Discussing Innovation and Venture Studios on the PowerTalk Show

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Transcript:

hi di thank you so much for joining the

power talk show today thank you so much

for accepting our invitation and being

part of a channel and sharing your

insights about Apollo 21 as well as your

market and Industry knowledge to our

audience so before we begin I I would

like you to introduce to our audience as

well as tell us a brief about what is

Apollo what does Apollo 21 do and how

does it help the the upcoming startups

and the new product development

teams absolutely first off thanks for

having me I appreciate it um I'm Danny I

am the founder of Apollo 21 uh I have

spent my 20 plus years career um focused

primarily excuse

me pardon me Focus primarily in the

space of technology and new product

development working with both startups

and established companies to help them

develop Innovation strategies and

through those strategies bring new

products to life and so Apollo 21 is uh

about three and a half years old and we

focus exactly on that space so uh most

of our work is split between helping

companies um develop Innovation

strategies that are actionable utilizing

Frameworks that are uh repeatable and

that make Innovation something Beyond

just a talking point and then again

through those efforts we work with our

clients to build technology usually in

one of two forms so either we help

clients build new products and

technology that they will sell to their

customers or we help them build new

technology to help streamline and create

efficiency with internal workflows

managing how data and work in general

flow through the organization helping to

create uh opportunities for efficiency

automation AI integration things of that

sort and so we're really split about

half and half between customer products

and internal use products and we think

that both are a ton of fun even though

they're their own unique

challenges oh thank you thank you Danny

for a quick overview so when when I was

going through your website I I noticed

something called as co-founder as a

service this is something that I believe

you guys provide can you can you care to

shed light on that co-founder as a

service and is it only for a startup or

is it for a full-fledged company who is

doing business as

well yeah so uh you probably saw that on

the Apollo 21 Ventures section of our

website so in addition to the

consultative work that I just described

we also operate as a venture studio and

so we are partnering with organizations

and Founders and to answer your question

directly that could be a Founder with an

idea who's trying to get it off the

ground or that could be a partnership

with a fully established company that is

looking to explore new opportunities

bring a new uh business unit to life Etc

and we're happy working with both um the

co-founder as a service idea came about

because a lot of folks have sort of that

idea moment but then they reach that

point of oh wait I don't know how to do

everything that I might possibly need to

do in order to create a new business or

build a new product and

so often though we'll start with that uh

highly difficult co-founder search and

that's always such a difficult task to

to kind of put ahead of you you don't

know whether your idea sort of has legs

or not which makes it even more

difficult to attract a potential

co-founder and so one of the advantages

of working with Apollo 21 is that we can

step in and serve as that sort of

co-founders as a service type of role

which means that you know if you're an

idea guy or a product guy and you need

technical help then we can bring that

type of capability to bear or if you're

a technical founder and you need help

with product strategy and go to market

then we can focus our efforts there and

really help um teams and Founders fill

in sort of the gaps in their existing

capability set so that we can get them

from zero to one or zero to hitting the

ground running as quickly as possible

and that way by the time they go to look

for a full-fledged co-founder if they

feel like they need one by the time

they're done with us um they have

something in Market they have a

validated idea hopefully they started

driving Revenue they have a clearer

picture of who their target market is

and so when you can go to talk to people

about what you want them to join with

all of those kind of things in your

pocket it makes those conversations much

easier and so we can help people get

through the the sort of messy beginning

parts and really iron all of that out so

basically if you have an idea which is

at a zero stage you can help them from

zero to 10 and then maybe 10 to 50 and

then if they want a co-founder they they

can bring in a co-founder

exactly that's exactly right what went

into the naming for Apollo why did you

choose the name Apollo and you also have

astronauts in your background so what

yes uh so when I was naming the company

I was thinking about all things you know

Venture building and new product

development and the idea of the moonshot

of course popped into my head which got

me thinking about the original moonshot

and sort of the the namesake for the

moniker of moonshot which of course was

the Apollo program in the old Space Race

and so I started doing some digging and

what I found was that the Apollo 20

mission was the last scheduled mission

in the Apollo program uh Apollo 17 was

actually the last one that went into

space they cancelled 18 19 and 20 for

budgetary reasons and so I sort of liked

