Long Run Labs: The Business of Endurance

What makes someone choose one brand over another when the products themselves aren’t all that different? Brian Button joins Jon to talk about brand strategy, authenticity, and what companies can learn from his time helping build brands like Lyft, DoorD...

Jeremy and Adriana Nelson did not set out to build a company. Jeremy was a mechanical engineer tinkering in his garage with rollerblade wheels. Adriana was a professional runner from Romania training twice a day at altitude in Boulder. When Jeremy coul...

Karen Merlin on UTMB, women’s trail running, and growing the sport sustainably. Karen Merlin, elite athletes and inclusion programs manager at UTMB, joins Jon to talk about how UTMB is evolving its race ecosystem, how athlete feedback drives change, an...

Leland Kohere is the marketing manager at Osprey Packs, one of the most trusted names in outdoor gear. He oversees their athlete program, field marketing, content, and social media. And after five years on the inside, he has a pretty clear view of what...

John Gonzalez started the RiNo 5K in 2017 as a passion project while working full time in cybersecurity. Named after River North, one of Denver's most vibrant neighborhoods, it is a road race, a run club gathering, a fundraiser, and a community event a...

Dr. Marc Bubbs has spent twenty five years on the frontline of performance nutrition. Working with Canada Basketball, US Soccer, NBA teams, Olympians, and elite endurance athletes. And after two and a half decades of watching the same problems show up ...

Monica Devreese is the CEO and co-founder of Rabbit, a running apparel brand celebrating its tenth year in business. Hilary Fenet is the founder of Halo, a platform built to solve the logistics and community gap that exists when runners travel to races...

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 thr...

Vivek Gowri has spent his career at the intersection of technology and community. Six months ago he added running store owner to that list, buying San Francisco Running Company and stepping into the shoes of a brand that has been a pillar of Bay Area t...

What does AI actually think about the running industry? Not what brands want it to think. Not what their SEO teams have optimized for. What does it actually say when nobody is watching? Michael Rueckert of Centium AI ran the biggest AI visibility study...

Sara Hendershot has spent her career at the intersection of elite sport and early stage brand building. She rowed at the 2012 Olympics, was employee number three at Momentous before it became one of the most trusted names in performance supplementation...

Megan Lightcap runs the creator fund at Slow Ventures, one of the first venture funds built specifically around creator entrepreneurs. Her thesis is simple: creators are just a new type of founder. And the ones who own a niche, build a world around the...

Jason Daniel didn't set out to build a global brand. He set out to race motocross, and when that didn't pan out, he spent years working as an electrician, a bricklayer's yard manager, and a carpenter while quietly building a clothing brand out of a nic...

Trail running is growing faster than anyone predicted. New brands are entering the space, race fields are selling out, course records are falling, and the sport is attracting capital, media attention, and mainstream audiences it has never seen before. ...

Andy Blow didn't set out to build a company. He set out to stop ending up in the medical tent. As a triathlete who kept collapsing in the heat, Andy discovered that electrolyte loss is deeply individual, got a sweat test, changed his nutrition, and rea...

Des Linden has spent two decades figuring out how to build a career that outlasts the finish line. The 2018 Boston Marathon champion joins Long Run Labs to talk about the business of being an endurance athlete, what loyalty actually looks like in a lon...

Randi Zuckerberg has spent her career at the intersection of technology, media, storytelling, and entrepreneurship. But in recent years, endurance sports have become just as central to how she thinks about leadership, business, and personal growth. Fre...

Doug Waters didn’t set out to build another outdoor apparel company. He set out to solve a problem he kept running into himself. Doug is the founder of Terlingua Threads, a hot-weather adventure apparel company focused entirely on performance in extrem...

Christian Rawles didn’t just build a brand in the outdoor industry, he spent nearly two decades learning what it actually takes to run one, eventually buying and leading the business himself. Christian is now an executive coach working with entrepreneu...

Nick Dibos didn’t set out to build a scalable apparel company. He set out to build something that actually means something to the people around him. Nick is the founder of Greenville Uptempo Sports, a running apparel brand rooted in community, culture,...