Discussing Our Unconventional Approach to Building Ventures on the Scaling Through Structure Podcast

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Transcript:

all right welcome back to scaling through structure I've got an awesome guest today Danny Nathan founder of

Apollo 21 Danny how are you doing I'm good thanks I'm excited to be here thank you awesome cool why don't we start tell

us about Apollo 21 what is it and why is it as awesome as it looks on your

website I'm glad it at least looks awesome Apollo 21 effectively sits at the intersection of management

consultancy a product design studio and a venture studio and what I mean by that is we help clients usually in the mid to

Enterprise size build new products that fit within their existing portfolio

launch new Ventures entirely if they're looking to pursue something that sits outside of kind of their existing core

offering and then we also help them establish internal Venture building operations so think oh okay we launched

something new once now we want to be able to do it again and again and then we do bits and P P of helping people

solve operational challenges through technology as well help us with drowning an email what can we do about that

things of that sort okay so how did this company start obviously you're solving a

very unique problem your target market how did you start when did you start this business and why so we started in

April of 2021 and it happened kind of opportunistically actually I was uh in

my last role as head of product at a technology company in La that was focused on the video space and we had

taken funding from a family office and basically one of the stipulations of that funding was you have to come help

some of our other portfolio companies with their technology needs and efforts and after pulling in that funding I very

quickly found myself in this kind of SWAT team role where I would be deployed in some of the other portfolio companies

to help them figure out what they needed how to solve problems using technology Etc and after doing that for about a

year my Founders and a couple of the folks from the family office tapped me on the

shoulder and said you seem to be pretty excited about this do you want to go pursue it and that was the birth of

Apollo 21 all right so I always like to hear about how everybody structures their company you said you're Founders how

many Founders do you have uh sorry the founders was in reference to the previous company I am

the the sole founder of Apollo 21 I have a couple of Partners in the business who

one of whom has been around since the beginning the other of whom I've worked with for years and joined us a little bit later on and we have one or two

other folks that make up effectively the core team and from there we scale up and

scale Down based on what projects we have going on we've been as big as about 30 and usually we sit in the 10 to 12

range depending on how busy we are okay and how do you divide and conquer from a a leadership level is there an area that

you focus on or you just growing the business at this point what you know how does that all work yeah I have head of

product and design who runs product and design across all of our projects I have a head of engineering who handles all

things technology and I come from a product and design background as well so I lean in in those areas but I try not

to step on toes when I do that because Calvin my my head of product and design is amazing and I love him dearly for the

most part I'm focused on growing the business looking at the Strategic side of what we're doing looking for new

customers things like that okay and what is your what's your growth strategy how are you

finding these new customers what Marketing sales tactics are you investing in where how are you

structuring all that so we were lucky in that we managed to grow organically for

the first couple of years primarily through referral and word of mouth and by working our Network and we're finally

getting to the point where we're starting to have exhausted that resource and so we're in the process right now of

exploring what the most effective means to grow a business of this type might look like so we've been experimenting

with some cold outbound I've been doing a ton of work on LinkedIn both to establish the brand and to establish my

personal brand and then also to begin connecting with other folks in the space folks who are focused on Innovation or

who seem like they might might be interested in the the types of offerings that we have and then we're always open

to Unique Partnerships and things like that as well so I I talked to a lot of other Founders and folks in The

Innovation space just looking for opportunities where where we can work together or refer work to one another if

you know something fits somebody else's business better than ours for example or vice versa and that's what we've been

focused on lately and we'll see how long that lasts and what it takes to go from there yeah so one of the marketing

challenges I've seen in businesses like yours that are pretty unique is that I'm

not saying you have to like like ignore search completely but search isn't as much of a Powerhouse as it is for let's

say a carpet cleaning company right somebody types in carpet cleaning company you pop up what you do is a lot

more intricate so you're probably having to look more at marketing to a demographic getting that thought

leadership out there and being able to say this is what the this is the the

future of being able to build awesome Innovative products within your existing

company and we're helping you do it and that's not necessarily something people are searching for am I barking up the

right tree there yeah no you're absolutely right I think that we do some work in terms of SEO and making sure

that we are discoverable and then of course a lot of our work as you pointed out revolves around thought leadership

and offering what we believe is a a unique perspective on the world of

innovation and product development and Venture building and we do find that we get some traffic from folks that are reading our articles looking at our case

studies we've released a number of white papers that offer a pretty detailed Deep dive into at least our view of the space

all of that being said you're absolutely right there's there's no comparison to I

need my carpets cleaned give me somebody that will do that and unfortunately we're just not carpet cleaners all right

