Aqualutions CEO Sarah Yocum dips into a catfish tank at a Wake Forest University laboratory.
Sarah Yocum Audio: 
By Boris Hartl
Web Content Specialist
Covered with fish slime on her wet clothes, Sarah Yocum learned a lesson two years ago in perseverance and patience that didn’t involve raising capital and developing cash-flow plans.
"It was 20 degrees, raining, and I was working with catfish, who are not the most attractive or nicest-smelling creatures on the planet," she said.
Yocum was trying to collect data drawing blood from a five-pound catfish.
"I had recently been offered two different jobs — neither of which required me to work in the cold or smell of fish for the next hour. And to top it off, I couldn’t hit a vein. I was ready to quit right then and there."
Frustrated, she then called her family.
"My father convinced me it was a just a bad day and to keep pushing forward," Yocum said.
And two years later, the three-person staff of Aqualutions, a company based in Winston-Salem, has certainly moved forward. The company develops disease diagnostic kits for catfish and is operating on more than $100,000 in funding secured from grants, awards and business plan competition winnings, said Yocum, the company’s chief executive officer.
Diagnostic Testing Kit
Aqualutions aims to capture its share of the estimated $3 billion aquaculture industry with kits created by Raymond Kuhn, the William Louis Poteat Professor of Biology at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem.
National statistics reveal a need for a diagnostic testing kit geared toward monitoring the health of catfish. In the United States, catfish industry officials estimate about 30 percent of inventory losses can be attributed to infectious diseases. That leads to a total yearly yield loss valued at around $135 million.
Catfish are susceptible to bacterial infections, Yocum said, and fish farmers have historically compensated by adding excessive amounts of antibiotics into ponds and streams. That in turn increases bacterial resistance to future treatments. Fish also can neither be harvested nor sold for 23 days after any antibiotic treatment.
Based upon the results of the Aqualutions diagnostic kit, fish farmers and veterinarians could prescribe more efficient treatment options such as adding antibiotics or nutraceuticals (which the company is researching) to strengthen the fishes' immune system.
Yocum said vaccines are nascent to the industry.
"It is important to utilize all methods of disease control as economically possible," she said.
The Aqualutions kit allows fish farmers to test on-site using solutions and vials. The operator simply draws a sample from a fish using a special swab and then adds the sample into a grid and studies the results.
Randall Johnson, the director of the North Carolina Biotechnology Center's Southeastern Office in Wilmington, said the diagnostic kit will benefit the state's emerging marine fish farming industry. Aqualutions aims to expand the product to cover other types of fish including salmon.
"We're excited about the exceptional potential for Aqualutions to strengthen North Carolina's freshwater fish farming industry and to broaden the current product platform to include saltwater species in the future," Johnson said.
The product is still in the proof-of-concept stage as the company conducts trials to gather data proving the kit's effectiveness.
"No kits have been sold to date," Yocum said, "but we've had great interest from the industry. Our goal is to provide proof that it works, even on a small scale, before we allow the sale."
The company will hold off on attracting angel funding so it can negotiate better funding terms when the data are in hand. Aqualutions officials could also partner with larger animal-health companies to move the diagnostic kit to the market.
Company History
The company, incorporated in May 2005, actually began in Kuhn's immunology course. He proposed starting a business, later known as Aqualutions, geared to marketing the kits to fish researchers with the help of university money earmarked for developing businesses from undergraduate entrepreneurs.
"I told the students that if any of them were interested in starting such a company," said Kuhn, the company's scientific advisor, "I would advise them on the science and let them take it."
Seven students, including Yocum, were selected. The students handled all disciplines relating to operating a start-up company, everything from marketing to product development to corporate structure. The students then elected officers and named Yocum as CEO.
"During the course of their marketing studies, they discovered that the aquaculture industry was in dire need of diagnostic and therapeutic products," Kuhn said. "They then, independently, shifted the focus of the company on products for the catfish aquaculture industry."
The students also participated in a semester-long seminar, "The Business of Biotechnology" which brought venture capitalists and business school professors, among others, to answer questions and even sit on the board of advisors.
In the end, the students gained experience running a business making them even more marketable.
"What a rush!"
The students drafted a business plan, which later helped Aqualutions to place among the top-25 teams in the Babcock Elevator Competition organized by Wake Forest University's Babcock Graduate School of Management and the affiliated Angell Center for Entrepreneurship.
"I knew this was the type of job I wanted to pursue when I participated in the elevator competition," Yocum said.
Teams shared their business plans with judges in a two-minute elevator ride to the top floor of the Wachovia building.
"What a rush! I didn't even realize we had gotten off the elevator and we were back in the lobby," she said.
For the young CEO, it was a moment that made dealing with fish slime almost worthwhile.