In today's fast-paced business landscape, staying ahead of the curve means embracing innovation as a core driver of growth and success. For those spearheading innovation efforts within large organizations, the quest to find the right partner to ideate new solutions and execute those ideas can be challenging. Enter Apollo 21, a business/technology consultancy and product design studio that specializes in helping teams navigate the complexities of innovation efforts.

Our Mission and Values: Innovation is Our DNA

Apollo 21 is not your typical innovation partner. We exist to make earth-shattering ideas, products, and ventures a reality. Whether building for ourselves or in deep collaboration with our clients, we’re focused on helping organizations become sustainable, technology-enabled, and ultimately self-sufficient. Our unique combination of business acumen and technical prowess make us an ideal partner for innovation-focused teams.

Our core values guide our every move:

Done is better than perfect.
Until it's tangible, it's an idea, not a business. 

Crawl, walk, run.
Build small. Grow nimbly. Pivot when necessary. Achieve scale.

Our clients should outgrow us.
We empower our clients to become self-sufficient innovators.

A Unique Approach to Innovation

At Apollo 21, we’re uniquely talented when it comes to understanding how a business operates, working with stakeholders to determine where the pain points are, and then designing and creating software that solves those pain points. We’re absolute nerds about all things operational efficiency, automation, and data collection. 

Yep, you’re probably thinking, “Woooooowwwwww.” (In your best Owen Wilson voice.) “That doesn’t sound unique at all. Every digital consultancy says that!”

And you’d be right. Here’s what does make Apollo 21 unique…

A diverse set of experiences building digital products for both leading brands and cutting-edge startups.‍

The Apollo 21 team is made up of entrepreneurially driven technologists, designers, data analysts, marketers, business executives, and more — all of whom have led careers focused on building innovative, technology-based products and services for companies large and small. Name an industry and there’s a high likelihood that we have experience in that space. Here are just some of the brands & industries that our team members have worked for and worked with:

Brand | Industry

Dyson | Consumer Electronics

The MoMA | Non-Profit

Annapurna Pictures | Entertainment

Coach | Fashion

Teton Ridge | Sports & Lifestyle

Bank of America | Financial Services

General Mills | CPG

Getty Images | Media

KY | Health & Wellness

VCA | Petcare

Girlboss | Women & Culture

Vibe & Sesh | Cannabis

Salesforce | Technology

Tauck | Travel

Mercedes-Benz | Automotive

Macallan | Liquor

Reebok | Sporting Goods

The Solve | Music & Fitness

Authored.app | Publishing

The Million | Education

A rich understanding of the role that a carefully crafted go-to-market strategy plays in a product's ultimate success (regardless of whether that product is internal or customer-facing).

In spite of what you may have seen in the movies, there is no such thing as “If you build it, they will come.” If you want to attract users to your new product or service, it requires intensely careful planning and execution to get that product into their hands. And the moment you let off the gas, your inbound leads will dry up leaving you wondering what to do next. 

Sadly, too many digital products are launched without a real plan for what comes next. 

We’ve been through the launch process dozens of times, and we can help you traverse the booby traps and pits of doom that you may encounter.

A deep expertise and understanding of the post-launch challenges that digital products face. 

This highly varied and diverse set of experience also makes the Apollo 21 team exceptionally knowledgeable about the difficulties that can arise after a product has launched. While a product launch is well-worth celebrating, in truth it is only the first step toward creating success and building an ingrained culture of innovation. Our team has traversed this post-launch waters many times over, making us uncommonly situated to guide innovation teams from launch to product/market fit, and beyond.

A foundational technology that accelerates not only development but post launch success of a product. 

Lastly, we come to our secret weapon: Mission Control. This proprietary foundational technology gives us a distinct advantage when it comes to moving quickly through the development process — particularly for efforts focused on data, analytics, and workflow management (which are at the heart of many internal-facing product builds). By utilizing Mission Control as a starting point, we can deploy products up to twice as quickly as we would building from scratch. 

And once launched, products built on top of our Mission Control foundation are designed to capture data at every step, passively growing your marketing database and enabling outbound communications with ease. 

