Moments of impact from Don Kellogg's career
Recon AnalyticsOur clients were drowning in industry news from dozens of sources and struggling to keep up with regulatory changes and competitor moves that directly affected their strategic decisions. The volume of information was overwhelming, and they needed a way to stay informed without spending hours sifting through content. This created an urgent need for an intelligent solution that could not only filter relevant news but also provide our unique analytical perspective. I designed and built an end-to-end agentic digest system that transforms how clients consume industry intelligence. Starting with a comprehensive mapping of the most critical news sources for each industry, I developed a workflow using APIs and orchestration tools to automatically crawl, filter, and summarize articles. The core innovation was building an automated analysis engine that connects breaking news with Recon Analytics' proprietary first-party survey data, providing clients with our expert take on what the day's top stories mean for their business. I created two consumption channels to meet different client preferences: a personalized morning email tailored to each client's specific interests, and a private podcast feed that delivers the same insights in audio format for on-the-go listening. The system now operates at significant scale, generating dozens of customized digests each morning that process thousands of news articles across a wide array of industries. By synthesizing and analyzing trends as they happen while injecting Recon's own survey data into the conversation, the digests keep us top of mind with our clients and create a valuable feedback loop where we're all operating from the same perspective on industry developments each morning. Most importantly, clients can now spend less time keeping up with what's happening and more time making critical strategic decisions about how to react, transforming our relationship from research provider to indispensable daily strategic partner.
Recon Analytics · PresidentAs employee #2 at a telecom consultancy, I witnessed major telecom clients making critical strategic decisions based on research data that was 3-6 months old. Traditional survey methods couldn't keep pace with rapid market changes, while syndicated research lacked specificity and custom research was too slow to be actionable. I saw an opportunity to bridge this gap by creating a hybrid solution that combined the speed of syndicated research with the precision of custom insights. I led the development of Recon Pulse from concept to platform, managing a small team responsible for survey programming, data cleansing, ETL pipeline design, and visualization. The core innovation was building a syndicated research framework that allowed clients to 'pulse' their custom proprietary questions on top of it, delivering fresh intelligence weekly rather than quarterly. I personally defined the data specifications flowing through our pipeline and designed the translation process that converted thousands of weekly survey responses into interactive Tableau dashboards, enabling clients to interrogate data and generate insights independently. The biggest technical challenge was maintaining data quality while processing at speed—I iteratively redesigned our ETL flow nearly a dozen times and leveraged my GIS background to build a unique validation system using highly granular broadband provider footprints to verify respondent accuracy, a level of precision unavailable in any competing telecom research solution. The impact was substantial and sustained. Within the first two years, we sold Recon Pulse to 2 of the 3 largest wireless telecom providers and expanded into complementary products for home internet and B2B markets. Five years after launch, we now serve 7 of the top 8 telecom providers in the United States and have successfully launched pulse products across AI, Aviation, Spanish Language Telecom, and Financial Services verticals. Recon Pulse is now recognized as the fastest large-sample custom research option in telecom, directly informing major business decisions around pricing, promotion, and product development across the industry.
