Founder of the month: Streamlingo

20.10.2025 Emma Schmitt Founder of the month

What happens when AI meets the church? Elly and Tim, the founders of Streamlingo, are working on this question with their team. Their goal: to translate church services live—with the help of artificial intelligence. In doing so, they enable communities worldwide to overcome language barriers and connect people with one another.

⁠Streamlingo⁠ stands for overcoming language barriers at live events with the help of AI. The startup’s goal is to ensure that no one is excluded simply because they don’t understand the language. Their focus is on church communities—an area that is often overlooked, but where they see a great need. Of course, Streamlingo can also be used for other events. For example, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology has already used the solution at several conferences.

With Streamlingo, participants can simply pull out their cell phones, scan a QR code, and listen to the live translation directly through their own headphones – in over 80 languages. The application is designed to be simple for both listeners and event organizers: Setup takes only a few minutes and requires no additional, expensive hardware.

In conversation with host Daniela, the two explain why churches and congregations are an underestimated but fantastic target group, how quickly their startup has developed, and why the industry is much more dynamic and creative than one might think at first glance. You can find the entire interview on Spotify.

What does your company stand for?

Streamlingo stands for overcoming language barriers at live events with the help of AI. We want to ensure that no one is excluded simply because they don’t understand the language.

Our focus is on church communities, an area that is often overlooked but where we see a huge need. Many communities have people from different countries attending their services who would like to participate but understand very little. But of course, anyone can use us for events. KIT, for example, has already used us for several conferences. With Streamlingo, participants can simply pull out their cell phones, scan a QR code, and hear the live translation directly through their own headphones in over 80 languages. It’s designed to be easy for listeners and organizers alike. Setup takes just a few minutes and no additional expensive hardware is required.

Where and how did you come up with the brilliant idea to start the company?

The idea came about in a very traditional way over dinner. Tim was sitting with his father, who is a pastor in Karlsruhe, and they were talking about a problem that many congregations have: more and more people with different language backgrounds are coming to church services, but they hardly understand anything. Finding interpreters is difficult, and there are often few who take on the task every Sunday. There was no service available for most languages.

Tim, who studied computer science, thought to himself, “There must be an AI solution for this by now!” So he started developing the first version of Streamlingo for his father’s congregation. The feedback was overwhelming. Other pastors quickly approached his father and asked if they could also use the solution.

That’s when he realized: this isn’t a problem for a single church, it’s a huge, unmet need. And that’s how the idea to turn it into a business was born.

How did the founding team come together?

Tim and Elly know each other from church. In the spring of 2024, Tim showed her the first version of Streamlingo – and Elly was immediately hooked. She began to support Tim with the design and later also with customer communication.

Because Elly’s husband Nathan works as a designer, he kept looking at the designs, giving feedback and really getting excited about the project. His enthusiasm grew so much that he quit his job in early 2025 and joined Streamlingo. Shortly afterwards, Jakob joined as a full-time developer and has been a tremendous support from the very beginning.

We’re not just colleagues—we’re passionate about the project and really want to make a difference. This enthusiasm is contagious and attracts the right people. We’ve now grown to nine team members, including two full-time developers, an IT intern, and support in the areas of social media, customer service, and event support.

What is your grand vision?

Our vision is that in just a few years, it will be completely normal to have translation available at every event, just as a matter of course as Wi-Fi or a projector. Technology is developing rapidly, and we want to be at the forefront of this development.

We want to become the number one AI live translation solution for Christian events. We firmly believe that by focusing on churches, we can develop the best product for this target group, with features such as our Christian glossary, which accurately translates theological terms.

Where do you see significant hurdles in the start-up process?

To be honest, the biggest hurdle was that we simply had no idea about a lot of things. How do you start a business? What legal considerations do you need to be aware of? What funding is actually available? We had to work hard to figure all of that out.

Then came the challenge of writing a reasonable business plan and pitching it properly. These are things you don’t learn in college—at least not in the depth that you need as a founder. We tried a lot of things, made mistakes, and learned from them.

Another hurdle was the team. Two people who actually wanted to join us dropped out at short notice. That was frustrating and also set us back because we suddenly had to replan. But ultimately, it also showed us how important it is to have people on the team who are really 100% committed and share the same vision.

Where did you get support?

At the very beginning, CyberForum and CyberLab were a huge help to us. Not only did we learn the basics of starting a business there, but we also built up a great network. We can really recommend the accelerator to everyone—it helped us make enormous progress.

The KIT-Gründerschmiede connected us with other founders, which was also valuable for exchanging ideas and learning from each other.

We are particularly grateful for the EXIST start-up grant, which helped us enormously in the early stages, and for the support from L-Bank. Without this support, we would not be where we are today.

We also sought out mentors who could support us with their experience – this was invaluable, especially when it came to legal and strategic issues.

What were the biggest challenges during your start-up phase?

Too many tasks, too few people: In the early stages, we simply had to do everything ourselves. Tim did the programming, took care of the finances, wrote grant applications, and worked out the business plan. At the same time, I took care of customers, sales, and marketing. It’s really hard to set a clear focus when you have to familiarize yourself with so many new topics. But that’s probably quite normal for start-ups—you learn as you go and grow with the tasks.

