Founder

Zachary Pope

Technology and the outdoors are going to become more integrated. Zachary's career is about making sure that happens in a way that enhances time outside rather than intruding on it. He proved the model with TroutRoutes and is now applying it to privacy-first camera analytics with Waypoint.

LinkedIn zach@waypointtelemetry.com

Zachary Pope, founder of Waypoint Telemetry, fly fishing a mountain river with snow-capped peaks and forest behind him — Zachary Pope, Founder

Role: Founder, Waypoint Telemetry
Previously: Founder, TroutRoutes (acquired by onX, 2024)
Background: Embedded electronics, medical devices
Education: B.S. Electrical Engineering, M.S. Management of Technology, University of Minnesota
Conservation: Trout Unlimited, 10 years

Why Waypoint

Technology is coming to the outdoors. The question is whether it is done with care.

Zachary's view is simple: the integration of technology and outdoor recreation is inevitable. Trail apps, mapping platforms, connected sensors, and analytics are already part of how people find, use, and manage public land. What is not inevitable is the outcome. Done carelessly, technology makes the outdoors feel watched, crowded, and commercialized. Done with intention, it makes access fairer, stewardship smarter, and the experience better.

TroutRoutes was the first demonstration. It consolidated scattered public data into one map that respected access rules, elevated conservation partners, and gave anglers more confidence on the water without changing what it feels like to be there. Waypoint is the second: image-validated activity data for the people who manage trails and parks, designed from the start so that the presence of a camera never degrades the experience of the people it counts.

That is the career, not a tagline. The commitments below are how it shows up in the product.

“I do not want a future where our experiences in the outdoors are negatively affected by the presence of technology. I want them greatly enhanced by it. That takes intentionality and care, and it is the work I have chosen for my career.”
Zachary Pope, Founder

Still images, not surveillance video

VisionAI One captures event-based still images to count activity. It does not stream or record continuous video.

Aggregate data, no facial recognition

The output is counts, activity types, and direction. The system is not designed to identify individuals.

Non-covert by design

Every unit is labeled with its purpose and pictograms of what it measures, with a public information tag on the enclosure.

Built to serve land managers and visitors

Data goes to the agencies that maintain trails and parks, so investment follows real use and crowding can be managed.

In the outdoors

More than a decade in the outdoors and conservation

Waypoint's founder is not a technologist who discovered the outdoors as a market. He is an angler and conservation volunteer who spent years on stream restoration, chapter boards, and expo floors before building products for that community.

Nearly a decade with Trout Unlimited

An active Trout Unlimited member for close to ten years, with hands-on time on Minnesota's metro trout streams. TroutRoutes was a business sponsor of TU National.

Twin Cities Trout Unlimited board

Served on the board of the Twin Cities chapter, one of the largest TU chapters in the country, which restores and protects streams such as the Vermillion River, Hay Creek, and Trout Brook.

Public lands advocacy

Through TroutRoutes, a vocal supporter of public lands organizations including Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, and of keeping access information accurate and responsibly shared.

More than 20 expos, Idaho to New Jersey

Personally worked more than 20 fly fishing expos across the country for TroutRoutes, hearing firsthand how conservation and recreation needs differ from Western tailwaters to Eastern freestones.

Proof of the model

TroutRoutes: technology that made the outdoors better, not busier

TroutRoutes began in 2019 with a problem Zachary had as an angler in Minnesota's Driftless Area: the information needed to fish responsibly was scattered across atlases, county property maps, state GIS layers, and stream gauges. He consolidated it into one map built for anglers, with public land, easements, access points, and real-time flows in one place.

With Twin Cities funding he built a small team of GIS specialists, developers, and marketers. Within six months the app covered all 48 contiguous states, and it eventually mapped more than 50,000 trout streams. Fly Fisherman magazine covered it as the sport's all-in-one mapping tool. Just as important, the company sponsored Trout Unlimited nationally and backed public lands advocacy, because a mapping app for anglers only works if the streams stay healthy and open.

In March 2024, onX acquired TroutRoutes to anchor its entry into fishing, and Zachary and his team joined onX.

onX acquisition announcement troutroutes.com

Fly Fisherman magazine feature on the TroutRoutes app founded by Zachary Pope, showing the app on a phone beside a fly reel and tippet spools — TroutRoutes featured in Fly Fisherman magazine

Career

Regulated hardware, then outdoor software, now both

Waypoint is a sealed outdoor computer with a camera, a cellular radio, and a cloud vision pipeline behind it. Building it well requires the discipline of medical-device electronics and a working understanding of how people actually use public land. Zachary's career supplied both in order.

Meet the engineering team See the Bloomington facility

2010
B.S. Electrical Engineering, University of Minnesota
Trained as an electrical engineer, the discipline behind the circuit design and power management in every Waypoint camera.
2010s
Embedded electronics, medical devices
Designed embedded electronics for medical devices and rose to engineering director, leading teams that shipped regulated, validated hardware.
2017
M.S. Management of Technology, University of Minnesota
Completed a master's degree in Management of Technology through the University of Minnesota's Technological Leadership Institute while leading engineering teams.
2019
Founded TroutRoutes
Left a director role to build TroutRoutes full time, starting with Minnesota's Driftless Area and expanding to all 48 contiguous states within six months.
March 2024
TroutRoutes acquired by onX
onX acquired TroutRoutes as the foundation of its fishing business. Zachary and his Twin Cities team joined onX through the acquisition.
Today
Founded Waypoint Telemetry
Building privacy-first camera analytics for trails, parks, and public land from a manufacturing and lab facility in Bloomington, Minnesota.