Danny Nathan, founder and CEO of Apollo Ventures, discusses the critical elements of leadership that foster innovation. Nathan shares his transformative journey from advertising to spearheading Apollo Ventures, where he assists established companies in breaking through stagnation to discover new growth avenues.

Throughout the discussion, Nathan emphasizes the importance of a learning-focused culture over mere execution, highlighting how innovation often takes a backseat due to risk aversion and efficiency-driven mindsets in large corporations. He explains that true innovation requires a shift towards accepting initial costs and failures as part of the process, aiming for long-term, significant returns.

The conversation also touches on notable failures in corporate history, such as Nokia and Kodak, serving as stark reminders of what can happen when companies fail to adapt and innovate. Nathan’s insights provide a blueprint for leaders to rethink their strategies and embrace a more dynamic approach to business leadership.

Want to learn more about Danny's work? Check out their website at https://apollo21.io.

Connect with Danny on LinkedIn at https://linkedin.com/in/amongmany.

Key Points with Time Stamps:

• [00:01:40-00:01:57] Nathan discusses how companies often hit revenue stagnation and need external innovation.
• [00:08:26-00:09:16] Explanation of Apollo Ventures' role in helping companies overcome creative and operational stagnation.
• [00:11:00-00:11:25] Discussion on how traditional business structures can hinder innovation.
• [00:17:10-00:17:45] Importance of top-down support in fostering an innovative culture.
• [00:26:01-00:26:33] Nathan emphasizes customer development and learning from customer feedback as key to innovation.

Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;30;20
Craig Andrews
I was in a coma for six weeks while the doctors told my wife I was going to die. When I woke up, she told me the most fantastic story. My team kept running the business without me. Freelancers reached out to my team and said, we will do whatever it takes. As long as Craig's in the hospital. I consider that the greatest accomplishment of my career.

00;00;30;23 - 00;00;51;10
Craig Andrews
My name is Craig Andrews and this is the Leaders and Legacies podcast where we talk to leaders creating an impact beyond themselves. At the end of today's interview, I'll tell you how you can be the next leader featured on the show.

00;00;51;10 - 00;01;17;05
Craig Andrews
Today, I want to welcome Danny Nathan. He's the founder and CEO of Apollo Ventures. Hal is a really interesting company. That's a little hard to define at first, but when Danny explained it to me, it made sense. And basically, companies get to a point where they're kind of stuck and they need some innovation and they have trouble innovating within themselves.

00;01;17;07 - 00;01;40;25
Craig Andrews
And so they bring in folks like Danny to help help them break through that place that they're stuck, spice up their, their product offering and open up new revenue opportunities. And typically they do this for businesses that are 10 million and up. And so the reason I think you should listen today is whatever revenue you're at, let's say you're below 10 million.

00;01;40;27 - 00;01;57;06
Craig Andrews
You will reach a point where you're going to start stagnating and you're going to run into these blockades. And so I think this is an important episode to listen to, because I think we're going to learn some really interesting things about how to break through that. So Danny, welcome.

00;01;57;08 - 00;01;59;12
Danny Nathan
Thank you. I'm glad to be here.

00;01;59;14 - 00;02;29;15
Craig Andrews
So, you know, you're up in Brooklyn and, and, I mentioned that I was in Austin. You're like, oh, I went to grad school there. And so you can, of course, the University of Austin at Texas, it's Texas at Austin. And, you know, very obviously down here held in high, high esteem. There is no of course, you know, but the, but you got a masters in advertising.

00;02;29;18 - 00;02;31;09
Danny Nathan
I did.

00;02;31;12 - 00;02;33;28
Craig Andrews
But you don't do advertising.

00;02;34;01 - 00;02;57;12
Danny Nathan
no, I don't I, I got my masters in advertising immediately moved to New York, the, the Mecca of all things advertising, and spent about, oh, whopping two years in the world of advertising and, to be quite frank, I just never enjoyed it. It, it never scratch the itch for me, and I, I came to the conclusion that the most fun one will ever have in advertising is during ad school.

