A tiny team shipped the translation tool half the industry now depends on. They would like you to stop emailing them.
The whole company fits at one table, and on Wednesdays it does. There are three of them. They have no office, no sales team and no telephone number.
Their translation tool handles more text each day than most national newspapers print in a year. A large part of the software industry now sends its error messages, help pages and menus through it without thinking.
How it happened
Four years ago the three were working on something else and needed a small program to keep translated files in step with the originals. They wrote it in a fortnight and published the code.
Then other people started using it. Then large companies did.
"We found out a bank depended on us when their lawyer sent a forty-page form," one of them said. "We have still not filled it in."
What they refuse to do
The team keeps a short list of things it will not add, pinned to the top of its public notes:
- No accounts and no sign-in
- No hosted version
- No features that only one customer wants
They take donations and a small number of support contracts, enough for three salaries.
The strain
The cost of staying small is the inbox. About two hundred messages arrive on a normal day. Most are polite. Some assume there is a department.
One of the three now spends two days a week only answering. They have talked about hiring a fourth person and so far decided against it, on the grounds that a fourth would want a fifth.
Wednesday
They meet in a rented room above a bicycle shop, review the week's changes and eat lunch. The meeting has no agenda. It ends when the food does.
