Danny Nathan Of Apollo 21 On 5 Tips for Accelerating Product Ideation & Innovation
An Interview With Rachel Kline
Crawl > Walk > Run.
Find the smallest thing you can build that will deliver the highest impact to your customer/user and build that. Then do it again. And again. And again.
In a world where the pace of change is faster than ever, the power of great ideas has never been more crucial. And yet, developing these ideas into impactful, market-ready products can be an immense challenge. The best products are not born overnight, they’re the result of dedicated ideation and innovation processes. These processes aren’t always easy, but they’re necessary and can be catalyzed with the right strategies and approaches. How do you foster a culture of creativity within a team? How can one rapidly translate ideas into prototypes and eventually finished products? How can roadblocks be anticipated and managed effectively to avoid unnecessary delays. In this series, we’re eager to explore insights, stories, and actionable tips from those at the forefront of ideation and innovation. As part of this series, we had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Danny Nathan.
After nearly 20 years of product and technology experience, Danny Nathan has developed a habit of helping companies create new products & services and launch new ventures. He has led product build and launch efforts at an international scale for companies ranging from pre-seed startups to Fortune 100 corporations, including: American Express, Dyson, General Mills, the MoMA, Getty Images, Legendary Pictures, and many more. Danny is currently the founder of product design + venture studio, Apollo 21 (https://apollo21.io), where his team partners with clients to solve business problems and launch innovative products while also creating wholly owned companies under the Apollo 21 Ventures moniker.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before diving in, our readers would love to learn more about you. Can you tell us a little about yourself?
Whoa… I haven’t felt this much pressure since I wrote my last online dating profile 15 years ago!
Hi, I’m Danny.
Professionally, I am the consummate square peg. I’ve been called a product person, a UX guy, a designer, a strategist, a marketer, an entrepreneur (and a few other choice names like “The Cleaner”). I have led product build and launch efforts at an international scale, and I’ve helped many startups down the path toward product/market fit.
I’m currently the founder of Apollo 21, a product design and venture studio focused on helping our clients solve business problems (via technology), launch new products, and build new businesses. Today, Apollo 21 can be broken down into three core business units:
- Apollo 21: This is our client services studio. We function as a business and technology consultancy and product design studio. Our clients generally come to us to because they have a difficult business problem to solve and believe technology can provide the answer. While this has come to fruition as consumer-facing product launches (mobile apps, commerce platforms, etc.), equally often our focus is on internal goals and workflows. We have helped numerous clients drive operational efficiency through workflow management and automations, coupled with AI, that are tailored specifically to that business.
- Launchpad: This is our website design and build service. Throughout our careers, our team has collectively launched hundreds of websites which gives us a unique perspective into what makes a highly performant, conversion-focused site. We leverage this knowledge and experience through the Launchpad service by utilizing a structured, carefully designed process to bring new websites to life for clients in as little as two weeks.
- Apollo 21 Ventures: This is the venture-building arm of Apollo 21. In addition to building new products, services, and workflow platforms for our clients, we also invest in and launch our own ideas. For example, we recently launched Meeting Cost Calculator, an analytics and insights platform designed to give team leaders detailed data on the health of their company’s meeting culture. (Did you know that the time employees spend in meetings has increased by 252% since the start of the pandemic??)
On the personal front, my family recently moved back to NYC after a 6 year stint on the West Coast in L.A. (where I discovered that I am definitely not an Angelino at heart). When we’re not focused on building new things (my wife also works in product), we enjoy the outdoors and spent much of our time out West escaping L.A. to explore California. We also run a side gig called Go Xplore Basecamp that’s an extension of our camping habit and provides a “science lab” where we can test and play with new ideas and technologies.
What led you to this specific career path?
I took a rather circuitous route to get where I am today. After graduating from college (many years ago) with a degree in Acting and Marketing, I decided to do the “responsible” thing and head to grad school for training in a field that might provide a more lucrative and less competitive career path than theatre and film.
I decided that a Masters degree in advertising would be the right path. After graduating, I moved to the advertising mecca of the world, New York City. There I discovered two important realities within my first couple of years as a newly-minted advertising creative:
- The advertising industry is every bit as competitive (if not more so) than the world of theatre and film.
