The Beginnings of Apollo

I'm Tim Zheng, co-founder and CEO of Apollo.io, and I'm thrilled to share the journey behind the inception of Apollo and the culture we are building.

Over the last few years at Apollo, I've found that our Product and our Culture have both changed significantly and have been major drivers of our success.

My journey began as an engineer with a passion for creating product-led solutions to tackle significant challenges. It all started with an education startup where the need for effective outreach led me to build a new go-to-market platform. Recognizing the universal need for intelligent, automated prospecting, we founded Apollo.io, an industry-agnostic sales platform. The core idea was to empower businesses to realize their full market potential. We are proud of what we have achieved already, and there’s so much more we want to build. 

Innovating with Purpose

What Apollo does is make world-class end-to-end GTM simpler & accessible to all, so that every business can reach its full market potential. We’re focused on combining Data, Workflow, and Intelligence all in a single, unified product. Rather than having expensive enterprise contracts, we use product-led growth: which means anyone can get started. Things that used to take months to set up, can be done in 10 minutes. 

We are excited to be continuing our investments in Research & Development to take Apollo to new heights. There are many competitors in the space, and the opportunities are exciting. 

Cultivating a High-Performing, Highly Supportive Culture

At Apollo, we cultivate a culture of high expectations and close collaboration, filled with brilliant minds from all over the world who consistently raise the bar. One of our goals is to build a culture that balances high performance and high empathy with one of our core values being “Winning as One Team”. We rally around and invest in each others’ growth: whether it’s celebrating wins with tacos handed out in our kudos channel, lending a hand on a customer incident, or giving constructive feedback. We celebrate achievements, fuel motivation, and empower autonomy and ownership. We respect diversity and everyone’s differences (we have an LGBTQ+ Resource Group and are building more!), encourage effective communication, and embed appreciation into our feedback processes. 

Apollo.io is not just a platform; it’s a community fueled by innovation and support. Our commitment to continuous career growth is matched by an environment characterized by a focus on engineering excellence and recruiting top talent, setting us apart with more investment in engineering, research & development than most companies (currently our investment into R&D as a percentage of revenue is more than double our industry average). Our journey is a testament to the power of solving real problems and building solutions that resonate in the market. As we continue to grow and innovate, our commitment to a culture of high performance and support remains unwavering. We empower our team to thrive in a culture that values adaptability, forward-thinking solutions, and team members who are driven to deliver results.  If you are a passionate individual who shares our vision, we encourage you to learn more about us!

To explore exciting global career opportunities, visit our careers page. If you want to learn more about our product and what we are building, you can visit our website.

Thank you for being part of the Apollo.io community.