Taxes and legal issues: Another big challenge was filing our tax returns and understanding what we were legally allowed to do and what we weren’t. These are issues that founders suddenly have to deal with intensively, even if they would rather be working on the product. We invested a lot of time in educating ourselves so that we wouldn’t make any mistakes.

Has anything changed for you since the formal founding?

Absolutely! Since the GmbH was founded in May 2025, everything feels more professional and binding. We are no longer hobbyists, but a real company with real responsibilities—which naturally brings more pressure, but also more motivation.

A major milestone was that we were able to apply for BW Preseed after the company was founded. The approval helped us enormously – we now have significantly more financial resources available to grow and invest specifically in development and sales.

In practical terms, the change is that we can now hire employees and finally delegate tasks that previously overwhelmed us. This gives us more breathing room to focus on the essentials: further developing the product and winning new customers.

How did you solve the problem of (follow-up) financing?

We are currently financing ourselves mainly through grants. The EXIST start-up grant gave us the necessary support in the initial phase to get started in the first place. This was followed by funding from L-Bank, which gave us further scope. This gave us the financial resources to invest specifically in development and sales and to expand our team. Now we can really scale up.

At the same time, we are already generating revenue from our customers. Over 90 municipalities use Streamlingo regularly, and this customer base is growing steadily. Our goal is to become cash flow positive and then independent of subsidies. We have deliberately not brought any large investors on board yet. We first wanted to prove that our business model works and grow organically.

Are current global crises affecting your startup?

We are not directly affected, as we are purely a software company and do not manufacture physical products or have supply chains.

On the contrary, many church communities use Streamlingo because they need Ukrainian translations. Since the war in Ukraine, many refugees have arrived in Germany who would like to participate in community life but do not understand the language. For these churches, Streamlingo is a real solution for integrating these people and making them feel like they belong. This also shows how important our tool is – not only technically, but also on a human level. We help to enable community, especially in difficult times.

What are your next big milestones in the coming 12 months?

We have a lot planned for the next 12 months:

Scaling in Europe: We want to significantly expand our customer base – from currently over 90 customers to five hundred. To do this, we are specifically hiring sales staff and expanding our marketing.
Rollout in the UK: We already have a sales partner in the UK and want to gain a firm foothold there. The UK market offers enormous potential, and we are excited to see how Streamlingo will be received there.
Product development: We are working on new features such as automatic transcription of lectures/sermons and the creation of summaries. In the long term, we want to help communities get the most out of their content and provide support where help is needed.
Cash flow positivity: An important goal is to become cash flow positive in the next 12 months so that we are independent of subsidies and can continue to grow organically.

In your opinion, what qualities should a founder have?

For us, the most important quality is perseverance. There will always be moments when things don’t go as planned—whether it’s team members leaving, technical problems cropping up, or customers hesitating. You have to be prepared to keep going even during frustrating phases and believe in your own vision.

Added to this is a willingness to learn. As a founder, you constantly have to familiarize yourself with new topics—from taxes and law to marketing and sales. You can’t know everything, but you have to be willing to learn everything or find the right people to help you.

And very importantly: enthusiasm for the project. If you’re not convinced by your idea yourself and passionate about it, it will be difficult to get others on board – whether they’re customers, employees, or sponsors. This enthusiasm is contagious and will carry you through difficult times.

Do you have any practical tips for other young entrepreneurs?

Get support early on: Take advantage of offers such as CyberForum, CyberLab, or accelerator programs. We learned an incredible amount there and made valuable contacts. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel—others have already gone down that road and can save you a lot of detours.

Make the most of AI tools: AI tools such as Claude, ChatGPT, and the like are worth their weight in gold! You can use them to ask all kinds of questions, write texts, debug code, or familiarize yourself with new topics – all in a matter of seconds. Large companies are often not allowed to use AI tools to the extent that would actually be possible for legal or compliance reasons. This gives us start-ups an enormous advantage: We can be faster, work more agilely, and try things that others can only implement in months. Take advantage of that!

Focus on a niche: It’s tempting to want to be everything to everyone, but it’s better to specialize in a target group and make the best product for them. For us, that’s church communities – and it’s precisely this focus that helps us to be better than the competition.

Stay close to your customers: Talk to your users, listen to them, and build your product based on real feedback. We test with communities every week and learn an incredible amount in the process.

Find the right team: Only work with people who are as passionate about the project as you are. If someone isn’t 100% committed, it won’t work sooner or later.

Looking back, what would you do differently?

That’s actually a difficult question because, in retrospect, we’re pretty happy with the path we’ve taken. Of course, you could always say “more customers” or “grow faster,” but we set our priorities very deliberately.

One thing we could have tackled earlier is a global billing system. That would have saved us some work later on. However, it would also have meant dealing with international legal and tax issues much earlier—and we simply didn’t have the capacity for that at the time. Sometimes you have to work through things one by one, even if you know they will be important at some point.

Otherwise, we shouldn’t have done more sales earlier on. Our product had to be stable before we could really scale up. That was the right decision, even if it was sometimes difficult to remain patient.