Most companies stop at “ask the bot a question”. onWater wants to go further, building an app that can answer “Should I go today?” and then quietly handle everything that comes after yes.
In this episode of Artificial Insights, Daniel talks with Alex Maier, now President of onWater. His team has been working on a simple idea with complicated stakes: help people decide where to fish or paddle, understand the real conditions on the water, and act on that information without forcing users to dig through dozens of screens or data sources.
Alex explains how they approached AI native design, how they stitched fragmented environmental data into a single system, and what it took to add features that can safely guide beginners while still giving experts real depth. He also shares how onWater is using computer vision to turn fish photos into useful science and why personalization in an AI age still comes back to knowing what a person is actually trying to do.
🔑 What You’ll Learn in This Episode
- ✅ How Alex distinguishes AI assisted from AI native, and why that shift changes product design
- ✅ Why clean, structured water data creates a defensible moat when everyone has the same models
- ✅ How onWater estimates fish length and weight from photos and feeds that data into TroutSpotter
- ✅ Where safety guardrails matter when AI outputs could influence on-water decisions
- ✅ Why curiosity and skepticism both matter when experimenting with new AI tools
🔗 Resources & Links
- 🤝 Connect with Alex on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexmaier2
- 🌊 Explore onWater Fish and Paddle: https://www.onwaterapp.com
- 🐟 Learn about TroutSpotter community science: https://www.onwaterapp.com/features/troutspotter
- 🧬 Wild Me, the conservation AI nonprofit behind Wildbook and TroutSpotter: https://www.wildme.org
- 📩 Subscribe to the Artificial Insights newsletter for key takeaways: https://manary.haus/podcast/#haus
- 👉 Have a guest in mind? Reach out to Daniel at daniel@manary.haus
💬 Know someone building AI in high-risk, real-world environments? Share this episode with them so they can hear how onWater is approaching safety, data, and product design in the wild.
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