The Apollo team recently held their first product testing workshop which was open to friends of the company. Following the launch of Apollo finally on the horizon we think this would be a good time to share details on our product development process, explore the reasons behind our motivations to build Apollo and what you can expect from the team in over the next few weeks.
Why build Apollo?
If you look at the landscape of Cryptocurrency exchanges you will find a number of common issues such as hidden fees, creating accounts is a long and complicated, withdrawals and deposits are slow and expensive, poor customer support & portfolio management and lack of compliance with regulation. Many exchanges over stretch themselves by trying to cater for both small retail and institutional investors but ultimately provide a sub-optimal experience for both.
We saw a unique opportunity to cut through these issues. We have leveraged our teams experience in building new companies and distributed applications to build Apollo. Apollo will launch as a mobile first exchange for retail investors which is completely transparent on fees, has full time customer support, portfolio management, compliant with regulation and secures its assets in cold storage.
Apollo’s development process
Apollo has been built as a native mobile first app for iOS and Android. The Product and Engineering team has recently been busy gathering and responding to a wealth of feedback from workshops and beta testers in Europe and North America. We estimate there’s a couple of weeks left of refinements before the product can be pushed further.
Feedback from our remote testers and product workshops is prioritised into our Product Backlog and roadmap. Our Product Manager works with everyone in the business, including Legal, Design and Marketing, to make sure the Engineering team is firing on all cylinders when we start on our next 2 week sprint.
Making Apollo a success isn’t just about getting the product right. We have also been working on drafting our GDPR compliant Privacy Policy and Apollo’s Terms and Conditions and serve as critical pieces. We have also drafted and put in place a robust Anti Money Laundering (AML) Policy. These will be updated on our website in the coming days in preparing of launch.
In anticipation of a longer than usual App Review process, we submitted a release candidate of Apollo to Apple and Google for review as soon as possible. We were extremely happy to see that Apollo was approved for Play Store, App Store and Apple Pay within a couple of days.
What’s next?
The Engineering team is sinking their teeth into the product feedback to produce the first public release of Apollo. In parallel, our product team is planning how to stagger the roll out of Apollo. It’s important for the Apollo team to monitor uptake and monetary throughput carefully and work with our strategic partners (such as payment processors, fraud prevention specialists and even other exchanges) to make sure that it’s easy sailing.
Launching Apollo is just the beginning, in the coming months we will share even more exciting developments. Thank you for being a part of our journey!
Best Wishes.
The Apollo Team