the idea that we were picking up the

mantle of helping companies take their

moonshots and um standing as next in

line in you know the the the

well-rounded um explor ation of the

Apollo program so that led to Apollo 21

and of course it gave us a bit of

License to play in the world of uh all

things space and NASA and all that fun

stuff from a branding perspective which

as you can see I I have a little bit of

fun with yes absolutely I can see that

so uh what do you how do you describe

the current product design market and

you know when when it comes to the

Venture Studio industry what do you

foresee where is the industry

heading uh I think that we are just

seeing a huge uptick in what will become

kind of the period of venture Studios

you know Venture Studios have been

around since since the 90s but they've

always been a little bit of a

misunderstood kind of Ideal that loses

out on attention from you know in lie of

like Venture capitalists and um things

of that sort and I think that because of

the nature of where business is today

and where the economy is today we're

seeing a lot more early stage companies

that are focused on becoming profitable

and self-sustaining early on as opposed

to focusing on getting onto the VC

treadmill and you know Venture studios

are kind of an interesting alternative

to that particular model because they

come with help baked in you know we it's

part of why we call ourselves a

co-founder as a service is we can

literally serve in the position of a

co-founder as opposed to forcing people

to go out and find one or um you know

being hamstrung in their VC efforts

because perhaps they don't have a

technical co-founder as the product

person or something of that sort and so

we can kind of step in there and become

that help and I think that we're going

to see more and more uh Founders and

teams gravitating towards that type of

model where they can keep their own team

very lean augment with um really kind of

fractional or contracted help to bring

their idea to life and get much further

down the path towards product Market fit

before they ever have to really go and

raise money which gives them the

advantage of you know ideally finding

revenue and figuring out how their

company is going to become self-

sustaining and self-supported before

they have to borrow other people's money

and the moment that you start taking

money from a venture capitalist for

example you know you've essentially

established a board and given yourself a

boss and all of a sudden you have kind

of limited the

um the ability to choose when and where

you want as opposed to following the

directives from somebody else and so I

think that there's a lot of freedom that

comes along with that uh either

bootstrapped or Venture Studio model

that Founders are going to continue

gravitating towards especially over the

next few years as um VC money becomes

harder to grab and more competitive to

uh to kind of get into the mix on

absolutely absolutely but when when you

say about product Market fit I I I read

through somewhere that you know you have

an approach where you help build

customer base before you find the

product is Market fit can you can you

just explain more about that approach

how how does an organization you know

build a customer base without having the

product or getting the product into the

market yeah so there's a couple of

things that come to mind there you know

one we are big advocates for the lean

customer development process and so you

know you can have a great idea and that

great idea can be grounded in your own

experience or in you know the things

that you've heard from other people but

there's no guarantee that the idea

that's in your head is going to be the

perfect fit uh to create a business

around and in fact I would almost argue

that there's a guarantee that it will

not be you're going to be wrong

somewhere and the reason that we're huge

fans of the lean customer development

process is that it allows you to drisk

and close the gap between what you don't

know and what your customers want before

you start building something and so in

my experience as you go about having

those conversations and talking to

people and explaining what the problem

is that you're aiming to tackle how you

think you can solve that problem for

them Etc um what you begin to do is kind

of collect an audience around you you

get a group of people who are going oh

my God you're G to go out and solve the

problem that I have tell me when it's

done please and so every one of those

conversations becomes an audience member

a fan somebody who is in your corner

going going man I'm really waiting for

those guys to get their thing live um

you know can't wait for that to happen

and that audience then becomes sort of

your built-in Champions you know they're

the folks that you can turn to when you

have a question about should my product

do X Y or Z or you know are people

willing to pay this amount for it or do

I have to limit it to this amount for

example and so you gain a lot of

valuable Insight before you ever start

building anything and of course the

build is where it gets resource

intensive and therefore more expensive

and so the more work you can do ahead of

time the more you can limit how much you

need to build and what you might

discover is that you know of the five

features that you were absolutely

certain you needed in order to be

successful audiences tell you that you

only need two of them for example or

that three of them are wrong but there's

