Why I've gone all-in on Apollo

After building in this space for 8 years, I've picked my horse to bet on

Feb 28, 2024

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Why I've gone all-in on Apollo

After building in this space for 8 years, I've picked my horse

Today’s post is a personal one. It’s about GTM tech (which is the goal of this newsletter), but it’s specifically about my career.

Let’s get into it.

Quick background

If you don’t know me, it’s helpful to give context to you before sharing why I’m bullish on Apollo, and why that matters (coming from me).

I’ve been in B2B SaaS for about a decade (I have the gray hairs to prove it). I started as an SDR, got lucky at a startup and worked my way up to AE, Manager then Head of Sales. Since then, I have started two SaaS companies in the sales tech space.

All of these experiences led me to the realization that we’re in the middle of a tectonic shift in how B2B GTM is done.

I believe Apollo is best positioned to win in the GTM tech market over the next few years (beyond that, I have no idea).

So, today, my journey has led me to join Apollo full-time to run their product-led sales / auto-SDR function internally. In other words, I’ll be working at Apollo, using Apollo, for Apollo. Very meta, I know.

The sales tech race

I have previously written about the 6 sales tech unicorns chasing the elusive title of the "one-stop-shop” in my article called: “Consolidation szn (The race is on…)”.

I wrote it after my original LinkedIn post back in August:

By the way, I do think HubSpot should be on this list too, especially given their sales engagement product has been rumored to be doing north of $700M in revenue.

As I have evaluated who the winner will be, I think data will be table stakes. And there are only two players who have had that, Zoominfo and Apollo. Plus, HubSpot, since they recently acquired Clearbit—but that has its’ own risks.

Outreach, Clari, Gong, et. al don’t have data natively built into their application. This is a big deal. And with AI, data will become even more important. That’s my prediction (with strong conviction).

A lot changed in the sales tech landscape in 2023.

It’s a very competitive space—I know from experience.

But, I haven’t seen any real challengers in the last couple of years.

There are cool products/teams I’m tracking (eg: Clay, Cabal/The Swarm, Warmly/Koala, among many many others). But even many of those could theoretically be built and bundled into Apollo. And within a unified workflow, they’d be even more powerful than as standalone “point solutions.”

Over the last few years, dozens (maybe over one hundred) of early-stage founders and salespeople/leaders have asked me what tech stack they should buy. And time after time, my answer is basically, “just buy Apollo and HubSpot and don’t think about anything else until you’re at at least 10 sales reps.”

Said another way—using my favorite meme template, the midwit meme—here is why I am bullish on Apollo:

“Buy Apollo” midwit meme, created by Brendan Short

Note: for large Enterprise companies, there are reasons to use each of these point-solutions. But if you have less than 20 sales reps (certainly if you have 1-2 reps), Apollo is a no-brainer (don’t mid-curve it).

And don’t get it twisted: I’m not saying this because I joined Apollo; I joined Apollo because this is true. :)

Founding Groundswell

As I was building Groundswell (we were building in the product-led sales space, and planned to expand to other “signals” over time), it was very clear that Apollo was the company I was most worried about. It seemed Clari/Gong/Outreach were bloated and just buying or building the same feature sets (mostly, going further into the sales funnel, building tooling for AEs and CS, things like MAP, forecasting, coaching, etc.).

But if generative AI ends of being as big is I think it will be, the biggest market opportunity is around prospecting (eg: modern-day demand gen). This will require a change in pricing & packaging imho, as I wrote about here: Whoever figures out how to switch from seat-based pricing to usage-based pricing will win the sales tech race.

I was a customer of Apollo at Groundswell (have used them at a couple of companies now). We used their data enrichment product, via API, into our product. We built an integration from our product into their sequencing tool. And we partnered with Apollo for a marketing event in San Francisco. I got to see Apollo from many different angles.

And it all made me even more bullish on their position in the market.

Vortex of talent

Another major reason I became increasingly bullish on Apollo is the “vortex of talent” joining Apollo.

People like Dan, Leandra, and Mallika.

And other smart people I knew continued to stick around - people like Krishan and Henry.

One thing I’ve learned over my career is that the people who join a company are the best indicator of the success of that company. I observed this first-hand from the inception of companies like TripActions (Navan), Figma, and others.

Follow the talent.

(Generative) AI

“AI will not replaces salespeople.
Salespeople using AI will replaces salespeople not using AI.”

I’m not going to shill AI to you. I have no course to sell you about how to use ChatGPT to do discovery before your cold calls or whatever (no shade if you made that course).

But I do think generative AI is still underrated.

And I believe that Apollo is really well-positioned to start building out products and features that take advantage of this massive tailwind.

Mike Marg has a great visual that I reference all the time (from his article: Generative AI will not kill the sales profession...) -

Apollo on Apollo

I saw this post and couldn’t shake it (I have spent a lot of time with Casey, and he is the real deal):

Is this really possible?

Yes.
It’s not perfect now. But it’ll only get better from here.

So, when I saw Casey’s post, I knew there was something special here—finally, someone was able to be a single-person operator (think: Ironman suit) who was generating enough demand for 20 AEs. Incredible.

Scaling GTM with tech+automation, not just people

My personal career goal over the next few years is to figure out how to scale go-to-market with tech+automation (including gen AI), instead of just hiring more headcount.

I want to learn (and share) how to operate the Ironman suit.

Said another way: I want leverage.

“If they can train you to do it, then eventually they will train a computer to do it.”
-Naval Ravikant, from Find a Position of Leverage

I’ll continue to write about my experience from the frontlines as an operator as I discover and execute the new playbook for Pipeline Generation that is emerging in my new role.

I’m excited to join Apollo and help them build the best internal GTM motion, and also the best tooling for other GTM teams.

If you haven’t looked at Apollo in a while, hit them up today, maybe you’ll get an (automated) email from me. :)