- The most fun you’ll ever have in advertising is during school.
I spent two years working in advertising during which time I both struggled to find a job and subsequently hated every job that I found. Ad agencies do a remarkable job of sucking the joy and creativity out of the day-to-day work. My existential crisis came to a head during one specific meeting…
My partner and I (if you’re unfamiliar, ad creatives usually work in teams of two) were called into a conference room with the Executive Creative Director and the Head of Strategy for our agency. They wanted to brief us on an exciting new project for a newly-won account, Mrs. Butterworth’s syrup. They explained in excruciating detail how our agency’s recent commercials featuring a Mrs. Butterworth’s bottle that animates to life and talks to little Jimmy (while mom is making pancakes in the background) is the embodiment of the brand. Thrilled with these new TV spots, the company wanted to extend the idea into the digital space and had offered up a one million dollar budget to create a kids-focused digital experience. The idea on the table was a ”Where’s Waldo” style game where kids would hunt down the Mrs. Butterworth’s bottle. (Womp woooooomp.)
We’re now 45 minutes into this meeting and I don’t think I’ve said a word, which was clearly beginning to irk the higher-ups. After listening to a slew of asinine ideas, I threw a thought on the table:
If the talking bottle is the essence of the Mrs. Butterworth’s brand, why don’t we spend a million bucks putting talking bottles on shelves in stores so that when kids open the bottles, they have the same experience they’ve seen in the commercials?
The response from the executives, after what felt like an eternity of stunned silence, was one I’ll never forget: “That’s package design. That’s outside of our purview.”
That was the day I mentally resigned from advertising.
I spent the next couple of months searching high and low for a job at anywhere that was not an advertising agency. At the same time, I came to the realization that old-school ad agencies simply couldn’t keep up with the changes that were happening in the world of branding and marketing, especially considering the speed at which technology was progressing. I began an impromptu, self-taught second Masters degree in “How to Build and Market Brands in the 21st Century.” I read everything I could get my hands on that talked about engaging customers in the age of the internet to build positive brand experiences. All that hard work paid off, and in November of 2007 I had landed myself a job at a company that would ultimately change my career path forever: POKE NY.
POKE was the first “born in the digital age” agency I’d ever worked for as well as the first company I’d ever experienced where leadership was willing to pass on business opportunities that didn’t align to their core beliefs. This mentality bled into everything that we did, eventually leading to projects creating and launching new products for well-known companies like American Express, Dyson, the MoMA as well as fledgling startups out to make their marks on the world. My experience at POKE gave me the opportunity to lead projects with well-known companies that would have otherwise taken years to cross my plate. It was also my first exposure to the world of startups and entrepreneurship…which is where I ultimately fell in love.
I parlayed my experience at POKE into a series of Head of Product roles at various startups. The most recent was an L.A.-based, video-focused technology company called SEER. I was one of the founding team members and led the design of our initial platform offering. About two years into a bootstrapped journey with SEER, we secured outside funding from a family office with a small portfolio of investments. One of the stipulations of this funding was that our team would help their other portfolio companies accelerate their technology efforts. For the next year, in addition to my role at SEER, I led a small SWAT team focused on helping our partner companies design and develop new software that would underpin operations and increase efficiency by an order of magnitude.
At the end of this period, some of the folks at the investor level took note of our efforts and approached me about stepping out to create a new company focused on this type of work. This opportunity led to the creation of Apollo 21 and the introduction of our first major client — an engagement that helped us get our business on the rails.
Can you share the most exciting story that has happened to you since you began at your company?
I don’t know how great a story it will prove to be, but there are two moments that together make for the most exciting aspect of Apollo 21 for me.
The first was late in 2022 when I was able to buy out my silent partners and assume full control over the company I’d worked for (then) 18 months to build from scratch. While obviously exciting by its own merit, the greatest benefit to this was the freedom it afforded me to run Apollo 21 independently and, in doing so, execute some of the ideas that interested me from the beginning.
