01 / The problem
The sensor was right. Nobody looked at the app in time.
Catfish ponds lose oxygen fastest between midnight and dawn. When it drops below about 3 mg/L, a farm can lose a pond of fish in an hour. Brineworks’ sensor caught the drop. Their first app showed it on page three of a dashboard built for daytime, on a laptop.
Farm managers told us the same thing in different words: at 2 a.m., in a truck, with gloves on, they need one number, one color and one button. Everything else could wait for breakfast.
“If I have to log in, the fish are already dead.” — a farm manager, week 1
02 / From sketch to shipped
Week 3 on paper. Week 12 in the store.
Drag the handle to compare the sketch we tested with six farm managers against the screen that shipped. The layout barely moved; the type got bigger and the button got louder.
- 01One number per pond, readable at arm’s length in a dark cab.
- 02The aerator button works from the lock screen alert.
- 03Night colors by default from sunset, so the screen never blinds.
03 / What shipped
Three things, all live on launch day.
The app
iOS and Android, React Native. Night mode from sunset, alarms that break through Do Not Disturb, and a farm map for the morning.
The alert service
Takes a reading from every sensor each minute, spots a falling trend 25 minutes early and pages the right person, then the next one.
The dealer kit
A counter card, a setup video and a 20-minute training so feed store staff could install sensors and sign farms up on the spot.
04 / Timeline
Fourteen weeks, two of them in a pond truck.
- Frame · 1–2Ride-alongs on four farms at night; the alarm becomes the product.
- Shape · 3–5Paper sketches, then a prototype tested with six farm managers.
- Build · 6–11Beta on 12 farms from week 9.
- Launch · 10–14, feed stores first
05 / Results
The first season, by the numbers.
Farms on the app
140
across Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama
Alarm to aerator
2m 40s
median, down from 19 minutes
Ponds lost to low oxygen
83% fewer
on farms using alarms, against the year before
Next round
$9M
Series A, eight months after launch
What the founder said
“They sat in a pond truck with us at two in the morning. The alarm screen came straight out of that night, and so did our Series A story.”
Leilani Treadway
Cofounder and CEO, Brineworks · with Dmitri Gentry, cofounder and CTO