I think you're building something that can scale a little bit beyond that I'm hoping so yeah U so let's talk a little bit about

Innovation everybody's got their own idea of what this word means and I'm

sure you have clients going we we want to do something cool and Innovative one of your offerings is you deliver

Innovation so talk a little bit about how you approach that word and how you

uh bring that change to your customers yeah that's a fantastic question Innovation is one of those tough words

and it's it's become overused in a lot of ways every company is throwing around Innovation Innovative whatever every

company has their their internal efforts that they claim or exemplary of what makes them Innovative and what we find

is that a lot of those activities don't move the needle they exist exist to

fulfill on the need to be Innovative and the ability to say to the world that we are innovating but when you really start

pulling back the layers what you find is that they're topical efforts in that

they aren't impacting the way that the company is operating you're not impacting the metrics that companies are

using to Define what growth looks like and that will set them up for Innovation

and so in our world Innovation has to move beyond that kind of theatrical moment and into

something more tangible we work with our customers uh very heavily on customer development learning from customers

interviewing them understanding what the pain points are and using those learnings as an opportunity to then

ideate and articulate what a new product might look like what a new Revenue

stream might look like what an entirely new business model might look like that still fits that company's offering or as

I like to say what they have licensed to publish some it has to fit in the realm of what that company is known for so that your

customers will believe that you can be Innovative in that space and a lot of

that work comes through research and engagement with customers and then the other side of it is really cultural is

helping organizations understand that the way that they measure Innovation or

the way that they measure how their business is performing with an eye towards Innovation uh is probably

different than what they're used to and so if you look at the way that companies have evolved what you find is that

companies most companies begin as a startup of course and are looking to disrupt some sort of Industry they bring

something new to Market that gathers attention they find product Market fit and they go oh my God this is working we

need to double down on this and then they do it again and again and it's not wrong by any stretch but what you end up

with is a company that is highly geared towards efficiently executing that one

thing minimizing risk around that one thing and protecting Capital around that

one thing and the idea of being an execution focused company that is aiming

primarily for metrics that demonstrate shareholder return metrics that

demonstrate quarterly growth Etc puts you at direct odds with the idea of

innovation because Innovation inherently is a learning experience it is

inherently something that does not return on your investment into exploration and learning and

experimentation at least not within the short-term confines that most companies

are looking for those returns today and so you end up in this kind of tug of war of do we want to execute extraordinarily

efficiently and save every penny we possibly can or do we want to expend some of that Capital take on a little

bit of risk and a little bit of inefficiency so that we can discover what might come next

I feel like I have 20 different follow-ups so I'm fire away so how do

you delineate the ideation of the Innovative idea with a customer because

and the reason I'm asking this is because when you're inside of a company in the day-to-day it's really hard to

think innovatively but it's really easy for all of us to go what Target should do so do you when you're working with a

customer do they have an idea of what it is they're looking to do or they we we got some outside eyes to see where we

might be able to take this I customers go bull forms for us so some come to us because they have an idea that they want

to pursue they have some inkling of a pain point that they think that they can step in and solve for their existing

customers or for a customer base that is just beyond their existing customer so that they can expand into a new market

and then others come to us and say we know that what we're doing uh won't provide us the longevity that we want

but we don't know where to go from here and we have worked successfully with both types of customers but the process

ends up looking a little bit different so if a customer has an idea then it gives us a jumping off point and of

course we can dig in and begin to evaluate how it resonates for their customers we can work on customer

research and prototyping to begin to mock up what that thing might be so that we can determine whether or not it

solves the need whereas if a company just wants to pursue innovation but

doesn't really know where to start you have to pull the starting line way back here and go okay let's explore what the

opportunities are and so some of that comes to life through the customer development process that I mentioned a moment ago lots of great ideas that can

come from customers who are saying oh I really like your product but I wish it did this or hey you guys do this really

well and my problem sits just beyond that do you think you could expand an account for that and then the other

thing is to your point these companies have hundreds thousands of people working for them who even if they're not