three other things that you want and

it's way better to learn that before you

go and build it than it is to do so

after um the other thing that I'll point

out and then I'll up for a moment here

is um you know Greg Eisenberg uh a

well-known entrepreneur has what he

calls the um let me make sure I get this

right uh oh God I'm missing the middle

step um he's a huge advocate for

developing your audience first building

an audience leveraging them to

understand what the product need is that

uh that you might be able to build

around and then building the product and

effectively what he's advocating for is

exactly the process that I've just

described but it's also part of the the

reason that we're seeing a lot of

companies that start as media first

companies you know can we create an

information Library about a specific

topic that will help people gravitate

towards us so that we become known as a

leader in that space before we ever

create a product it's just creating

knowledge and sharing that knowledge and

then uh once you have that audience in

place who are gravitating to the

knowledge you have the ability to start

asking them questions and the ability to

start learning about

what they want to pay for to create a a

true business around that idea and so

regardless of which way you look at it

we think that there's a ton of value in

the audience development and the

customer development before you start

building for all of the reasons that

I've just talked about wow so is

absolutely there's a lot of work needs

to be done before the product the

pre-launch not even pre-launch I would

say it's it's at the initial stage as

you said something that is written on

the napkin itself

exactly and you know we're going through

this process with a very close partner

right now where you know they had an

idea for an upcoming AI product and of

course you know AI products are a dime

of dozen these days which makes this

even more important and so um we've been

working with them to create kind of a

series of questions and things that they

should be having conversations with

folks about and you know because it's in

a space like AI that is getting a lot of

attention right now what we're finding

is that it's very easy to get those

conversations it's very easy to reach

out to people at well-known companies

we've been talking to Folks at Carta and

Folks at beehive and uh a number of

other you know highly known companies to

ask them about what they might want from

this type of product and to gain some

clarity and insight and now we're using

that to go and design what the first

iteration of the product might look like

and again you know that's a little bit

of work but it's just design work it's

it's pushing pixels that takes you know

hours instead of days and weeks and we

can go back to them and say hey last

time we talked we talked about this and

you told us that you wanted this look we

went and designed this thing is this the

thing that you want and again it gives

us a chance with just a few hours of

work to to get further validation and

further drisk information from those

people to hear from them yes yes I want

that oh but wait could you also do this

with it and it's a great way for us to

get ideas about our own product that we

hadn't even thought of yet I mean I

can't tell you the number of people that

have said you know the product that you

just described sounds really interesting

but what I really want from it is to get

to hear and then let me do the thing

that you just described and had we gone

and built the original thing first we

never would have known that and when it

came time to start selling I can only

imagine or guarantee that we would have

had considerably more difficulty than I

think we will given the fact that we're

going through this process at the very

outset and and we're doing it before

there's even a legal entity there's no

company right now yes it's you know we

have ideas for what the company will be

and what it will be called and all of

that but right now it's just an idea and

all we're doing is talking to people

about those ideas and getting their

feedback on it so that by the time we

get to the point where we go from idea

to reality we know that we're that much

closer to to getting something valuable

absolutely that's that's very helpful

information actually to for for a

founder or for for an entrepreneur who

an idea how to take it Forward what as

you mentioned some companies so I I just

want to understand what kind of

Industries do you work in and for now

till now what has been Apollo 21's

biggest success uh so

far uh so we are largely industry

agnostic we've done work across remote

guarding and security restaurants Sports

health and fitness music uh financial

services and a bunch of other stuff that

I'm probably getting off the top of my

head um as far as biggest successes go

um one of the most fun projects that we

worked on was related to the sports

space um we had a client in the rodeo

space of all things and so think Cowboys

and bull riding and you know lassoing

horses and all sorts of stuff that's

very exciting and very fun to watch but

at least here in the US is not

traditionally a space where technology

has been a huge differentiator and so

when we had a client come to us and say

hey we want to build the next major

brand in the world of rodeo but we want

to do it with technology at the very

heart of everything that we're creating

we saw it as a huge opportunity to kind

of play in a space and to make an impact

in a space where technology was