Proven Success in Diverse Industries

Apollo 21 has a history of successful projects across a variety of sectors/industries. 

Video Security & Remote Guarding:

Problem:
“We’ve achieved product/market fit, but our cobbled-together technology stack doesn’t support our need to scale. Can you help us?”

Solution:
The Apollo 21 team worked with the client to understand their workflows and technology needs. Through our collaborative Discovery process, we were able to define a roadmap and build plan that ultimately resulted in an entirely new, bespoke operations software platform tailored specifically to the client’s needs. This platform manages every aspect of the client’s business from alert notification and management in the command center to data and analytics collection, audit logs, executive summary presentations of key metrics, and more. 

Results:

• Reduced load time of remote camera feeds from an average of 5 seconds to 0.5 seconds.
• Reduced agent event response time from an average of 12+ seconds to ~2 seconds.
• Provided a robust data stream to improve ML/AI training, automation, and future capabilities.

Financial Services:

Problem:
“We have no clearly defined operational process and handle everything via email. We’re drowning in emails, and as a result we’re missing important client requests. Help!”

Solution:
Our Discovery process with this client focused on documenting the most frequent requests/processes executed by the team and the workflows necessary to accomplish each. We built an instance of our Mission Control platform designed to usher team members through the desired workflow and put guard rails in place to limit mistakes and miscommunications. The outcome is a platform that allows the team to easily manage client requests on an ongoing basis, onboard new team members quickly, and efficiently educate them on the steps of the workflow while limiting mistakes. 

Results: 

• 87% fewer emails.
• 23% increase in client satisfaction. 
• Ability to scale the customer base without hiring new team members.

Sports:

Problem:
“We’re building a company that will modernize and revolutionize Western Sports (think cowboys and rodeos). We have no technology infrastructure, but we’re firm believers in the value that data can bring to our business. We have acquired five companies and need to collect the data we’ve received from each into a single data store where we can make use of it.”

Solutions:
Apollo 21’s initial engagement with this client focused on making their hodge-podge collection of data consumable and useful. Thanks to our foundational Mission Control platform, we were able to ingest half a million rows of data, normalize that data, and display actionable metrics and insights in a period of just six weeks. 

Following this initial engagement, Apollo 21 continued to work with this client for the next 18 months during which time we:

• Iterated on Mission Control to establish a robust data store, analytics, and CRM platform connected to every piece of technology in the business.
• Built multiple websites showcasing the parent company and numerous sub-brands. 
• Created a mobile app focused on connecting fans and athletes while providing an evergreen news outlet focused on the world of Western Sports.
• Designed a content and commerce ecosystem that enabled team members to manage content and shopping opportunities across multiple applications and websites.
• Executed an event management platform for the production of Rodeos.

Results:

• 14.3 minute average mobile app engagement time.
• 50k registered users added.
• 65% average weekly user growth.
• 100k livestream views across 225 hours of event coverage.
• 16 million data points collected.

Our full collection of client case studies are available here.

Building at the Forefront

We believe that innovations efforts thrive when ushered by a team that remains at the forefront of technology trends. Apollo 21 is committed to continuous research and exploration of emerging technologies. We embody this belief by building and operating our own products and businesses. This proactive stance ensures your projects benefit from the latest advancements and from our extensive knowledge and experience as entrepreneurs.

Supporting Our Clients’ Long-Term Success

At Apollo 21, we're not just interested in short-term gains. Our unique perspective — echoed in our core values above — is that our clients should outgrow us. We approach our projects with the expectation that a detailed transfer of knowledge is a necessary part of accomplishing truly innovative and collaborative work. For teams that do not have in-house technical capabilities yet, we can build a team around your project and eventually transition that team to you as internal resources equipped with in-depth knowledge of your new technical product. 

In Conclusion

In the rapidly evolving world of innovation, Apollo 21 provides a unique competitive advantage for those tasked with driving change and growth. Our mission, values, expertise, and commitment to your success make us the go-to choice for companies looking to turn innovative ideas into reality or utilize bespoke technology to solve core business problems. 

Contact us today, and let's embark on your innovation journey together.

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