I had always envisioned Apollo 21 as part product design studio and part venture studio focused on building products and services on behalf of both our clients and ourselves. After months of diligent work, I was able to lay the foundation for that future through the creation of Apollo 21 Ventures in April 2023 (moment #2). As the venture building arm of Apollo 21, this new aspect of our business offered us a vehicle through which we can bring our own ideas to life.
Which brings me to the exciting part. Throughout 2022, our team grew, and I was able to bring on my first non-contract employees. This small, highly trusted leadership team is made up of folks I’ve worked with in past jobs, and each of them excels in an area that compliments one another and makes Apollo 21 stronger. I was thrilled to give this team an ownership stake in Apollo 21 Ventures, ensuring that our future successes will truly be ours.
I find that incredibly exciting.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?
We’re working on two particularly interesting things right now…
The first is bolstering the growth of our conversion-focused website build service, Launchpad (https://countdowninitiated.com). This service leverages our team’s deep experience in building highly performant websites to validate business ideas, test demand for new products, etc. We’ve taken everything we’ve learned and boiled it down to a discrete, clearly defined, repeatable process. Doing so allows us to launch new websites for clients in as little as two weeks. Obviously this is hugely beneficial for companies who are short on time and need to build marketing landing pages, product validation pages, or even full-blown content and commerce platforms. Our next build is for a well-known recording artist who we’re extremely excited to partner with.
The second is a new client in the virtual kitchen space. They have built an amazing business here in New York that supports more than a dozen tech-enabled, delivery only restaurant brands out of a single kitchen. Seeing them deliver thousands of high-quality meals every day with a kitchen staff of ~20 is a sight to behold. We have the pleasure of working with this team to help turn their commercial kitchen into a technology and data-driven power house capable of supporting sustained growth and new kitchen locations as their business scales. While our partnership was initiated by the need for a specific technology solution, the real opportunity is in helping their team collect data and automate as much of their workflow as possible.
Projects like this align incredibly well with our superpowers 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.
You’re a successful business leader. What are three traits about yourself that you feel helped fuel your success? Can you share a story or example for each?
Determination.
As I was starting Apollo 21, someone asked me if I was “ready” to be a CEO…to lead a team.
After a moment of consideration, the answer was obvious… No. There was no world in which I was “ready” to be a CEO and lead a company.
I’d led teams before. I’d founded a company before. But I also knew that there was an immeasurable amount that I *didn’t know* about running a company and how to support the team supporting that company.
In that moment I couldn’t imagine anyone ever answering “yes” to that question. Who in their right mind would think that they were ready for the endeavor that is starting a company, becoming responsible for the livelihood of others, aiming to keep clients and customers happy, etc?
But did I answer “no” when asked? No!
My answer was simply, “I’m ready to figure it out.”
Little did I know just how much that would ring true. I’ve learned more in the last couple of years running this company than I probably have in the decade or two prior (a time when I also would have sworn that I was learning a ton). And the amount of constant context switching required of a founder is intense. This isn’t something that’s talked about widely.
Sam Altman really nailed this one with his thoughts on determination, “The most underrated quality of a founder is being really determined… So much about being a successful entrepreneur is just not giving up.”
I think back on that question often: “Are you ready?”
Hell no. But I’m doin’ it anyway.
Integrity.
Telling you a story demonstrating that I operate with integrity feels a lot like trying to tell someone you’re cool. It’s not something you can tell people…you just are. Or you’re not.
That said, I’m a firm believer in operating with integrity, trust, and honesty. This mentality is a foundation of our company culture. It’s also inherent in how Apollo 21 operates — we’re fully remote and operate a R.O.W.E. (results-oriented work environment).
This means that, as an organization, we place immense trust in our team. We trust folks to get their work done. We trust them to communicate when something isn’t clear. And we trust that they will utilize the freedom afforded to them through this structure without malicious intent. Essentially, this means that our team is free to work when they want, from wherever they want — as long as their work is getting done and they’re communicating clearly to the rest of the team.
Integrity is also foundational to how we work with clients and partners. We operate in good faith. We truly want to help our clients and partners succeed in their own entrepreneurial endeavors. That means that if we make a mistake, we own it. That means we communicate with transparency. That means that we operate in a customer-centric fashion, often putting the needs of our clients above all else.
