Not everyone with a deep passion for horses ends up making a living riding them. Some of them end up orbiting the sport instead — building the products, platforms, and services the rest of us depend on. That's what this new series is about.

First up: Laura St. Clair, Hanoverian breeder and co-founder and CEO of ICONEQ, a sport horse platform people tend to describe as Zillow for sport horses. Every horse in one place, fully searchable, pedigrees hyperlinked, priced, located, and not buried under fifty Facebook groups.

Laura's background is commercial real estate, and it shows — she came into this looking at how we present and market sport horses in this country and found most of it counterproductive. We talk about why the breeding market is struggling, why ”inquire for price” is quietly costing sellers buyers, what actually makes a listing work, and how registry partnerships with the American Trakehner Association, KWPN-NA, and the American Hanoverian Society are changing where horses get discovered.

We also get into Yards, ICONEQ's newer functionality that makes training services searchable by location, why recognizing young horse trainers matters, and how a technology company ends up trying to make this industry more human rather than less.

Find Laura: iconEQ.com | ICONEQ Technologies on Facebook

More from me:samanthabaer.com — training philosophy, blog, and Ride Along, my audio subscription that puts you in my pocket for real rides with real horses. Start with the 2 free lessons.