00;02;57;15 - 00;03;24;15
Danny Nathan
And, really, it all came to a head for me. I remember the meeting. I can tell you the day that I mentally checked out of the world of advertising. and I'll try and keep it brief, but, my partner and I were called into a meeting with our executive creative director and the chief strategy officer or something, and we were working on, Mrs. Butterworth's sirup, which, if you'll recall, is the one that the bottle is the shape of, of Mrs. Butterworth's.

00;03;24;17 - 00;03;48;14
Danny Nathan
And, they sat us down and gave us this whole rundown about how our recent TV spots where the bottle animates to life and talks to little Jimmy while he's at the breakfast table and mom's cooking pancakes in the background is the utter epitome of this brand. And they had brought us into the meeting because we had $1 million budget to create a game for kids online.

00;03;48;16 - 00;04;05;01
Danny Nathan
and I just, I couldn't I literally I mean, you have $1 million to spend. They, they sat there and talked about all of the ideas that had come up previously. And the best one that was on the table was Where's Waldo with a sirup bottle in it. And I'd been sitting there for what must have been about 45 minutes.

00;04;05;01 - 00;04;22;26
Danny Nathan
I don't think I've said two words clearly starting to annoy, you know, my bosses, they're kind of giving me the side eye of like, hey, you know, chime in, contribute its time. And so I finally, you know, sort of raised my hand and said, okay, let me get this straight. We have $1 million to work with, right? Yes.

00;04;22;29 - 00;04;39;17
Danny Nathan
And we want to engage with kids for whom the talking bottle is the epitome of the brand, right? Yes. I said cool. Why don't we put talking bottles on the shelves of grocery stores so that when kids pop the top of the sirup bottle, it says something to them and they get the exact same experience that we've just created.

00;04;39;17 - 00;05;02;26
Danny Nathan
TV commercials for room went dead. Silence felt like an eternity. It was probably, you know, a couple of seconds. And finally my creative director looks at me and says, but that's packaged design. That's outside of our purview. And I just, I like I mean, just like dead silence, you know, mental bombshell going, I was just like, oh my God, I can't like, I just can't anymore.

00;05;02;26 - 00;05;14;20
Danny Nathan
I cannot do this for the rest of my life. In what world is the thing that you just told me is the epitome of the brand? Not in our purview. And so now I don't work in advertising anymore.

00;05;14;22 - 00;05;27;22
Craig Andrews
That is so wild. And, you know, when you were talking about that, about video game, the thing that hit me was, I wonder how many kids buy the sort, you know.

00;05;27;22 - 00;05;32;07
Danny Nathan
Right. The pancake sirup by the. Yeah. Who's the decision maker in the household?

00;05;32;09 - 00;06;00;29
Craig Andrews
You know, and and you know, you remember a few years ago, five, five, six, seven years ago, Old Spice ran this ad, you know, look at your mind. Now look at me now look at your man. Yeah. So if you look, if you go through that ad, I actually know a lot about that ad. If you look, if you go through that ad, they the ad is targeted at a woman, the person who is most likely going to buy Old Spice.

00;06;01;06 - 00;06;24;15
Craig Andrews
Right. and they're sitting there actively insulting her husband. Your husband doesn't look like me, but you wish he did. But guess what? He can smell like me. And, that was a brilliant strategy. And there's some other stuff that I won't say on there. The ads, like, go back and look at that ad as just straight up pornography.

00;06;24;22 - 00;06;36;17
Craig Andrews
And when you look at it from a perspective of straight up pornography, you'll see things in that ad you're like, oh, wow. And so basically that ad was targeting under sexed, Housewives.

00;06;36;19 - 00;06;37;04
Danny Nathan
Yeah.

00;06;37;06 - 00;06;39;25
Craig Andrews
but that's who bought that's who they.

00;06;39;29 - 00;06;42;07
Danny Nathan
That's who was deciding what her man needed to smell like.