Above all, we hold ourselves accountable. And that begins with me.
Mudita
I was recently introduced to another founder via a mutual friend. While we’d heard plenty about one another through this mutual connection, we hadn’t managed to meet until recently. We hit it off like gangbusters.
We quickly realized that the similarities in our approach to business and our commitments to operating with integrity, ideally for the benefit of everyone involved, truly align our outlooks and our operational approaches. It’s rare these days to encounter someone who’s looking to foster opportunity for the people around them. (Note that the quality here is not “altruism” — there is an aspect of personal growth involved.) But this founder demonstrates that quality in spades. We’ve already begun discussing, and working on, a few ideas that we believe have unique potential for both our teams.
It was when we realized this similarity in approach that he taught me the term “mudita.”
Mudita is a term from Buddhist philosophy that refers to the joy and happiness that comes from seeing others succeed, prosper, or experience happiness. It is roughly the opposite of schadenfreude.
It has been said that our mistakes can sometimes be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
In my experience, when you’re running a company, finding humor in mistakes and learning from mistakes tend to sit at opposite ends of the spectrum. It’s difficult not to feel like there’s a lot riding on every decision. Not only is your own livelihood at stake, but so is that of your employees and the folks relying on you to help provide for their families. The mistakes that are funny are more innocuous (and frankly not worth sharing). The mistakes that are valuable and that we can learn from often aren’t so humorous.
With that caveat out of the way… I’m a huge believer in failure. In fact, I have a bit of a personal motto about this…
Fail Beautifully.
Fail beautifully is a constant reminder to try — even if the result is abysmal. It’s a reminder that anything worth trying is worth putting real effort into — even if the result is abysmal. Most importantly, fail beautifully is a reminder to myself that failure is a learning experience.
I’m also a firm believer that the freedom to fail engenders opportunities to succeed and that failures in the quest to learn and validate an idea are always positive. (I’ve written about this philosophy in detail here: https://www.apollo21.io/transmissions/find-success-by-creating-a-culture-of-failure.)
One of my greatest failures throughout my career is putting too much trust in people who I think have my best interests at heart. Or, put another way, I’ve made the mistake of assuming that some people close to me have my best interests at heart. Given my personal need to operate with integrity, I have fallen into the trap of assuming others do as well.
This is a mistake that’s cost me a few times throughout my career and one that I’m still learning how to overcome. It has taught me to be more careful about the assumptions I make in my business relationships. And it has taught me to step back and view business dealings through the eyes of the other person. Whereas in the past I might have taken someone’s words at face value, I now remind myself to think about the situation from their perspective to understand where they stand to gain or lose. In doing so, I can be more objective in considering deal terms, partnerships, etc. and in assessing the other party’s motives.
Do you have any mentors or experiences that have particularly influenced your approach to product ideation and innovation?
I’ve had both over the years.
The most significant mentor in terms of career impact was Tom Ajello, the founder of POKE NY (described above). He was the first person in my career who gave me the opportunity to grow into my shoes. The more capable I proved myself to be at POKE, the more responsibility and opportunity he put on my shoulders. He didn’t care that I was only a few years out of school when I started. He didn’t care that I didn’t come from a technology background; Tom and the team at POKE taught me technology.
What Tom did care about was the way I approached problems. And we saw eye-to-eye on that approach at nearly every step. I spoke “Tom” in a way that allowed us to build an immensely productive working relationship. And in my five years working at POKE, we put that relationship to work (and to the test) across more projects than I can count.
We worked with American Express to launch multiple new card products, influence innovation strategy, and guide executives on how to engage in this new space called “social media.” We partnered with Dyson to handle the global launch of their bladeless fan product. We built an installation for the Museum of Modern Art in New York. We helped TruTV launch an entirely new television network…in the midst of the 2007–2008 writer’s strike. We created the first 24/7 livestreamed television show on behalf of Simon Fuller (the creator of American Idol). And this list just scratches the surface.
Tom’s confidence in me helped me find confidence in myself.
