Alex Maier has spent his career building brands that actually listen. From Porsche and Audi to Nike to onX Maps to his current role as president of OnWater, he has consistently chosen the path of product led growth over marketing led noise. And the throughline across all of it is the same: get curious, listen to the customer, and build something worth talking about.

OnWater is building the operating system for water-based recreation globally. Two products, a fishing utility and a paddling platform, powered by community, conservation, and a genuinely different approach to how outdoor brands think about creators, consumer insights, and product feedback.

Jon and Alex chat about:

• what Porsche and Audi taught him about activating a brand at every level from global to local enthusiast club

• why being a generalist is a competitive advantage in small outdoor marketing teams

• the difference between product led growth, marketing led growth, and sales led growth

• why consumer insights are the soul of every decision a company makes regardless of growth model

• how OnWater brings creators and beta testers behind the curtain before they ever post a single piece of content

• the gatekeeping problem in outdoor recreation and why fewer people doing the thing hurts conservation

• how hunters and anglers are the number one contributor to conservation of clean water

• finding common ground between paddlers and anglers, overlanders and hunters, left and right

• why word of mouth moves mountains and bum rushing your way to growth does not

• how OnWater is using AI to estimate fish length and weight from a photo to support fisheries conservation

• why the data you own is the most powerful thing you can feed an AI model

• the Strava MCP and where hyperpersonalization is headed

• what a decade of blood work and running data revealed when fed into Claude

• why the outdoor industry has needed a platform like Popfly for a long time

Stay connected:

Alex on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexmaier2/

This episode is supported by:

The Huddle: If you're at the point where going at it alone isn't working or you're ready to level things up in your business, go to https://findmyhuddle.com/ and fill out the application

Popfly: If you're a brand trying to reach outdoor, travel, and adventure audiences, Popfly is where to do it. It connects you with the largest communities of adventure creators and handles the entire process from start to finish. Creators click here: https://popf.ly/longrunlabscreators. Brands click here: https://popf.ly/longrunlabsbrands