00;06;42;09 - 00;07;05;02
Craig Andrews
And it was outrageously successful. They within it was a Super Bowl ad. By the end of the year, they, they were number one in body wash and male body wash. And by the one year anniversary of that they had doubled sales. It was outrageously successful. But they were targeting, they were targeting the person who was going to buy it.

00;07;05;02 - 00;07;14;13
Craig Andrews
The purchaser. Right. And that's what struck me about your, your but Mrs. Butterworth's, it's like you're going to spend all that money to make a video game for kids.

00;07;14;16 - 00;07;15;27
Danny Nathan
Right? Yeah.

00;07;16;02 - 00;07;17;20
Craig Andrews
I can get your sirup.

00;07;17;23 - 00;07;37;29
Danny Nathan
Yeah, I can kind of get behind the argument of, you know, mom might not care what brand of sirup it of Jimmy's begging for. This is better. Worse than she'll grab that one next time. But your point is very well taken, and I, I agree, you know, the ad was the whole effort was sort of misguided as I've relayed.

00;07;38;01 - 00;07;58;09
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Well, and it's, you know, it's it's kind of interesting that and that that kind of dovetails into what you help other what you help people do is, you know, one thing that you see in very mature and established brands is they get stuck, you know, and they get stuck in this mentality of, hey, this is how we've done it.

00;07;58;09 - 00;08;26;26
Craig Andrews
This is what's led us to our success so far. And I imagine there was some of that going on with Mrs. Butterworth. You know, they just, been focused on the same thing so long. They just they lost fresh ideas. Right. And, and so that kind of ties in to what Apollo Ventures does. And this, you know, we're not doing an ad here, but I'm really intrigued by what Apollo Ventures does.

00;08;26;26 - 00;08;31;23
Craig Andrews
It's, you know, so I, I gave my description. How would you describe it?

00;08;31;26 - 00;09;16;24
Danny Nathan
so Apollo 21 and our kind of sister company, Apollo 21 ventures, basically sit in the realm of venture building. So we are a company that is just designed around the idea of, applying repeatable processes to grow and build companies and the new products that will make those companies well known. And so we work with, as you noted, to, mid to enterprise size, because customers who are looking for scale and growth and an opportunity to reinvigorate, the entrepreneurial spirit and the innovation that really drives companies when they're small and so if you look at, if you look at the the sort of general life cycle of a company, you know, as

00;09;16;24 - 00;09;51;22
Danny Nathan
you've pointed out rightly, you start off as the disruptive startup who then takes market share from the incumbent, the big company, and eventually you, you settle, you go, okay, this is working. Let's keep doubling down on this. And what you end up doing is effectively washing away all of the innovative thinking and the ability to look for those unique, contrarian, just sort of on the fringe ideas that allow you to tap into a new market share, allow you to discover new business models, or come up with new products that solve pain points for your customers.

00;09;51;29 - 00;10;09;07
Danny Nathan
And so, you know, we look at it and we think about, why didn't blockbuster start Netflix or why didn't the Hilton or Hyatt or Marriott star, Airbnb, things of that sort. And it really comes down to getting too stuck in the rut of business as usual.

00;10;09;10 - 00;10;31;27
Craig Andrews
Yeah, yeah. So what what do you think contributes to that? I mean, I mean, you laid out some of it, but I can picture people saying, you know, they're listening and they're like, you know, I'm not stuck. I have an open mind. I would imagine all these people that are stuck claim that they have an open mind.

00;10;31;29 - 00;11;00;05
Danny Nathan
Yes, everybody. Everybody believes in innovation and everybody wants to be innovative. And it's really where the rubber hits the road that you have to start questioning whether or not you are structurally and culturally set up to fulfill on that need. And you're asking Craig, kind of what leads to it. In my mind, it has to do with the really the way that businesses are structured today and the way that we measure what success looks like for businesses.

00;11;00;09 - 00;11;25;14
Danny Nathan
So, you know, generally success is you're a publicly traded company, which means that you are beholden to, whatever is the highest benefit for your shareholders, and you're beholden to a very clear set of metrics by which your businesses measured that determine that you are doing a great job of conserving capital, that you are optimizing for efficiency in all of your processes.