My experience under Tom also helped shape my approach to product ideation and innovation. POKE was unique. We weren’t an ad agency. We also weren’t a “digital agency” (a term of the times — bear in mind, this was in 2007). We were the folks that companies called in when they weren’t getting strategically sound, technology-grounded ideas from those agencies in their arsenal. Being the outliers served us well and garnered us opportunities to work with companies who already had established agency relationships. (For the curious, we eventually settled on the moniker of “innovation consultancy.”)
For a hungry, creatively driven, technology-curious, design-minded individual like myself — those five years were an absolute gold mine. Those experiences sent my career in an entirely new direction and exposed me to the worlds of technology and entrepreneurship that are the focus of everything I’ve done since. And yes, I’m still in touch with Tom.
If Tom set the first half of my career on the right path, then it was certainly Tim who helped define the second half. (Don’t worry — it’s not over yet).
I met Tim Mohn while serving as Head of Product for an AI and video focused startup here in New York. Not unlike the relationship I found with Tom, I quickly discovered that Tim and I also shared a closely aligned perspective on how to build products. It was Tim who prompted my move to Los Angeles, first to work for him as Head of Product at Legendary Pictures and subsequently at SEER. And Tim was one of the folks who encouraged me and guided me at the start of Apollo 21.
Tom helped me find confidence in myself. Tim helped me learn how to use it.
In your experience, what is the anatomy of a strong product idea?
Let’s not overcomplicate this. A strong product idea:
- Solves a discrete need for a specific group of people who are willing to pay for that solution.
- Has a feasible execution path that doesn’t require a massive feature set to provide value to early users.
- Is built around a clear business model with a discernable path to monetization at a scale that will support a business.
Sure, in reality there’s more to it than this. But not much more.
What approach does your team use for coming up with new ideas for products and features?
These are really two needs with different approaches…
The easier of the two is feature development: Listen to your customers.
When you release a product and start gaining traction, your customers (or potential customers) will tell you what’s missing. The customers who are paying will ask for things that would make your product better fit their needs. This is good — you should work hard to solicit this feedback. Potential customers will tell you why they won’t pay for your product (which may come down to missing features). You should work hard to solicit this feedback as well.
The hard part of soliciting feedback is understanding that you shouldn’t react to every bit of feedback the moment it comes in. Too many product teams rush to build some new feature because a single customer (or potential customer) has requested it. I call this “Shiny Object Syndrome” — it’s a guaranteed path to a long, slow death. Your team will feel like they’re always falling behind and like your roadmap is an ever-growing, undirected pile of ideas that lack cohesion. (Probably because it is.)
To combat Shiny Object Syndrome, document all the feedback you get. Prioritize new feature requests based on how often a specific feature is requested (balanced against the build cost). Remember: you should let your customers influence your roadmap, but they should never own your roadmap.
Product ideation is a different beast altogether. Any employee at Apollo 21 has the freedom to write up an idea in the form of a project charter — a document template we’ve created to capture the idea, the market, the opportunity, the key features, etc.
Once a project is chartered, it’s shared around the company for internal validation. Regardless of the internal validation, those who draft a charter are also welcome to begin putting their idea through our external validation process. This aims to ensure that we don’t kill a viable project or idea due to internal biases.
If validated externally, then we often put an idea to the test by conducting a Design Sprint — a one-week (or often less) intensive workflow through which we further interrogate the problem, the opportunity, and the solution. The output of the Design Sprint is a working prototype (clickable designs; lightweight code, etc) that we then test with potential users to gain real feedback on the solution we’ve come up with.
At the end of the validation phase, if we believe that there is a real business opportunity, we then take the time to work out a build plan outlining how we can create an MVP to release to market.
In my opinion, sourcing product ideas comes down to the right mindset: always be on the lookout. We’re surrounded by opportunities for new products and services — the easiest way to find them is to look at your own life and figure out the moments where you encounter pain points. Or ask other people where they have difficulty. We recently released a product that was inspired by a single sentence out of a LinkedIn post from someone we follow.
What is the story behind the most successful product or feature idea your team has ever had — what was the need, how did the idea come about, and what was the outcome?
Oh, great segue! Let’s dig into the product I just mentioned above. Back in December, I came across a LinkedIn post that was a veritable gold mine of product ideas. But the one sentence that really stood out to me was:
“These days it’s harder to expense a Twix from a hotel mini bar than it is to call a meeting that costs $20,000 of other people’s time.”
