Lingo.dev co-founder Max Prilutskiy: AI localization, AX, and having a lean team | Evil Martians

About this episode

Max Prilutskiy discusses AI localization, lean team dynamics, and insights from his entrepreneurial journey.

Max Prilutskiy, CEO and co-founder of Lingo.dev , sits down with Victoria Melnikova to talk about why localization is still far from a solved problem in the age of AI, how a six-person team ships 56 pull requests a week, and what agent experience actually means for developer tools in 2026. He also shares his journey from a hackathon with zero ideas to Y Combinator, how 30 cold exploration calls taught him more about messaging than any sales book, and why he rebuilt the entire Lingo.dev platform from scratch in December and January. Plus, Max gives a candid take on what didn't work in go-to-market, why word of mouth remains the only reliable growth channel, and how source code is becoming the ultimate input for AI agents. Victoria Melnikova is a business and go-to-market expert for developer tools and AI, and host of Dev Propulsion Labs. She works with 40+ early-stage startups a year as Head of New Business at Evil Martians. https://x.com/vmelnikova_en Evil Martians is a design and engineering consultancy for developer tools, AI, and cybersecurity startups. https://evilmartians.com/devtools Recorded at Chroma. Vector, full-text, regex, and metadata search. Develop locally and…

People in this episode

Host: Victoria Melnikova

Guest: Max Prilutskiy

Topics covered

• AI localization
• developer tools
• lean teams
• go-to-market strategies
• agent experience

Keywords

• localization
• AI
• developer tools
• Y Combinator
• go-to-market
• growth channels
• Lingo.dev

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Lingo.dev, Evil Martians, Y Combinator, Chroma

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