00;11;25;14 - 00;11;51;27
Danny Nathan
And that you're mitigating risk in everything that you do so that you can drive costs as low as possible and profits as high as possible. And the unfortunate reality is that innovation, the idea of coming up with something that is new and disruptive and unique is inherently a cost center. It is. It's not going to provide a return on your investment in the short period of time.

00;11;51;27 - 00;12;20;29
Danny Nathan
You know, the quarters or fiscal years that companies are looking for. it's going to take longer and it's going to return ideally outsized returns, but it's going to take a lot of tries to get to the point where those outsized returns happen. And so when you look at what it means to innovate through that lens, in my mind it suddenly becomes quite clear how you get to that point, because that's what everything is geared towards today that defines what a successful company looks like.

00;12;21;02 - 00;12;31;17
Craig Andrews
You know. Well, and there's some, some massive examples, you know, from me, from my background, the most notable example is Nokia mobile phones.

00;12;31;20 - 00;12;32;07
Danny Nathan
Yep.

00;12;32;10 - 00;12;54;13
Craig Andrews
Nokia had 50% market share. at their peak they had 50% market share. And the iPhone came out. And the story that I've heard is and I was in that industry, the story I heard was the head of Nokia mobile phones took the iPhone. He was in a staff meeting with the senior staff, and he threw the phone across the room and smashed it on the wall.

00;12;54;16 - 00;13;23;18
Craig Andrews
And he said, we should have built that. Get started. And they got started. But they still yeah, they had all the money they needed. They had all the, you know, they had all the momentum they needed and they just started not so slowly dying. I think, I think it was 2010 when they sold to Microsoft. And so the iPhone came out in 2007 right.

00;13;23;20 - 00;13;36;09
Craig Andrews
So it took three years, three years to take somebody from number one in the market to being sold to Microsoft, which was a disaster. And then completely disappearing from the market.

00;13;36;11 - 00;13;47;20
Danny Nathan
Right. Yeah. It's so interesting. And there's so many of those stories. I mean, the other one that popped into my head as you were describing, that is, of course, Kodak in digital cameras, you know. No, nobody's going to want digital cameras. Why would anybody want that?

00;13;47;21 - 00;14;11;23
Craig Andrews
Well, yeah. Yeah. Well and you know, and I experienced it I remember. So I used to do semiconductors for mobile phones and I, I was having a meeting with our engineering managers talking about next generation of parts. You know, what can we do? And I kid you not, he looked at me and said, Craig, our customers love our parts.

00;14;11;23 - 00;14;16;21
Craig Andrews
They're always good by him. By them. You're too worried. Hahaha.

00;14;16;27 - 00;14;21;04
Danny Nathan
I wonder if, what are we. Do we think about that statement today?

00;14;21;06 - 00;14;44;18
Craig Andrews
Well, what was funny was, I went back in my office and let my blood pressure come back down. and, and a little bit later, I walked down to my, our general manager's office, and I said, I said, Joe. And so I'm a little bit worried. I think our competitors is hungrier. I didn't name one specific competitor.

00;14;44;18 - 00;15;11;01
Craig Andrews
I said, I think they're hungrier than us. And he got angry with me and threw me out of threw me out of his office, not caring for me out of his office. And within nine months of that conversation, we had to deploy one of our most valuable assets. Not in a strategic role, purely in a tactical role, basically, to grab Samsung by the ankles and beg them to not design this out.

00;15;11;04 - 00;15;14;22
Danny Nathan
Interesting. And did they? I can only assume that.

00;15;14;24 - 00;15;37;24
Craig Andrews
We we hung on to some of the business. Not all. I mean, you know, but it came at a high cost. And guess what? The guy that we deployed to Korea ended up leaving the company because guess what? no no no no no, he, he, he moved, he moved to the UK at the time.

00;15;37;27 - 00;16;04;08
Craig Andrews
but, you know, Samsung is a tough customer, you know, living if unless you're Asian, living in Asia can be tough. It's a different lifestyle. Yeah. and, you know, and at some point, he just fed up. I mean, so you look at the total cost of that and it goes back to people got complacent. They they quit innovating.

