size of markets — rather than the past or current size of markets — has been really helpful for us. As my grandfather frequently said to me, put yourself in a position to benefit from the inevitable.
About Will Fleming
Will Fleming, co-founder and chief executive officer of MotionPoint Corporation, is nationally known for his expertise in identifying and understanding consumer trends and building and managing growth companies. He has more than 20 years of experience creating markets for technology-based multi-lingual services.
In 2000, he co-founded MotionPoint, where he drives the company’s short- and long-term strategies and business results. A lifelong entrepreneur, Fleming is an expert in identifying domestic and international business opportunities and has a thorough knowledge of emerging global markets. He has wide-ranging knowledge of the website globalization space and the potential it offers organizations to generate sustained growth.
Before establishing MotionPoint, Fleming co-founded Convenience Products Corporation, a company he grew into a nationwide leader that created a market for prepaid calling card and prepaid wireless products. It was acquired by AT&T.
Fleming received a bachelor’s degree in economics from Carleton College, and a master’s in business administration (MBA) from The Wharton School of Business.
