Helpful References:

1. Apollo Help Page: https://knowledge.apollo.io/hc/en-us
2. Apollo YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/Apolloio/videos

How to Set Up Apollo

1. When you send emails from Apollo, you will NOT want to alias any of this to currently used emails at all. It should have nothing to do with your existing email infrastructure at all.

2. You will need 3-4 additional domains. Buy them from Namecheap. You will also need one additional Google Apps seat and one additional Google Apps domain for each one. You can buy this from Namecheap. Four additional domains with a Google Apps seat each costs about $324/year, and that includes customer support. Buying the Google Apps and the domain from the same vendor makes it so support is really simple.

3. You will also need to set up Sendgrid at the same time. Twilio, who owns SendGrid and Segment, has a number of programs for startups, and you may possibly be able to get it for free. Do NOT use Apollo without it. You will likely want to use the version with the private IP ($99/mo). This means that Apollo will cost an additional $1500/year ($126/mo) beyond what you’re paying for it in order for it to work well. Sounds unfair? Uh, ok.

4. Again: DO NOT use your own Google Apps email to send emails. ONLY use the Apollo SendGrid integration to send from and I recommend only using a warmed private IP address. Start at 500 emails per day, get to 3000+ for real results and mix with 100-120 outbound dials per person. That’s how you get a shitload of qualified deals.

5. Apollo is the best lead-Gen tool I’ve ever come across and it generates leads while you sleep. I recommend using the $99/mo version, but you can still get quite a bit of value out of the free version, over even the $49/mo version. It’s basically a pre-CRM because it generates all of the leads you will need.

• For example, if you haven't used Apollo before, you’ll need to build up a list of 100k prospects so that you can quickly get 3000 meetings. You’ll need to write some really good campaigns in order to do this, and you’ll need to do a mixture of email and phone calls over a period of 30-45 days on each campaign in order to reach these leads. If you call them on anything besides their cell numbers.

1. For Apollo set up and best practices their Youtube is so solid. There's also a former employee named Byron that I think has a group of consultants that can help with that. Feel free to reach out to him.
2. Any person can make 110-120 dials per day with the Apollo dialer, easily. A founder and 3 other team members can do 500 dials. DO NOT outsource until you perfect this model yourself, and do not make a sales hire until the founder perfects the model. Results will be bad. If you do not believe me, call other founders that have hired outsourced sales teams before perfecting the sales model themselves.
3. As for phone numbers, Apollo will do unlimited phone numbers if you're spending $5.9k/year on it. Most larger startups do. If you only need about 500 cell numbers per year, it will only cost you about $1.2k/year.
4. Apollo will change your company and your life. However, I must caution you: if your product is far from product-market fit (PMF) it will accelerate failure rapidly. Here’s why: Apollo is an accelerant.
5. Here's the link to that thread on how to shred at cold emailing investors. If you combine this with Foundersuite and Apollo (even the free version, but I prefer the $99 version), you will do amazing. Be sure to follow his instructions on HOW to write the emails. DO NOT batch-and-blast. Again, you can use Apollo to TRACK these emails, but write them using your Gmail, and then track them using Apollo. You can use Apollo as a very smart tracking system as well. This is a secondary use case to use Apollo for fundraising.