I’m Glenn Gow, The Scaling Executive Coach and host of The Scaling Executive Podcast. I talked with Zach Papenhausen, President and CEO of Apollo Corporation, about a product launch he calls “a scaling ouch of all proportions.”
When a CEO validates a new product only with the decision-maker who buys it instead of the person who uses it every day, Zach Papenhausen holds that the company will miss real usability problems that don’t surface until after launch. That is the lesson he draws from pulling Apollo’s Solaris touch-screen tub off the market and discontinuing it within its first year, after caregivers, not the senior living leadership who approved it, found it too hard to use.
Papenhausen has led Apollo Corporation, a manufacturer of advanced hygiene and therapeutic hydrotherapy systems for senior living, memory care, and skilled nursing facilities, since February 2020, when he acquired the business roughly two weeks before COVID hit. Apollo’s legacy dates back to 1978, and under Papenhausen’s direction the company now provides end-to-end support from architectural space review through final installation.
This episode is for CEOs launching a new product who are deciding whose feedback to trust before going to market.
Key Takeaways
- CEOs validating a new product should test it with the actual day-to-day end user, not just the decision-maker who approves the purchase. Apollo’s Solaris tub tested well with senior living leadership because of its reporting and data features, but failed with the caregivers who actually used it and was discontinued within its first year on the market.
- Moving from a resource-rich corporate environment to a resource-constrained small business changes the operating model entirely. Zach Papenhausen calls the shift from his pharma background at Sanofi and Merck to running Apollo’s bootstrap operations “a different game,” one that forces sharper, more efficient decision-making by necessity.
- A sudden crisis can expose operational problems that healthy revenue was masking. Acquiring Apollo two weeks before COVID forced Papenhausen to uncover and fix flawed revenue-per-employee metrics faster than normal growth conditions would have required.
- A small, resource-constrained company can use AI to close the talent gap with larger, better-funded competitors by applying it to back-office functions like coding, API integration, and historical document search, while keeping AI out of the company’s actual product and especially out of any direct human-care interaction.
How CEOs Should Test a New Product Before Launch
Solaris was supposed to be Apollo’s breakout product: a new tub with touch screens, sensors, and what Papenhausen described as “lots of really cool things that I thought was going to be great for selling.” The deeper the team got into real-world use, the more the product worked against what they expected. “We essentially missed the mark,” he said. Within the first year of launch, Apollo pulled Solaris from the market entirely. “We actually decided to pull it off the market and discontinue it within the first year of launch.” He calls it “a scaling ouch of all proportions.”
The root cause traces back to who the product was validated with. Solaris tested well with senior living leadership, who liked the reporting capability: data on when a bath was given, how long it took, and similar metrics. The people actually giving the baths had a different experience entirely. “It sounded really good to leadership. Unfortunately, in practice, it wasn’t very good to the actual people giving the bath,” Papenhausen said. The team had assumed a touch screen would be intuitive for anyone, the same way a smartphone is, without properly accounting for the caregivers’ education level and familiarity with that kind of interface.
Papenhausen’s takeaway is specific: research a product with the actual end user, not just the buyer, and watch for red flags about real-world adaptability before launch, not after. In Apollo’s case, that means favoring simple buttons and levers over advanced touch interfaces for the population actually operating the equipment day to day.
How CEOs Adjust to Resource Constraints After Leaving a Large Company
Before Apollo, Papenhausen spent close to a decade in pharmaceuticals at Sanofi and Merck before moving into fleet solutions. The single biggest habit he had to unlearn moving into a small, specialized company was assuming the same resource environment would still be there. “The resource allocation is just a different game,” he said. At Sanofi and Merck, training, sales infrastructure, and financing were close to limitless. At Apollo, he was starting from a bootstrap mentality with a fraction of those resources.
Papenhausen sees a real upside in the constraint. Larger organizations can lose sight of what matters most because a mistake is easier to absorb when resources are abundant. Operating with less margin for error forces sharper, smarter, more efficient decisions by necessity, even though mistakes still happen in a bootstrap environment just as they do anywhere else.
How a Crisis Forces CEOs to Fix Operational Inefficiencies Faster
Papenhausen didn’t just step into the CEO seat at Apollo. He acquired the company roughly two weeks before COVID hit, at a valuation that changed dramatically within weeks of closing the deal. The trial by fire forced him to learn his team, the business, and the senior living market simultaneously and at speed, work that in hindsight he considers a net benefit to Apollo’s long-term growth.
The clearest example: revenue-per-employee metrics that were already off at the time of acquisition and worse once COVID hit. “We had some operational inefficiencies from revenue per employee type metrics,” he said. Without the cushion of stable revenue, those inefficiencies became impossible to ignore, forcing Papenhausen to understand Apollo’s full manufacturing operation, from how revenue was generated to how it was actually delivered, far faster than ordinary growth conditions would have required.
