[throwaway2016a]

I've found adding it to an app after the fact to be much more work than just doing it up front.

But with that said, doing it up front even if it is less work than doing it later, is still way more work than not doing it at all. And if your app is in English your TAM is likely huge and you won't need to expand international for quite some time.

It's more than just localizing your app. You also need to do the same with your sales, support, and billing.

What do you do when you get a customer support request in a language your app supports but no one on your service team speaks? How do you get the customers in the other languages?

Also, what differences in laws regarding data protection / privacy / terms of service are you getting yourself into?

If you're charging a fee, do you need a bank account in the foreign country to charge the fee in local currency? If you do, what laws and regulations are you required to follow to get that bank account? What about tax? The US doesn't charge tax on services but many places do.

[hrktb]

To note, all of these are not mandatory and can be done in steps as it becomes interesting to do.

You can start by having multi language support on most user facing screens, as long as you make it clear that it’s mot full support and you only accept help requests in one or some of the languages.

Same with sales structures, making deals in english is doable, as long as the end user product supports their language.

Some people won’t go into internationalisation because it’s too costly to do it in full. I think it’s ok to do it peacemeal and along the way. Most user will prefer to have some vs nothing.

[throwaway2016a]

> To note, all of these are not mandatory and can be done in steps as it becomes interesting to do.

I agree with your point in general but would like to add a disclaimer. Local legal requirements if you target a specific non-domestic audience are mandatory. Sure you can skip that part and hope you fly under the radar but I wouldn't personally take that risk.