focused on going about their day-to-day with the moment of how can I be Innovative as I write this email

whatever because that's those the mo the things that you do when you go through the motions but if you stop and ask

folks for their ideas you will find a gold mine of incredible ideas from

within your own organization and so it's really just a question of putting out a call for entries

terms nice nice so one of the things you talked about is looking at Innovation to

to solve a problem and before we start we both rolled our eyes at the idea of AI because we all have to talk about it

all the time even though we don't care and the idea of innovation just to

innovate right versus innovate to make an impact because you can really anybody

can make a bunch of cool stuff with the right budget um but at the end of the day what is that do what does it do and

so when you're working with a customer do you ever find yourself where they're like oh this would be a fun idea and you

have to go yes but what outcome are we expecting from this of course and that's

part of the beauty of the process that I'm describing is that it really gives you the opportunity for those moments of

oh wouldn't it be cool if to come to life and yes you have to then ground

them in okay which of our business goals does that amazing thing align to or what

customer paino does that amazing thing help us solve and to your point companies can be Innovative they can

build amazing Innovative things but if they don't align to the business then what's the purpose and so you have to

ground The Innovation work in strategy that aligns to the business and otherwise you're just either a starting

a new business which isn't necessarily a bad thing if you think that amazing thing that you came up with people will

buy or you just need to get used to throwing out the baby with the bath water and going you know what that might

be a great idea but it's just not right for us okay I want to ask a little bit

about your entrepreneur Journey So you you're you're the founder of this company talk to me now is this the first

company that you've LED or what how did we get here no this is not the first company

I started my career in advertising very quickly realized it didn't that got into the world of innovation Consulting back

in about 2007 which was a really interesting time to be exploring the space because it was around the birth of

the iPhone social media was becoming highly established we were seeing a ton of change in the way that technology

enabled Brands to interact with customers and to provide value for customers and so that was really the

turning point in my career was the the five years that I spent at a company called poke that was focused on that

type of work and was also really my introduction to the world of startups and Entrepreneurship and so coming out

of poke in 2012 I started my first company which I built with my then

girlfriend now wife which was a company designed to help couples who had been through the online dating ringer figure

out how to keep dating one another after they had found the one if you will so that was a lot of fun and then

bounced around a number of startups in the coming years we explored a couple of other companies I have a couple of

companies that I run just almost for fun and is my I call them my science experiment zones I have an e-commerce

company for example that I don't make a killing off of by any stretch but it earns a little bit of Revenue and it's the place where I can go huh I wonder

what would happen if we I don't know did this and I can go and play and

experiment and take bigger risks because I'm not quite as worried about the stature of that brand I've been through

the process of starting a few different things now well you seem very driven by your own curiosity is that's accurate

yes that's not the first time that somebody has said that to me I think that's highly accurate I get to a point where I go huh I really

want to know how this works or what would happen if and often I just I have to go through it and experiment and try

in order to get that that itch out of the way so you've been around the block you wor the Innovation consulting

company you've got some side gigs talk to when you're starting Apollo

and you're like okay these are the mistakes we not going to I've seen an ADL here's what we're not going to do

what what some of the biggest one for me was how the company was structured and how quickly we're willing to grow and

having come from a creative Services background and a Services oriented background one of the things that I knew

from day one was that I've seen way too many companies that uh get a new client

hire a bunch of people at some point lose that or another client and you're left with 10 15 20 miles that you need

to feed and so you get stuck in this cycle of oh no I need to pay these guys

salaries Etc and so you start looking for any work that will pay the bills and that's where you hit this sort of

downhill slope of H we're taking on work that we don't really want to be doing but we're keeping the team together

which is a good thing and I certainly respect folks that want to keep their people paid and employed and all of that

but I decided that I would take a different approach and so I grew Apollo 21 very carefully I was highly

considered about everybody who I brought on as an employee and still am and the

result of that is that we have a or leadership team of about five people and

then we scale up based on the needs of Any Given project and so I'm fortunate

that I have found a a resource partner who exists purely to supply technology

folks Engineers designers Etc and given the great relationship that we've built with them it has put us in a position

where we can go oh we've got a new client by next week I can have a full software engineering team with designers