00;16;04;11 - 00;16;34;09
Craig Andrews
And so that's why I love what Apollo 21 does. I mean, that's just so cool. so when you, when you go in, how do you break through this? Because here's the problem. The that mindset is still there. So when the Apollo 21 shows up it's not like the mindset disappears. Yeah. That mindset is still there I mean I don't envy you that that jobs UX.

00;16;34;12 - 00;16;37;06
Craig Andrews
How do you work through that.

00;16;37;08 - 00;17;10;03
Danny Nathan
there's a couple of things that we do. You know, one, we prepare ourselves for those conversations and we've been through them ideally enough times at this point that we can help shed some light on why that change in thinking needs to happen. And we also have a bit of a rule for ourselves if if the need for change and the, the lack of better terms, if the edict of we're going to focus on innovation in this manner doesn't come from the top down, then to be frank, we're generally quite reluctant to work with that client.

00;17;10;03 - 00;17;45;20
Danny Nathan
And have been known to say, no, thank you, because we know that without that support from the very highest levels of that organization, innovation is not going to happen. If you don't have the support of your executives and your C-suite in particular, who understand that this type of work requires different processes, different approaches, different frameworks, then there's no way that you're going to shoehorn an innovative culture into a company that is still execution focused, as opposed to learning focused.

00;17;45;22 - 00;17;54;15
Craig Andrews
You know? Well, that's such an interesting differentiation. Executional focused versus learning focused.

00;17;54;18 - 00;18;18;15
Danny Nathan
Yes. That's one that we talk a lot about. you know, in my experience, companies that are larger companies tend to be focused on, on execution. That's what they're good at, you know, so companies, as they grow and become established and figure out what that product market fit looks like, they design all of their internal operations around the success of that thing.

00;18;18;20 - 00;18;45;04
Danny Nathan
And so they become very good at executing and executing at the limits of, what they can do to increase their margins or what they can do to decrease, delivery times, whatever the case may be. Whereas organizations that are focused on innovation have to have this learning mindset. There has to be a mindset going into it of what don't we know that will allow for an opportunity that we haven't thought of before?

00;18;45;11 - 00;18;58;15
Danny Nathan
And it comes back to what I was describing a moment ago learning costs money. And, becoming operationally efficient saves money. And the two, in many ways are a direct odds with one another.

00;18;58;18 - 00;19;16;08
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Well, you know, that brings in another example that's really interesting. When we talked about the iPhone and I hear the, you know, Steve Jobs was an innovator. And one of the most curious things is when Steve Jobs dies, the person they put in charge is an operations guy.

00;19;16;10 - 00;19;18;05
Danny Nathan
Yes.

00;19;18;08 - 00;19;25;23
Craig Andrews
And I don't want a mention of what's your take on the, the Vision Pro headset.

00;19;25;25 - 00;19;50;01
Danny Nathan
I think that the Vision Pro is a really interesting look at what the future might bring to bear. It's also, arguably, in many ways, a solution looking for a problem. And I think that I think a lot of it will depend on the ecosystem that grows up around the Vision Pro, because there's a few ways to look at it.

00;19;50;01 - 00;20;12;07
Danny Nathan
You know, if you're if you're building for, for example, or a remote workforce who wants to feel like they're not remote, awesome. Some really interesting features built around that. If you are building for somebody to have their own kind of personal entertainment room, that goes with them wherever they go, interesting. Some really cool stuff that that can enable that.

00;20;12;10 - 00;20;33;02
Danny Nathan
But beyond that, I struggle to see the I struggle to see the widespread applications in ways that will make the Vision Pro the next iPhone. And, you know, it's really interesting because when you brought up the iPhone a minute ago, I had this thought of, was the iPhone actually the last really game changing thing that Apple launched?

00;20;33;04 - 00;20;52;24
Danny Nathan
And I didn't think at in the moment about the Vision Pro, but I don't really feel like even now that you've brought it up, that the Vision Pro kind of lives up to that, that type of hype. You know, it's not the it's not the same impactful game changer that first the iPod was and then the iPhone and so on and so forth.