That statement stuck with me and got me thinking carefully about cost drivers and, more specifically, meetings as cost drivers. It served as the catalyst that began our journey in building our latest product, Meeting Cost Calculator.
A couple of months later, Shopify made the news cycle because they were effectively canceling ALL company meetings. Shopify COO Kaz Nejatian was quoted stating that “Meetings are a bug.” We were able to leverage this news to drive pre-launch interest in Meeting Cost Calculator which helped to validate our idea.
Subsequently, and by total luck/coincidence, the week prior to publicly launching Meeting Cost Calculator, Shopify again made the news cycle. This time, the stories were focused around their newly released for internal use only tool called meeting cost calculator. Because Shopify wasn’t clear about the fact that their tool — which happened to carry the same name as our product — wasn’t publicly available, this drove a significant amount of search traffic to our product. Once again we were able to capitalize on Shopify’s news to help our product grow.
Unlike other products on the market, Meeting Cost Calculator delivers team leads a data-driven dashboard offering insights into how their team spends meeting time and what the cost implications of those meetings are. Our goal is to help companies eliminate unnecessary meetings, increase team productivity and the value of team meetings, and educate team members about the cost implications of their scheduling habits.
While still at the early stages, Meeting Cost Calculator is gaining traction quickly. We’re thoroughly excited to see where it goes, especially as the first wholly owned release from Apollo 21 Ventures.
How does your product team manage new product and feature ideas?
We run all of our projects on Github Projects. Every project gets a board tied to the relevant repos. New feature ideas get added to a holding area until we’ve validated them (through the user feedback process I mentioned previously). Once validated, we cycle those features into an upcoming sprint for development.
New product ideas are put through their paces via the process I described above: charter 🡪 validation 🡪 MVP.
What, in your view, is the biggest challenge with respect to innovation?
It’s really ducking hard.
I read a quote recently that has stuck with me: “Innovation is changing the way someone does something, forever.” We all know how difficult it is to break a bad habit. Or to change a deeply ingrained process. Or to shift someone’s opinion. Innovation is similar in that we’re trying to change the way that people do things.
Beyond the fact that it’s hard, you must also consider the fear factor that runs rampant in most corporate environments. Middle managers are afraid to break the status quo for fear of losing their jobs. Companies are afraid to introduce too much change at once for fear of angering customers (or worse yet, shareholders). None of that is a recipe for innovation.
And, even if you can clear both of those hurdles, there’s still the issue that those who have the determination don’t have the means, and those who have the means don’t have the determination. In other words, founders — those who are determined to innovate — usually lack the funding to do so independently. Corporations — those who possess the means and funding to drive innovation — often lack the determination to do so.
Thank you for all of that. Here is the main question of our interview. Based on your experience, what are your “5 Tips for Accelerating Product Ideation & Innovation”?
Crawl > Walk > Run.
Find the smallest thing you can build that will deliver the highest impact to your customer/user and build that. Then do it again. And again. And again.
Years ago, when I started my first company, we had validated our idea and were working on our MVP. As a foundling entrepreneur, I was worried about launching a product that didn’t include enough functionality to be compelling. I was fortunate enough to sit down with a family friend who is also the CEO of a well-known ATS platform.
Over the course of our conversation, he bestowed much wisdom. But the piece that truly stood out to me — and still rings in my head today — was his answer when I asked him how he dealt with prioritization and how much he was concerned about disappointing his users.
To which he responded: “Not at all.”
He went on to explain that the earliest stages of a startup are focused on finding product/market fit. Which part of your idea or solution is valid and valuable to your audience vs. the parts that are simply bloat. He made the point that, in the early days before you find product/market fit, your job is to try anything and everything that might resonate with your customers. You will inevitably disappoint — and lose — some of them in the process, but in doing so you should be finding the opportunities that will turn your blossoming idea into a viable business.
It’s easier to focus on tiny, bite-sized features that can be tested quickly than it is to build out an entire product ecosystem only to find that it’s missed the mark. Which brings me to my next tip…
Done is better than perfect.