Etc built and ready to go and we just start rolling and it's a Nuance because

often those people will work with us for a year at a time they're people that we thoroughly enjoy working with but we

know at the end of the day that they are contractors and there is no inherent

expectation that we are going to fight to keep them around if things get ult

and so it gives us the benefit of scaling as needed based on what we have going on and as a result we've been as

big as about 30 as small as about eight and it just depends on what we have going on that's I think that's really

important really responsible expectation setting yes that's really helpful to

everybody involved because it can still be a part of your mission and understand what their role is but not feel like

they're getting kicked to the curb if the the word just isn't there exactly exactly and of course we come back to

them when there is new works we have built a great relationship that is ongoing but to your point there's an

understanding there so I it I like the what you were talking about that really big client

right and I think having that big client that takes up so much of the agency

bandwidth is there's this fallacy that you need it and I think the thing that people don't realize is the emotional

toll that it takes because the stakes are so high and you know I remember uh

years ago we had a very large client probably somewhere between 20 30% of Revenue and they went through you know

some changes and all of a sudden it became clear oh wait a minute we're they're going away but the marketing

company is gonna get cut yes and it was like this big bad wolf that that was

like terrifying and then they were gone and then life moved on and now I don't a

client that's over 5% of Revenue and I don't have nearly as much stress because I don't have a big bad wolf in my and so

yeah there's one one little uh tip for the service based businesses out there listening like your biggest client

doesn't need to be too big there's some emotional highs and lows on that that's an amazing point to call out I too

learned that the hard way right fail up kids fail up yeah so one things I'm

always interested in with entrepreneurs is uring this work life balance and

everybody does it different right so how do you approach your week understanding

all of your responsibilities yeah your life family your work family all of that

what's your approach I'm probably a terrible person to ask this question Austin because work life

balance I might even go so far as say it doesn't exist in my world and I'm fine

with that because I understand it don't have kids fortunately or unfortunately however you want to look at that so that

is not a time time commitment that I need to be concerned with and I'm fortunate that my wife also works in the

industry and so is highly understanding of the ups and downs of what we go

through and also does some Consulting work of her own and so she knows exactly what I'm dealing with and so the reality

is that we tend to throw ourselves into the work that's in front of us and it's funny I mentioned that I have a couple

of little side businesses and in a way those really are my hobby my my brain

revolves around how do I build Ventures how do I build things that people want

how do I create products that are interesting and it is pervasive in a lot

of the things that I do to give you a concrete example we were living in California a few years ago and bought an

SUV for some off-road camping adventuring stuff and that became the

basis for my side business I now run an e-commerce company that designs and

sells accessories for off-road camping vehicles and it's literally just a side gig that I do for fun but it aligns to

how my brain works I enjoy camping we get out and go camping I start thinking to myself huh I really wish the truck

had lank in the back and then I get an itch in my my brain and I go I want this now I need to go create it and I've been

through the entrepreneurial rigor enough to go huh if I want this I bet somebody else does and so my brain just

immediately goes to not only how can I make the thing that I want but how can I make the thing that I want and then

provide it to other people so that it becomes a business and gives me another experimentation Zone and so work life

balance revolves around the complete imbalance of my turning even my hobbies into something that isn't necessarily

hobby anymore all right I got to ask you some questions about that offline I just got back from a great camping trip in

Yos a couple weeks ago so oh amazing we were there we were there a couple years ago yeah a Wonder wonderful spot I do

like your answer because I feel like you know yourself right you have

the you want to scratch it and so your work life balance is that when life

gives you something to work on you like to work on it yes and I I think that's great and especially in service based

businesses people love that now knowing that you're like that how do you set your boundaries with your customers so

that you are the one the terms of how much you're working and when and not then that's a really

good question that as an outcome of what I've said so I appreciate that I allow

how do I do that I allow my customers to dictate it to an extent but I also find that we so

one of our core principles at Apollo 21 is Relentless collaboration we collaborate extremely deeply with our

clients we effectively embed ourselves into their teams and so the results is

that we tend to get to know them pretty well we meet and understand them as people as opposed to just business

clients which sit at the other side of an email for example and to be quite Frank the result that I find is that our

clients tend to be reasonably respectful of our time and we create a relationship where we

know if somebody's emailing or calling at 7:00 on a Friday evening because they

need something we can usually trust that it is genuinely an emergency in their

world and that and that's where that Relentless collaboration comes in if a client comes to me it's 7:00 on a Friday