00;20;52;26 - 00;21;23;08
Craig Andrews
Yeah, the the iPad came out in 2010 and, and so and that's and that's the product that turned me into an Apple user. I'm a PC guy to this day. I'm a PC guy. Oh, interesting. I got my first I got my first iPhone three years ago. Okay. and that was for, different reasons. But, originally I got one of the I got the HP or, you know, which was, who made that?

00;21;23;08 - 00;21;44;14
Craig Andrews
That was, Palm Pilot, you know, his Palm Pilot. Then they got acquired by HP, owned them for a year, and like, we just want to waste another billion dollars. So they wrote off that business, and, but the so that went and got an iPad. And I tell you what, you know, pried out my cold dead fingers.

00;21;44;14 - 00;21;54;20
Craig Andrews
You know, it's it was a game changer. you know, because in my mind, it solved a problem. I haven't been able to figure out the problem that the division pro solved.

00;21;54;23 - 00;21;56;20
Danny Nathan
What was the problem that the iPad solved for you? So.

00;21;56;20 - 00;22;20;28
Craig Andrews
Well, lightweight computing without toting around a heavy computer. Gotcha. Which is largely web browsing or reading books. Yeah. Or if you had, like, you know, I put my presentations on there, you know, and so, you know, it was funny. I mean, so here's like, you know, a story from my past lives in semiconductors, and you went to a customer meeting, you brought your laptop, and.

00;22;20;28 - 00;22;40;09
Craig Andrews
Yeah, first thing you do is you plop open your laptop, and that felt normal. And then I left the semiconductor world and started doing marketing for, you know, SMEs. And I noticed when it popped out on my laptop, they just got nervous. They're like, wait a minute, this feels more formal than we were looking for. And so then I got my iPad and they were okay.

00;22;40;09 - 00;22;43;08
Craig Andrews
If I was like, hey, may I show you something on my iPad? That was okay.

00;22;43;08 - 00;22;46;07
Danny Nathan
That was okay. So the line fell.

00;22;46;10 - 00;23;09;05
Craig Andrews
Yeah. but the you know, when I look at what's happened to Apple, you know, and so obviously Steve Jobs had the pipeline filled with a number of things, but like the first product that came out under Apple or under Tim Cook was the Apple Watch, and that took them like three generations before they figured out they built the fitness device.

00;23;09;08 - 00;23;36;29
Danny Nathan
Yeah, yeah. That's interesting. I didn't actually get I got my first Apple Watch. I think it's series five. Yeah, I was and I'm a diehard, diehard Apple user like I haven't had a non-Apple computer, mobile device, whatever since, 2005, probably. And I didn't need notifications on my wrist because that was what it felt like. It was like, hey, we took the Notification Center and made it more annoying.

00;23;37;01 - 00;23;39;17
Craig Andrews
Right? Yeah.

00;23;39;19 - 00;23;43;05
Danny Nathan
So now it's not your phone in your pocket that's buzzing. Now it's on your wrist.

00;23;43;07 - 00;24;09;17
Craig Andrews
Yeah. So yeah, but I guess, you know, kind of anchoring it back to what we were talking about. If a company and let me just go on the record, I think Apple laid an egg with Vision Pro, I think it's, I think it's going to go down in history. Do you remember, like, the anniversary edition, Mac? this was right before Steve Jobs joined Apple.

00;24;09;19 - 00;24;34;12
Craig Andrews
it's it was a it was a flat screen. It's like this little panel. It was $10,000. Nobody bought it. $10,000. Computer. Personal computer. In the 90s. Nobody bought it. Yeah. and I think the Vision Pro is going to go down like the, you know, the anniversary edition. Mac, the benefit of the anniversary edition, Mac, is you had years of Steve Jobs to erase that memory.

