Aquifa

Australian water brokers trade entitlements worth billions of dollars every year, across overlapping state and federal rules.

Nick Johnston brought that on-the-ground knowledge: which rule applies to which trade, what each registry needs, where the fees come from.

Sprawling documentation, shifting rules and siloed data meant each trade was verified and recorded by hand.

That time came straight out of time with clients, and the knowledge that made it work stayed with the people who had it.

Discovery workshops with pilot brokers, and click-throughs tested within a fortnight, showed where the real friction was: duplicate data entry and opaque fee calculations.

The product strategy was built around the trade lifecycle, with compliance as the product rather than the obstacle.

Automated form generation, real-time rule validation and a dynamic ledger, in a broker-facing front end that iterated quickly on feedback.

A security-first back end protects sensitive entitlement data. The architecture is API-first, so the platform can connect to government registries and ag-tech dashboards as standards change.

Aquifa launched to Victorian brokers first and is now live across three states.

The first-season beta ran clean, and the roadmap follows the standards as they evolve across the Basin.