Goodbye Apollo

I don’t even really know where to begin… Well, I guess I do: I’m grateful.

When I came to Apollo, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I had next to no understanding of sales, experiments, a/b tests, or any of that stuff. I was just desperate to get out of my current job (Real Estate Tech) and I wanted to put myself into a new problem space that truly I took the first offer I was given. I’m glad I did this because the day after I left my last job, they laid off 50% of the company and 6 months later they went toes up. Several of my teammates took at least 6 months to get a job but I was lucky enough to land right on my feet, I’ll forever be thankful for Mohamed and Ahmed in seeing the potential in me.

In the two years I’ve been at Apollo, I’ve become a person that I didn’t know I was capable of being. Now I know that there’s this cliche about your job being your life and all of that stuff, this isn’t the case. Well, it was at some point (and I’ll talk about that later) but as of right now, Apollo transformed me as a person. First and foremost, I became a better engineer. I became a better listener. I learned how to think of problems in a grander sense. I learned the power of small iteration. I learned the power of understanding your analytics and being able to action on them. There are SO many things that I learned at Apollo that will help me in my life and for that, I’m grateful.

If there is one singular trait that Apollo taught me, it’s the power of support. I experienced a level of burnout earlier in this year that shook me to my core. When my doctor said “Peter, we are going to do the tests for prostate cancer. The chances are low for your age but we just need to check to make sure”, something in my brain clicked. I had spent the last 6 months pouring everything into Apollo without any clear payoff and that drove me to the brink. I took the next three months off from work to learn how to live my life without work being the main driving force, which I did learn through intense therapy, gardening, and building a sauna. I came back to work as a changed man. Not only did I really figure out what my core passion in life is, building physical things, I learned that you can still feel positively about yourself even if work is going bad. That’s a skill that I had been trying to learn for 7 years and while I still have work to do, I’ve learned the skills that will allow me to keep on.

My team supported me through everything. I got regular calls from my coworkers just asking how I was doing, my manager even told me he didn’t call me because he didn’t want me to feel any pressure or to even think about work, and I was given the space to truly heal. When I came back, I was given the space to slowly acclimate back into work at a speed that I felt was comfortable. Even when I tried getting ahead of myself, my team & manager would call me out on it. In the 5 months that I’ve been back, I have not been given the opportunity to even attempt to burn out because my team has built such a strong support structure for me to ensure I don’t burn out like I did before and for that, I’m grateful.

Despite having the greatest team I could ask for, working at a company who has treated me so incredibly well and is doing well itself… I have found an idea that I have so much conviction in and have had so much validation in that as of right now, I don’t think there’s anything more important I could be doing with my life than working on this idea. I accidentally found the solution to this problem by trying to solve an important problem in my life right now. I’ve talked to my family, my friends, my therapists, my mentors and even some of you about this idea and it’s been proven time and time again that it’s a solution to a problem that is so extremely prevalent in America.

I can’t go into full detail about the idea, I’m still hashing it out myself, but I will share it soon. In a nutshell, it’s a way for people to learn about the financial instruments that the rich use to enrich themselves in ways that we could be using them too. We live in such an extreme time of extreme inequality and the tools to keep that in check are so prevalent, why can’t the average person use the same tools that might give them the push they need to buy their first home, start their first business, etc… I’ve validated it with several accomplished, real business owners, and they all said that they wish they had this tool when they first started their business. I even went to non-business owners and they said that if they had this tool, they would have started their business.

This all comes from a lifetime of real estate knowledge, finance, AI skills and of being the guy that all their friends come to to ask for money advice. I’m not starting a fintech firm, I’m not looking to sell mortgages, or anything like that. I simply want to give the average person the knowledge of these tools to the average person in hope that it may put them in a better life.

With all of this being said, I have made the decision to start planning my departure from Apollo. As I’m writing this message with tears flowing down my face, I know that this is the right decision. I have an opportunity make a real difference in the people around me and I have a real, executable path to do it in a way where all of the spoils will go back straight to the people who have taken care of me. I will regret this decision for the rest of my life if I don’t take the jump now.

As far as safety nets, I have a 12 month runway on my personal savings until I would need to start dipping into investments. If I did that, I could stretch it out to 36 months and that’s without making a penny. I plan on raising a friends and family round in the next 60 days that will fund the next 12 months of my living expenses that way I can focus more on how to build out this idea.

I live in the great state of Oregon where we have a wonderful publicly funded health care system, OHP that I will be eligible to take advantage of at a very reasonable price. I will still be able to see my primary doctor, my therapist, go to urgent care, pay for prescriptions, and any other health care needs without any impedance.

On top of all of this, I am only 31 years old. I could fall completely on my ass in 6 months and I could rebound and live a happy life. I can always find another job but Apollo would be the first one I call. I’ll be alright.

My next steps are figuring out how to make this transition as smooth as possible. This is not me putting in my two weeks or even any set amount of time, I’ll take as long as we both can reasonably agree to but do know that I will be working at a reduced capacity. Maybe I stick around for a month, maybe I stay on as a consultant, I don’t know. I actually plan on using Apollo to build & scale my sales operation so at a minimum I’ll give y’all detailed feedback from a growth engineers perspective. All I know is that Apollo took care of me when I was at my absolute worst and there isn’t anything I could do worse than leave you all hanging.

With all that being said, I truly owe so much to Apollo and all of the people here who have instilled confidence in me so I could find out what my true calling is in life, to lift others higher than myself.