generally um not particularly you know

interesting or Innovative and so that

led to the development of a number of

different applications for them we

started off building a very simple data

and analytics platform and that very

quickly grew to become one of the

largest data sets about Western and

Western Sports and Rodeo that is in

existence to the best of our knowledge

and then we expanded on that into

operational software to help them with

their marketing operations we built out

a platform for the uh management of the

production of rodeo events so this

company is executing across all of their

different brands something like 600

different Rodeo events a year so think

you know two a two no two a week like

two a day on average kind of thing um

and so you know executing rodeos at that

scale is not easy in terms of dealing

with entries and entry fees and winnings

and what events are you holding and all

of that stuff um and so we built a

platform to make that easier and then

perhaps one of the most exciting things

that we built was a customer phasing

mobile application that was effectively

designed to be sort of ESPN for the

world of rodeo so

the key place that you go to stay up to

dat with what's happening in the world

of Rodeo who's leading in Team Roping

what's going on in barrel racing all of

that fun stuff and so users can sign up

they can follow their favorite athletes

they can follow their favorite

disciplines they can watch rodeos via

live stream and really kind of keep up

with the world of this

particular area of sports in a way that

um no other application on the market

allowed for previous to our launching of

that that platform wow wonderful

wonderful Danny uh at last I just want

to understand from your perspective how

do you see forc the V The Venture Studio

industry and the product design industry

growing and what is the near future what

what do you think the future is for

Apollo as well as for the

industry and you know lot that this

might even help uh the future

entrepreneurs who are working in the

studio certain startups who are actually

into the ecosystem how do they approach

this absolutely um let me break that

apart so I think that as I as I

mentioned earlier I think we're going to

see a continued uptick in the

attractiveness of venture Studios as a

means to both fund and execute uh new

ideas and new Ventures I think that

people will begin to realize the value

that having an experienced team with a

uh distinct process in place that allows

them to sort of follow a Playbook as

they're looking to create their new

Venture will become more and more

attractive especially as funding gets

Tighter and Tighter um to answer your

second question as far as what I see is

the the kind of future of product design

um I think that we're going to see a

huge shift in terms of the impact of AI

in the way that we not only think about

what product design looks like but then

also in the way that we go about

executing product design so you know

we're already beginning to see

chat-based interfaces become more and

more prevalent and I think that as as

the trends continue what we will start

to see is um more ability to to Really

discuss and ask questions and query the

platforms that we're using on a daily

basis probably

alongside the views that we're used to

seeing so no longer will your dashboard

just be a dashboard it will be a

dashboard that you can talk to and ask

questions of and no longer will your you

know your design platform or your email

platform or your whatever platform just

be a thing that does that and maybe

gives you a little bit of analytics data

around open rates or audience

segmentation but you will be able to

query that in a much more interesting

and you know much more granular and

insightful Manner and I think the other

thing that will then come out of that is

less need for structure around our data

I think that what we're you know what

we're looking at in the future is um

data storage will become a Dumping

Ground that we no longer have to be

careful and considered about how we how

we put together and we will have more

ability just to start throwing

everything into the pool and relying on

the AI to help us sort it out on the

other end as we need to understand

what's going on um and then in terms of

how that impacts Apollo 21 you know

we're we are continually shifting our

business to support all of those Trends

you know as I said we already operate in

adventure Studio style model and my hope

is that over time you know the balance

between the Consulting work that we do

and the Venture building through our

Venture Studio work that we do will

begin to flip you know right now we are

heavier on the Consulting side than we

are on the Venture side and I'm I'm

anticipating that that will begin to

shift and you know eventually the Seesaw

will kind of flip the other Direction um

and at the same time every new product

that we are helping people bring to life

we are considering the impacts of uh Ai

and web 3 and the changes in ux that

we're seeing out in the world as we

consider how those will impact what we

are then building for our clients and

for ourselves wow thank thank you thank

you Danny for such a wonderful insight

and thank you so much for accepting my

invitation and joining ing us today at a

podcast and giving our audience such a

wonderful Insight on Venture studio and

product design industry as well well

thanks for having me it's been a

pleasure thank you so much

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