Private Equity Investor at hauerX holdings + Founder Courageous Minds Only + Co-Founder The Garage Group

Enterprise growth used to compound over years. Now it compounds over weeks.

The companies winning see what's coming months earlier, validate in weeks instead of quarters, and get to revenue before the window closes. Most enterprises are still operating on the old timeline. The gap is widening.

Jason Hauer built and sold an Inc. 500 innovation consultancy. Now he's building HauerX Holdings: a portfolio of AI-native companies that close the velocity gap.

The mission is simple: make AI-native growth the standard for every enterprise.

Not through advice. Through companies that operate at AI-native speed.

Speed to see what's coming. Speed to validate. Speed to revenue. Systems that compound.

The HauerX portfolio delivers what enterprises need to move faster:

Board of Innovation builds AI innovation engines across the commercial stack. They built Walmart an AI product engine that compresses 12 months to minutes.

Nichefire delivers predictive culture intelligence. Nestlé used their signals to launch Vital Pursuit first-to-market, predicting the GLP-1 trend before it hit mainstream.

FifthRow turns consulting workflows into autonomous AI agents that run 24/7. A Fortune 500 auto company validated 5 B2C businesses in 10 months.

3D Color produces color-perfect product comps in days instead of weeks.

Serial Growth Engine helps B2B companies build repeatable growth systems that scale.

Serial Growth Lab is where Jason shares the roadmap to AI-native growth. How enterprises move from slow to fast. From reactive to predictive. From campaigns to compounding systems.

Jason partners in two ways: backing growth-stage companies building AI-native solutions, and deploying portfolio capabilities inside enterprises ready to move from strategy to installed systems.

The vision: $100M portfolio. Built from Ohio. Serving enterprises globally.

Speed to signal. Speed to market. Speed compounds.

Jason Hauer

Michael Howard is a leading expert in predictive analytics and cultural insights, with over a decade of experience in driving brand growth. As the founder and CEO of Nichefire, he developed an AI-powered platform that uncovers cultural trends in online communities.

Michael’s innovative use of contextualized data has provided Fortune 500 companies with valuable insights into their audiences. His work in contextual analytics, featured in major research journals, helps forecast audience interests and trends.

A recognized research innovator, Michael holds multiple patents in AI and machine learning. He is a respected speaker and advisor, dedicated to helping brands build authentic connections through data-driven cultural understanding.

Under his visionary leadership, Nichefire has become a pioneer in the next generation of social intelligence.

Michael Howard

Most people misunderstand how culture actually moves.

They expect trends to arrive fully formed. Loud. Obvious. Undeniable.

But culture doesn’t work like that.

It works like pointillism.

Up close, all you see are dots.
A conversation here.
A niche behavior there.
An odd comment, a fringe community, a small shift in language.

On their own, each dot feels insignificant. Easy to dismiss as noise. An outlier. “Not big enough yet.”

But culture is never revealed from inches away.

When you step back, and you layer those dots over time, you start to see it.

A shape forming.
A pattern emerging.
A future taking structure.

Every cultural signal is a dot on the canvas.

Our job, as insight leaders, isn’t to chase the loudest trend of the moment. 

It’s to notice the dots early, place them with intention, and understand how they relate to one another.

That’s where foresight lives.

Not in a single viral moment.
Not in one data spike.
But in the cumulative intelligence of signals that, together, tell a story about where people are headed next.

If you only look for fully formed pictures, you’ll always be late.

But if you learn to see the dots (and step back often enough) you don’t just observe culture.

You anticipate it.

🔥Michael Howard

Founder/CEO at Nichefire | Insight250 Winner | 2x Social Intelligence Insider 50 | Discovering Market-Defining Opportunities Through Culture

Excited to share the latest episode of Omnivore Presents: SciDish podcast from the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT)! In this episode, we unpack what will matter most to food and beverage shoppers in 2026. From #MAHA, to #PlantBased, to #Affordability.

If you’re building products, campaigns, or innovation pipelines for next year, here’s a preview of what you’ll hear in the episode:

🔎 Value 3.0 is the new north star: not just lower prices, but fairness plus real benefits consumers can feel.

 💪 “Nutrition per dollar” is the purchase filter: shoppers want health outcomes that justify every spend.

 ⚖️ Moderation is back: people are craving better-for-you and indulgence, without going overboard.

 🌱 Plant-based is evolving: less about moral signaling, more about practical health and wellness.

 🧠 Proof over packaging: premium positioning gets vulnerable fast when the nutritional ROI isn’t clear.

Huge thanks to Mary Ellen Kuhn at IFT for having me on to share insights we've been working on at Nichefire, and to Jenny Zegler (Mintel) for joining and sharing such sharp, grounded perspectives.

🎧 Give it a listen on IFT’s Omnivore Presents SideDish feed, and let me know which 2026 shift you’re planning around. Link in the comments 👇 

#FoodTrends #ConsumerInsights #FoodInnovation #CPG #RDCulture #PredictiveInsights 

🔥Khalil El-Amin Abby Zennie Jason Hauer Pete Blackshaw David Iudica Dan Rucolas Frank Gregory Linh Phillips Jim Reynolds Angela Palladino Kris Russell Dave Knox Brent Gravlee 🔥Steven Brown Joe Kikta Troy Janisch - thought you might be interested in this one!

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The Battle

Jason Hauer

Michael Howard

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taplio

The Battle

Jason Hauer

Michael Howard

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Michael Howard's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreMichael Howard's LinkedIn Performance