How Small Companies Use AI to Compete with Larger Rivals
Papenhausen draws a sharp line in how Apollo approaches AI, and the Solaris lesson shapes where that line sits. He expects AI adoption in senior living to be slow, and is explicit that AI does not belong inside the actual bathing and care process. “It is the opportunity for our customers to actually have eye to eye connection, touch connection in a very real intimate way for a care setting,” he said, calling AI interference in that moment “a big mistake,” one he believes should stay off-limits for a long time, possibly indefinitely. He’s more open to AI quietly supporting sensors and reporting at the operational level, as long as it doesn’t insert itself into the caregiver-resident interaction directly.
Internally, AI is a different story. Papenhausen sees it as a way for a small company to compete with larger, better-resourced rivals on talent. “It can make one person’s skill set exponentially more valuable,” he said, closing much of the gap between what a small team can do and what bigger competitors can afford to staff for.
Apollo’s current AI use spans several functions. The team uses it for basic research and content support, but the bigger impact has come from coding and API integrations: connecting customer order systems directly into Apollo’s systems without hiring dedicated coders, so orders from its largest customers now flow automatically into the company’s system. Apollo has also been uploading historical engineering drawings, work orders, and changes, so support staff can search the repair history of a tub built more than a decade ago and give faster, more accurate recommendations. The next step is integrating purchasing and inventory management the same way. Papenhausen’s long-term vision is an AI-based operational business paired with a product, and a manufacturing process, that stay comparatively hands-on.
How to Scale a Company: The Framework
| Principle | What it means | Named evidence from this interview |
| Test with the user, not just the buyer | Validate a new product with the person who will use it every day, not only the decision-maker who approves the purchase | Apollo’s Solaris touch-screen tub tested well with senior living leadership but failed with caregivers who found the interface too difficult, leading Papenhausen to pull it off the market and discontinue it within its first year |
| Treat resource scarcity as a forcing function, not just a constraint | A bootstrap environment with limited resources pushes a leader toward sharper, more efficient decisions that abundant resources can let a company avoid making | Papenhausen calls the shift from near-limitless resources at Sanofi and Merck to running Apollo’s bootstrap operation “a different game” that forced sharper decision-making |
| Use a crisis to fix what revenue was hiding | A sudden drop in revenue or a forced crisis exposes operational problems that a healthy top line can mask for years | Acquiring Apollo two weeks before COVID forced Papenhausen to identify and fix flawed revenue-per-employee metrics faster than normal growth conditions would have required |
| Apply AI to the back office, keep it out of the human moment | Use AI to close the resource gap with larger competitors on coding, integrations, and institutional knowledge, while keeping it away from a product’s most human, intimate interactions | Apollo uses AI to connect customer order systems via API without hiring coders and to search decades of engineering records for fast repair recommendations, while deliberately keeping AI out of the actual caregiver-to-resident bathing process |
Quotes from This Episode
- “We actually decided to pull it off the market and discontinue it within the first year of launch.” (Zach Papenhausen, President and CEO, Apollo Corporation)
- “It sounded really good to leadership. Unfortunately, in practice, it wasn’t very good to the actual people giving the bath.” (Zach Papenhausen, President and CEO, Apollo Corporation)
- “The resource allocation is just a different game.” (Zach Papenhausen, President and CEO, Apollo Corporation)
- “We had some operational inefficiencies from revenue per employee type metrics.” (Zach Papenhausen, President and CEO, Apollo Corporation)
- “It can make one person’s skill set exponentially more valuable.” (Zach Papenhausen, President and CEO, Apollo Corporation)
Frequently Asked Questions
How should a CEO test a new product before launch?
Zach Papenhausen, President and CEO of Apollo Corporation, says a CEO must validate a new product with the person who will use it every day, not just the decision-maker who approves the purchase. Apollo’s Solaris touch-screen tub tested well with senior living leadership because of its reporting and data capabilities, but failed with the caregivers who actually operated it, and Papenhausen pulled it off the market and discontinued it within its first year on the market.
How should a CEO adjust after leaving a large, resource-rich company for a small one?
Zach Papenhausen, CEO of Apollo Corporation, says the biggest habit to unlearn after leaving large companies like Sanofi and Merck for a small, bootstrap business is assuming the same level of resources will be available. Papenhausen calls resource allocation in a small company “a different game” that forces sharper, more efficient decisions, since mistakes are harder to absorb without the financial cushion a larger company provides.
How can a small company use AI to compete with larger, better-funded rivals?
Zach Papenhausen, CEO of Apollo Corporation, uses AI to close the resource gap with larger competitors by applying it to back-office functions like coding, API integrations, and searching decades of engineering records for faster repair recommendations, all without hiring additional specialized staff. Papenhausen deliberately keeps AI out of Apollo’s actual product and especially out of the direct caregiver-to-resident bathing process, which he considers too intimate a moment for AI involvement.
CEOs Work with Glenn Gow to Scale Their Companies and Themselves
Glenn Gow is The Scaling Executive Coach. He coaches ambitious executives into the CEO seat and CEOs into successful exits, drawing on 25 years as a CEO and five years in venture capital. If this conversation was useful, you can apply for executive coaching with Glenn Gow or apply to be a guest on The Scaling Executive Podcast.
