Redokun

My Document Translation App Makes $125K/month

October 17th, 2025

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About
Business

Stefano

Founder, Redokun

$125K

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

Redokun

redokun.com

from Venice

started January 2016

$125,000

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

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Who are you and what business did you start?

Hey! I’m Stefano, co-founder of Redokun.com, a SaaS that streamlines translation workflows for marketing and localization teams.

Our clients are mostly B2B and manufacturing companies that work across multiple languages and need scalable translation processes.

Because Redokun was built by people who worked in this environment, it introduces a complete workflow that transforms how teams collaborate. At every step, Redokun replaces manual, fragmented tasks with a faster and more organized way of working.

Upload your document, invite your translators or partners, and in minutes you’re managing everything from AI translations to approved text memories in one shared workspace.

Interface

The result is a workflow that feels lighter, faster, and more under control. Marketing teams move from chasing versions and copy-pasting text to quickly launching on-brand, consistent content in multiple languages.

Today, Redokun has surpassed the $125K/month mark in recurring revenue.

MRR Growth to $125K/month

How do you come up with the idea for Redokun?

I came up with the idea for Redokun after seeing firsthand how chaotic and manual translation workflows were inside the teams we now serve. Translating design-heavy documents meant endless copy-pasting, version confusion, and sleepless nights fixing mistakes before deadlines.

It became clear teams like us didn’t need another complicated localization platform, but something simple, practical, and fast enough to fit into our everyday workflow.

My “aha” moment came during one project where a client had to update four documents already produced in 37 languages each for CEE certification in just a few days. That stressful experience made me call my high school friend Paolo, who would later become my co-founder, to explore building a solution for these recurring pains.

My background working with many teams in this messy space helped me see how much time and energy were wasted on coordination. But things didn’t start perfectly. We were unprepared, and the Italian countryside where we were based was far from a startup-friendly environment. We didn’t know how to build a company, how to talk to customers, or how to do marketing. And what we were trying to do sounded like an alien language to everyone around us.

If I could go back, I’d probably spend more time validating the idea before building, but we didn’t know better when we started in 2016. We also felt like the Italian market wasn’t ready for SaaS.

How did you launch Redokun and get initial traction?

At first, we couldn’t even speak English well, and yet our website and audience were international. Paolo and I used to write email replies together in a shared Google Doc, line by line, to make sure every sentence made sense.

Whenever I had to speak with a lead, I’d drive 25 minutes to Paolo’s house to take a video call because the internet at my parents’ place wasn’t strong enough. Next to my computer, I kept a piece of paper with potential questions and answers reviewed by an English-native friend. Often, I struggled to understand different accents and had to guess the topic before reading one of my prepared answers.

Luckily, Paolo knew how to build a solid product, and I was decent at UX design and ready to try anything to grow. We trusted our gut and pushed ahead. As you’ve probably seen from the MRR graph above, it took us years before we started to see results. We just kept trying, learning, and improving — and that persistence is ultimately what got us here.

After we built the first MVP, we needed to validate the idea and find our first users. I started searching online for every conversation that mentioned an issue like the one we were solving. I posted helpful answers on Reddit, Quora, Stack Overflow, and other forums, and at that time, the internet was a bit more forgiving about self‑promotion. That effort led to our first influx of testers, some even willing to pay.

We sold fewer than 30 plans in the first year. The most expensive at $1,250/year, but most at $90/year. The first customer was from Milan ($250), a few days laters one from Switzerland ($250), and then one from Canada on the same day (which is still our longest‑lasting customer – $500). Then crickets for weeks.

What was the growth strategy for Redokun and how did you scale?

That was how we quietly launched Redokun to the world.

Those posts also helped Redokun appear on Google for the same keywords I used to find those discussions. Gradually, one, two, then a few users started finding us every week — and some of them became paying customers.

Later, we invested heavily in writing our own blog and kept improving our website. At one point, our blog was attracting 250k unique visitors per month. Not many on target though.

It was a slow burn. From 2016 up to 2022, we didn’t see huge results. By the end of 2020, Redokun was still making less than €200k a year — not enough to invest in hiring a tech team.

Seeing that we still had no clue on how to grow, we hired a consultant to help us understand what was not working. She suggested we talked to our best customers: those we wanted more of, to understand how to find more of them.

From the interviews, we understood we had to fix our website to make the message more clear: what is Redokun? Who does it help? What issues does it fix and how? How can you test it?

All the content we produced was driving traffic, but the readers were not understanding that the tool we built was for them and could help them. Fixing the website improved our conversion.

We also looked at our conversion numbers in the product. We reviewed the onboarding, and more than tripled the conversion rate for ICP users (there is still space for improvement, but we are at above 25% now).

If you are having issues with growing, you have to go out and talk to your users (or potential users). This is what I would do if I were you:

If you don't have conversions, try to find users you can serve and interview them with genuine curiosity. Your main objective should not be selling, but learning what you should do before you can sell to them. What problems do they face? Can your tool help them? Is it clear what value you want to offer? Are they willing to pay for it?
If you have conversions, it's time for you to multiply those users you like to work with. First: understand who they are. Second, what they think your solution is and why they are buying it. Third: how do you find more of them?

What were the biggest lessons learned from building Redokun?

After almost a decade of building Redokun, I’ve realized that most lessons come disguised as struggles. We made plenty of mistakes, and (as you can imagine) often learned things the slow way. But those experiences are what compounded into progress.

If I had to sum it up:

Patience compounds. Growth takes longer than you think, and most of it happens quietly. The real challenge is staying consistent when nothing seems to move. There is no silver bullet. No single ad campaign. No single feature or improvement. Unless you are one of the extremely lucky ones.
Talk to users early and often. Every turning point came from listening to our users. The biggest unlock for us was finally understanding who our best customers were and how they saw Redokun.
You can start unprepared. We began without experience, funding, or even fluent English.
Clarity drives alignment. Growth accelerated once we clearly defined what Redokun was and wasn’t. It’s amazing how clarity simplifies every decision.
It’s all about people. Not technology, not business. Empathy is everything: with customers, teammates, and partners. Understand people deeply, and everything else follows. Keep asking yourself questions, take time to reflect on what’s not working and where you can push more.

Along the way, books and podcasts became my mentors.

When I didn’t know what to do or I had a question, I’d find a book that helped me figure out the next step. An example? Lately, I’ve been reading Finish Big. I am not ready to sell my business, but I want to understand what long-term endings can look like so I can spot problems before they incur. There is a lot to learn from someone at the end of your same journey.

I also wrote my own book, The Road to a $1M ARR Product (it's free), to share what I learned from scaling Redokun from $30K to $125K MRR.

If there’s one thing I’d tell other founders, it’s this: keep learning, keep asking questions, and often stop reflecting. The habit of curiosity and empathy will take you farther than you imagine.

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