No matter how right you think you are about your idea, you will learn more in 10 minutes of speaking with customers — or better yet, watching them try to use your product — than you ever will in your office. Build the smallest thing that will deliver the highest impact and get it into the hands of your customers. It can be dirty. It can be ugly. It can be powered by humans instead of technology. Just get it out there and then listen to your customers.
It’s so easy to get overcome by the excitement of what a product could be that we get caught in a cycle of “It would be awesome if we just added this one more feature…” You’ll quickly find yourself on the feature creep treadmill — working hard and going nowhere. I’ve been on that treadmill, and believe me it is not fun.
After I shuttered my first attempt at a startup, I found a gig as Head of Product for a burgeoning AI startup focused on teaching computers to understand video content like humans. (Bear in mind, this was in 2015 — well before the recent AI boom.) The idea was beyond exciting and opened the door to an almost-limitless number of product possibilities: search within video, shoppable video with zero manual interaction, storyline development and testing, and so much more. We were well down the road of a working tech stack and had interest from folks like Disney to bolster our confidence.
And we went nowhere.
I stuck around for two years because I was intensely interested in the things we might do with this technology. Unfortunately, the CEO suffered from acute Shiny Object Syndrome and changed direction weekly. Every external conversation spurred a new idea and a new direction that we just had to pursue. We found ourselves on the treadmill — always running toward success that was just out of reach.
Had we simply put a stake in the ground and built something out of the amazing technology the team had created, we could have gained some traction and learned more discretely what our customers wanted from our platform. Instead, we never actually built a product beyond the POC phase before distraction led us to the next POC (and the next, and the next, and the next).
Have a process.
There are more than enough resources available now to help anyone start down the path of innovation and entrepreneurship. Use them to develop a plan before you start. Knowing what steps to take is always better than stepping blindly.
At Apollo 21, process is one of our superpowers. We have a carefully documented process for everything. We have a senior team member whose primary task is to ensure that we’re following process. And we do so because constraints breed creativity. If we know what step we need to take and when we need to take it, that frees us up to focus on the goal. And as a venture studio — a company built to build new companies — this is doubly important. As we learn what works, we can document that as part of our process so that we don’t have to think about it when we approach the next venture.
We have a process for documenting ideas. We have a process for validating ideas. We have a process for building those ideas. We have a process for gathering feedback on the things we’ve built. We have a process for prioritizing feedback once we have it.
And each of these processes offers us freedom.
Fail Beautifully.
Approach your process with the clear understanding that you will fail. You will fail hundreds of times along the path to success. Embrace failure and learn to recognize the value in understanding what does not work — it will bring you that much closer to what does.
This mantra was born from a lesson that one of my acting professors (yes, I have a degree in Acting) instilled in her students: the need to be open to anything that may happen when you’re performing. In acting, characters are developed by making choices. Any character information that’s not presented within the context of the script is the actor’s job to fill in, explicitly or otherwise, to create a rich persona.
As you’re working to develop a character through rehearsals, it’s not unusual to try hundreds of different choices to see what fits. And the actors around you are doing the same thing. The scene, and the character relationships, will develop and become cemented as the actors learn how their choices mesh with those of other actors and characters. Being open to those choices — saying “yes” to them when you’re performing — can dictate whether a scene falls flat or engages the audience.
She called this philosophy The Cosmic Yes.
In my experience, it’s also a philosophy that can be adapted to life in general. Simply put, learn to make choices and say yes to the challenges in front of you — even if the result is abysmal.
I’ve framed the application of the Cosmic Yes philosophy to daily life as Fail Beautifully.
It will take longer than you think.
Every success story you read makes it sound like success happens overnight. Someone builds a thing in their garage and then turns around and is suddenly being acquired for billions. The real world doesn’t work like that. The level of grit, determination, and persistence required along the way in the murky area between idea and success is nearly unfathomable. Keep going.
I’ll let you know when I find the end.
We are very blessed that very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them :-)
Garrett Camp.
Why? Because Stumbleupon. And Uber. And Expa. That’s why.
Thank you so much for this. This was very inspirational, and we wish you only continued success!
