While Denver is more than 1,000 miles from the coastline, a local startup is building solutions aquaculture software solutions to protect against disease for farmed fish.
Tony Chen and John Costantino met as random roommates in Washington, D.C., while working in various government capacities. Outside of their day jobs, they were drawn to the oyster farmers in the Chesapeake Bay and found themselves exploring the business more.
The more they asked these farmers, the more they learned that disease was a huge issue in fish farming. Coming from a digital background, they both began to wonder what, if any, software was being used to track this issue.
“They were using pencil, paper, whiteboards and a little bit of Excel,” Chen told Colorado Inno. “That's really how it all started, trying to answer this question of 'why do oysters die?'”
In 2018, the duo founded Denver-based Manolin.
As they began to dig into Manolin, Chen and Costantino realized that their best bet in aquaculture analytics was to find the specific industry and location that was furthest along in tracking data. They found that salmon farmers in Norway had the most advanced systems already in place.
So, they began developing a software solution to help these farmers track disease on their farms. Manolin’s machine-learning software runs on millions of data points to help detect the risk of disease, including daily environmental and farm production factors, marine sensors, satellite imagery, boat traffic, oceanographic forecasts and much more.
In an industry challenged by the unpredictability of ocean currents and the devastation of disease, Manolin says its software detects the risk of disease on aquaculture farms at greater than 93% accuracy.
“We've really made a lot of progress in being able to help farmers de-risk their operations,” Chen said.
The company recently made its offering available to fish farmers across Norway, building on its current customers that are already producing fish for stores across the U.S., including Whole Foods Market, Costco and Sam’s Club.
Chen compared Manolin’s dashboard to that of a stock trader, combining a host of data sources into one singular screen designed to deliver insights.
“These farmers are able to get these risk formats in one place. They are easy to read and you are able to dive deeper,” he said.
In 2020, the company raised $1 million in seed funding from Boost VC, Hatch AS and Innovation Norway that Chen said primarily went to hiring.
The company has four employees based in Denver and three in Norway, including Costantino.
While Denver is more than a thousand miles from the coastline and even further from Manolin’s Norway operations, Chen said the local community has been invaluable in helping build the company.
“A lot of people ask us why we’re based here, there aren’t exactly oceans and fish farms,” he said with a laugh. “Colorado has been the right place for us from the product development standpoint. We think the focus on the nature and environmental aspect has been really helpful and the people here mesh well. And Colorado is also building itself to be a really powerful ecosystem around remote sensing.”
