When Claudia Mirza and Azam Mirza started a translation business five years ago, they had big ambitions, and for a while, their operation, Akorbi Language Consulting, thrived. After just two years, sales broke $1 million, driven by translation jobs for corporate clients such as Southwest Airlines and Aetna. But that was as good as it got. For the past three years, the Mirzas say they feel as if they have been hitting their heads against the wall. The more they spend on sales and marketing, the more their business seems to shrink. Lately, it's gotten so bad that the couple is on the verge of the unthinkable: bringing in an outsider as CEO. "Just because I own the business doesn't mean I am the best person to lead the company," says Claudia. "Are we the right people to run it, or should we let someone else take the reins?" Azam wonders.
Self-doubt is often the kiss of death for entrepreneurs, but you can't fault the Mirzas, who often finish each other's sentences, for wondering if they are up to the task. When the couple launched Akorbi, they were full of bravado. They saw a fast-growing global translation market worth billions of dollars and figured they could get in on the action. Now, that plan is looking less than realistic. Indeed, the Mirzas fear that getting to the next level of growth and profitability may be something they cannot do on their own.
For Claudia, always a self-starter, opting to go to an outsider would be tough. She launched her first business, a copy center and translation service, to put herself through business school in her native Colombia. She wound up with two full-time employees translating study guides for college students and discovered she had a knack for managing. Later, she moved to the United States and took a corporate job with a telecom company. She met Azam in a Dallas Starbucks in 2000. Azam, who grew up in southeastern India, had been an IT consultant at Ernst & Young before going into IT work on his own. Wouldn't it be great, Claudia thought, if she, too, could get out of the corporate rat race and launch her own venture? Azam, who loved being his own boss, was all for it. "We are skeptical about working in an environment where our life and livelihood are decided by someone else," says Azam.
After doing some pro bono translation from English to Spanish, Claudia began thinking about returning to the translation business. Soon after the couple got married in 2002, she persuaded Azam to join her. With his technical background and her experience, the two of them figured they could create software that would make it easy for corporate customers to automate high-volume routine translations in order to reduce reliance on human translators.
Claudia sought out some high-profile but still nonpaying clients, such as the Dallas Arboretum and the Greater Dallas Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. The duo used savings from previous careers to finance the launch. Azam handled sales and project management, while Claudia oversaw translations.
At first, the Mirzas advertised in the yellow pages but soon decided to target large companies willing to spend several thousand dollars per translation contract. By November 2002, through word of mouth, Akorbi won its first paid project: translating brochures into Spanish for 3M.
As more jobs came in, the Mirzas began hiring enough employees so that at least three translators worked on each job -- including brief memos, billboards, or hefty insurance guides -- to get the subtleties just right. Azam also set up as an IT consultant, helping companies find freelance tech staff members.
Soon the Mirzas were signing on to do work with insurance companies, advertising agencies, and government offices. Akorbi's staff grew to eight full timers in Dallas, a dozen in Buenos Aires and Medellín, Colombia, and five tech developers in India, as well as a network of hundreds of freelance translators who pitched in on big jobs. By 2005, the company had 33 language clients and nine IT customers. Revenue jumped from $20,000 in 2003 to $1.2 million in 2005. Spanish translations accounted for about half the business, with Chinese a strong second.
The company developed a reputation for its attention to cultural nuances and reliability. A recent slogan for Dallas Area Rapid Transit, for instance, "Dump the Pump," was rendered into lyrical, rhyming Spanish by Akorbi: "Keep your wallet safe and say goodbye to the gas station" is the English rendering. Says DART's media supervisor, Carmen Hillebrand: "I can give them an assignment and know I am going to get exactly what I need on time."
The business was going so well that Azam figured he could indulge his greatest passion -- owning and racing horses on the regional circuit. He had bought his first horse, for just $5,000, in 2002. Over the next several years, Azam was able to own and race a succession of horses; he now owns three, Claudia's Agenda, Claudia's Forum, and Powerful Claudia. What's more, the horse racing turned into a helpful marketing tool for the business. The Mirzas have entertained executives from Aetna and Bromley Communications, a Hispanic advertising agency, by taking them to races in which Azam's horses competed.
As it happened, demand for translation business was far greater than it was for IT, and the IT business was being hammered by competitors overseas. So, in 2005, the pair decided to back away from IT staffing and go full bore on translations. Freed from his IT work, Azam would use his tech know-how to help the company push so-called localization services, an offshoot of the translation business that helps companies adapt their websites and software to foreign markets. The plan was to take two steps back and then make a big leap ahead by marketing these new translation tools to land bigger jobs.