00;24;34;14 - 00;24;58;28
Craig Andrews
Right. And, so, you know, I had to bring that back to your memory, but. What I would say is, if somebody with the resources and the talent that Apple has can make that big of a mistake, and I think it is a big mistake, then you shouldn't be embarrassed if you're much smaller. Company is also stuck and is having trouble innovating.

00;24;58;29 - 00;25;27;10
Danny Nathan
And of course, yeah. No, I mean, look, it's in my it's in my best interest to agree with you, but I do wholeheartedly. yes. I, you know, companies get stuck all the time. And it's in a way, it's a measure of success, because if you have grown to the point where you have the ability to get stuck, then there's a good chance that you've done something right and you are stuck because you've been focused on continuing to do something right.

00;25;27;13 - 00;25;43;25
Danny Nathan
And so you certainly can't fault somebody for doubling down on the thing that's working. But sometimes folks need a reminder that, you know, hey, it's only going to work for so long. And no matter how good it feels today, at some point you're going to want to be focused on what comes next.

00;25;43;27 - 00;26;01;07
Craig Andrews
Yeah, yeah. And that's when you call Apollo 21. so tell me a little bit about the the process. What's what's the process of innovation look like for a company that is stuck?

00;26;01;09 - 00;26;33;15
Danny Nathan
we tend to focus very heavily on the customer development process and the opportunities that are brought to bear by learning from your customers. And it's one of those things where a lot of companies go, oh, well, we sent surveys all the time. We talk to our customers, we know what they want. And the reality is that there's a difference between surveying your customers about their experience with your existing product, or your customer service team, or whatever it is, versus literally asking them what their problems are, that you might be in a position to help them solve.

00;26;33;17 - 00;26;57;15
Danny Nathan
And so a lot of the work that we do is structured around, at least early on, helping companies engage with their customers from an inquisitive perspective, that really does just ask open ended questions of what are you, Mr. Miss Customer dealing with that aligns to our business, but that we can help solve a pain point for in your world.

00;26;57;18 - 00;27;16;25
Danny Nathan
And it takes a little bit of discovery and back and forth, and it takes a lot of trial and error to find those opportunities. But eventually what happens is, you know, you cast a wide net, and then over time, through those conversations, you begin to narrow in on what that most opportunistic pain point is, and then ultimately, what a potential solution is.

00;27;16;28 - 00;27;50;08
Danny Nathan
And the benefit of doing all of that legwork up front is that by the time you're ready to go and start making the thing, that is the solution. You have talked to so many people about it, and you have explained to them what you think your solution is going to be and gotten their response to it. You have minimized so much risk in the product development process through customer development that the, I don't know, 1 to 3 months that you spend talking to folks on the front end will save you at least that on the far side.

00;27;50;10 - 00;27;57;07
Danny Nathan
And so we focus very heavily on that, that portion as part of our discovery work.

00;27;57;10 - 00;28;20;29
Craig Andrews
So oh my goodness, there's so many things you said in there that once happened that too. But let me start with this. so I actually have a blog article that talks about the folly of opinion surveys and, you know, and one of the examples, so two examples I use in there is one, the focus group that tested the, the 1984 commercial.

00;28;21;01 - 00;28;50;10
Craig Andrews
Yeah, Apple's epic commercial focus group flunked it. And the board actually pulled funding for that commercial. and the only reason that commercial ran was because Steve Jobs for Steve Jobs. Right. And but the other example, when you talk to enough customers so Coke when they introduced New Coke in 1984, they had they tested 200,000 people. There was no problem with the sample size.

00;28;50;12 - 00;29;02;28
Craig Andrews
200,000 people led them to the wrong answer. And so how do you guard against that?

00;29;03;01 - 00;29;24;11
Danny Nathan
The thing that comes to mind and what you're nodding to is the old sort of faster horse mentality. If I talk to my customers and ask them what they what they want, they're going to tell me they want a faster horse. And my perspective on that is, yes, they will. And that's a good thing because it is not the customer's job to envision what a faster horse might look like.

00;29;24;11 - 00;29;40;20
Danny Nathan
It is your job as the person that is creating what you think is the faster horse. It is your customer's job to tell you that they want to get from A to B faster, and yours to interpret that to mean that. What if a horse wasn't a horse, but was a box with an engine and four wheels instead of four legs?