or whatever it is a Saturday morning because they have a true need that is going to impact their business I want to

be there to help them and beyond that I guess the the other way on that street

is when a client emails us and says hey we need this and we say no or no we can't get to it till Monday we've also

established enough of a trust and Rapport that we know they will tell us if it's an emergency and if not they're

usually pretty understanding and respectful of our time and it always es and flows

different types of custom of course I we we do mostly B2B and when I'm being humorous people like oh really why not B

to C and I was like I don't know I've never had a problem hanging out with my

family the day after Thanksgiving I've never my holidays are pretty nice and so there definitely are those professions

though where to excel you do have to be on at times that are not conventional and and there are those moments

especially product launches things like that in your world that I'm sure things get really intense

and there's the camaraderie that comes with when you go into the trenches together for those moments I was just

about to say that yes when you go through the trenches with somebody you come out the other end with a certain

respect understanding and uh view of how that person acts under pressure and to

me that's where some of the best relationships are built yeah my team last year we had to do a CRM migration

that simply required like six people all hands- on Deck the sales team from this company left on on Friday when they came

back Monday morning they were going to have a new fully built CRM and I I the

way I kept telling my team I was like look at like a heist film like they're they're gone and now we got to do all

the work because they're G to show up on mondy whoa what happened and so I called at the heist I was trying and and I was

trying to tell I was like listen this is one weekend of your life you're not going to love it but I promise you when

you guys do this and you Pace it you're going to look back on it and go it's really cool and sure enough at our our

next quarterly was like oh best best of the last order and person leading the

migration was she was like easily the migration like I know it was a pain but

it was awesome and like the work we did was great and everybody was happy in the end and just goes that balance of like

fulfillment versus happiness right T happiness is easy yes yeah and the

experience that you gained from it there's something about operating Under Pressure especially when the outcome is

successful that gives you confidence in your team your partners and your own

capabilities that in my experience serve you as you move forward because you know

what it's like to go through the ringer and how to do it better the next time that you're capable of it and it really

for me I find those moments grounding because I can always look back at it and go H it can't be any worse than that so

let's do it all right Danny last question I'll get you out of here on this what is your

plan or your structure how are you going to scale Apollo 21 let's say over the

next three to five years uh if I had the answer to that I would

be clear ofo but my goal at least is to continue growing our engagement

hopefully with some larger organizations that we can have a real impact on and can help establish their operations to

be something beyond what they are today I so I mentioned one of our operating

principles we have three in total but a second one is we expect our clients to outgrow us and it's a I think it is a

highly unusual perspective especially for a company like ours but what I've come to realize is that if you try to

hold on too hard to the clients that you have especially beyond the point where

they're ready to begin operationalizing the things that you've worked with them on for themselves eles ultimately you

can end up ruining what might be an otherwise great relationship and so to bring that back to your question Austin

I would love to get to the point where at least once every year we have a

client that says to us guys this has been amazing we need to do it for ourselves now and we Apollo 21 want to

be there to help get them to that point and we have built our operations around

that inflection moment of amazing here can we help you build the team internally can we help you find the

right people that will take over leadership what can we do to make that transition successful because if that

client goes on and does something amazing on their own there's a I don't want to say we can take credit for it

there's a great sort of sense of accomplishment in it that you help them get to that point and so my hope for

growth and scale is that we can help our clients outgrow us yeah I think you're

showing there is by let's say deprioritizing immediate revenue is that

one you really care about your customer success which just guestling work in the long run but two if what you do and what

you inject into their company is so contagious that they want to build a department around it then what the

influence that you have and what you care most about and why you started a company is

really entire companies that's awesome Danny thank you so much for being here this was a lot of fun I I appreciate it

and where can the people find easiest place to find us is Apollo 21 the number two number

one. I am personally active on social media usually is blah blah blah slam

many Apollo 21 of course is also active on socials and if you happen to be in the New York area I run a monthly

Founders dinner and a monthly innovator's dinner where we actually sit down in person and have a meal and get

to know one another if you're interested in that please give me a shout oh that's awesome that sounds great they're a ton

of fun in fact I just had one a couple of nights ago and it was such a great experience all right I'll look out for that next time I go to New York I try

and get up there at least once a year and oh yeah please do those those times I'm just inviting myself yeah absolutely

you'll be more than welcome awesome thanks so much danny thank you appreciate it

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