Revenue: $514,170
Founder(s): David Salter
Industry: Property and business services
Head Office: New South Wales
Employees: 3
Website: www.linguistico.com.au
Former lawyer David Salter started Linguistico just one year ago, after spotting a gap in the market for quality legal translation work. "Law firms were all too often undertaking this work in-house using people who were not qualified and did not have time to do the job properly.
The company's first project involved translating a driving licence from Italian to English, but soon after Salter became involved with a complex mining case in the Commercial Court in Paris and a project that saw the company translate over 500,000 words into five languages for a healthcare client.
The business has continued to grow and is now focused on the core areas of finance, healthcare, insurance and legal translation.
"We've grown largely as a result of word-of-mouth recommendations from clients and a clear need in the market for someone to do the tricky stuff."
Salter says the most challenging part of starting the business has simply been believing in the idea. "Many people, including friends, colleagues and family were unclear why someone would want to leave a sensible ‘career' job such as legal practice in order to set up a business," he says.
"During the six months while I was creating Linguistico and the nine months before I paid myself, there were times when I started to think they were right. However, I kept at it, kept refining our systems and our offering and now have a viable, well-respected business."
BEST PART OF STARTING YOUR BUSINESS:
"The satisfaction in creating an income, creating jobs and creating a business has been far greater than anything achieved as a lawyer. That said, I could not have started this business without the skills learned at the various firms where I have worked and ‘protecting the downside' is an important business lesson hammered in to every junior lawyer."
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