00;29;40;23 - 00;30;14;19
Danny Nathan
And then how do you convince people that there's value in that? and so, you know, there's always a balancing act and there's always other measures beyond just the customer opinion that go into whether or not something is innovative, whether or not it will be successful. And so when we go through that customer development process, what we're looking for are ideas that we can rank not only on the desirability, but also on the feasibility, the alignment to that company's core operating needs and core.

00;30;14;22 - 00;30;36;26
Danny Nathan
You know what they're known for. Will customers trust this from you? For example, you know, Coke owns I mean, how many different brands of soda does Coca-Cola own? You know, if New Coke had simply been introduced under a different brand name, 200,000 people might have been perfectly right. They just didn't want to replace what they knew was Coke.

00;30;36;29 - 00;30;46;07
Danny Nathan
And so there's a lot of measures that you have to kind of take into consideration as you're going through that process to assess what exactly it is that you're learning from your customers.

00;30;46;09 - 00;30;56;21
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and this ties in to the other thing that I heard you say a number of times when you're having these conversations, you're trying to figure out what their pain is.

00;30;56;23 - 00;30;57;18
Danny Nathan
Yes.

00;30;57;21 - 00;31;26;13
Craig Andrews
And I think, for me, I, I live and I mean, it makes me just straight up nervous when I don't feel like I have clarity on the customer's pain, whether it's from from me and my own marketing or may helping other people with their marketing. Right. I mean, I get really twitchy because the thing I've learned is when you miss the pains, when you miss the pains, you the outcomes not good.

00;31;26;13 - 00;31;30;09
Craig Andrews
And I think that's what happened with the Vision Pro. It didn't fix the pain.

00;31;30;11 - 00;31;31;14
Danny Nathan
Yeah.

00;31;31;16 - 00;31;34;05
Craig Andrews
Actually I did once heavy.

00;31;34;07 - 00;31;55;04
Danny Nathan
I haven't sat down and played with one yet, which obviously I need to do, but, I, I can't help but believe that the next iteration will be, will be the make or break it, you know, because they the apple is pretty well known for getting the first one out relatively quickly. you know, certainly not software quickly, but when you're talking hardware, that's to be expected.

00;31;55;06 - 00;31;59;04
Danny Nathan
and it always takes them a little while to sort of iron out the kinks.

00;31;59;07 - 00;32;16;17
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Well interesting. You know, Danny, I, I, I could keep going for a while. This is so fascinating. but unfortunately, we need to wrap, so. Sure. so, Paulo 21 is your company. How did people reach you?

00;32;16;19 - 00;32;46;02
Danny Nathan
we're pretty easy to find. We are Apollo 21, number two. Number 1.io. I am personally on all of the socials as blah blah blah among many. And of course, Apollo 21 is on most of the major social, platforms as well. So please check us out. give us a look. We have a bunch of case studies and some white papers and other documents and things that might actually provide useful if you work in the innovation space or in any kind of venture building operations.

00;32;46;04 - 00;32;59;06
Danny Nathan
and then if you happen to be in the New York area, I run a monthly founders dinner and a monthly innovators dinner that is live and in person and very informal. And I love to find new folks to join us for dinner.

00;32;59;09 - 00;33;03;04
Craig Andrews
Oh that's awesome. Well, Danny, thanks for being on Lazarus and Legacies.

00;33;03;07 - 00;33;06;24
Danny Nathan
Thanks for having me. It's been a great chat.

00;33;06;24 - 00;33;35;20
Craig Andrews
This is Craig Andrews. I want to thank you for listening to the Leaders and Legacies podcast. We're looking for leaders to share how they're making the impact beyond themselves. If that's you, please go to Alize for me.com/guest and sign up there. If you got something out of this interview, we would love you to share this episode on social media.

00;33;35;22 - 00;33;59;02
Craig Andrews
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00;33;59;04 - 00;36;09;20
Craig Andrews
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