“I’ve spent $300k and six and a half years working full-time to create something free for the community …”
That post gained 12k shares and 263k reach. I sent her a message immediately, Brehoni responded, and we agreed to do this interview.
I’ve spent most of my career around brands and founders, whether in agencies or through the innovation festival I ran, Pause Fest. I’ve sat through many early founder stories, including Melanie presenting Canva in beta, endless emerging technologies at the Pause Startup Expo, and I contributed to the early success of Zero Latency VR.
Incaberry reminds me of those early-stage startups on the brink of blowing up. Brehoni possesses what every founder needs: unwavering conviction, customer obsession and the resilience to rebuild after a near-fatal setback. Her purpose-driven mission is changing how Australians source food because she believes there must be a better way.
According to The Australia Institute’s 2024 research, nine million Australians (45%) grow some of their own food. Of those who don’t, almost two-thirds are interested, rising to nearly four in five among 18- to 39-year-olds. The appetite is clearly there. What has been missing is a simple way for backyard surplus to reach neighbours.
That is the exact gap Incaberry addresses.
Brehoni’s mission is clear, her conviction is rare, and her moral compass guides every decision, right down to which growers and businesses she welcomes into the fold.
Most founder stories start on the back of a napkin, in a pub or cafe. This one arrived in a car on a hot summer day, somewhere on the side streets of WA’s Swan Valley.
“I was in the car with my mum. We were looking for grapes and watermelon, trying to buy directly from local growers. I was taking her down all these side streets looking for signs out the front of people’s houses,” Brehoni said.
“I went out of my way down the side streets, thinking … surely there’s a better way. They deserve the same exposure as someone with main road frontage.”
“I told Mum it would be amazing if there was an app so we could see on a map who’s around us. We both sat there going, that’s actually a really good idea. And it was something I genuinely wanted to use. I remember thinking, how does that not already exist?”
Some founders struggle to find a gap in the market. Brehoni literally drove into it, then went straight back home to look it up. She had a particular vision and nothing worked the way she’d pictured it: a Google Map for growers. As for why this moment landed when it did, she admits she had become content with her work and was looking for a challenge.
“I’d made a deal with myself months before that if I ever start a business, it had to be something I completely believed in, something that made a positive impact or I wouldn’t do it at all.”
The timing was right. It was early 2020, days before the shutdowns. The business she worked for was non-essential, so she couldn’t go in and was still being paid. She had time, space and savings.
“I knew there was no coming back from that choice. I was in, all the way. The only way I stop is if I physically can’t continue.”
Incaberry launched off a waitlist of close to 5,000 people. Three to four thousand signed up in the first few weeks. It had passed 13,000 users by the time I spoke with Brehoni, with listings now in every state but still heaviest in WA.
The app is free to download and use. You can explore the map or browse by category and distance. If you grow something, you simply list it: produce like fruit, vegetables, honey, eggs, seeds and plants.
The target audience is the person with one fruit tree producing more than a household can eat, but it has stretched further than that on its own.
“It’s used by roadside stalls and more established growers too,” Brehoni said. There’s a woman making jam who has listed the public locations where she stocks it alongside her own listing, with her home address hidden.
I was curious to know why she chose the Incaberry name. She liked Inca, because of the Andean concept of ayni, reciprocity and balance in giving and receiving, but Inca was taken by an accounting app.
“I found out there’s a fruit called an Inca berry, which here we call a cape gooseberry. I’d been eating them the entire time I was trying to name the company,” she said. “I took that as a sign and trademarked it in Australia and the US.”
Six years, tens of thousands of users and not a cent charged to the people using it. What’s the catch?
“We sell a garden planner and seed-saving guides that help people grow their own produce at home so they’ve got excess to share. Those sell more as the app grows, and they push people who were on the fence into growing. It’s an ecosystem, not two separate things.”
Everything purchasable sits on the website rather than in the app, and that is deliberate. A payment gateway is coming, carrying a small transaction fee that scales with use.
“The app stores take thirty per cent on digital products and services. That cut, plus the development work to handle it, defeats the purpose of in-app sales.”
“The commercial side matters, because the bigger picture includes the team and the work we’re putting in. For most of this time the focus has been community impact. We’re looking at the commercial side properly now, because if we can’t afford to keep going, that hurts the community too.”
“We’re bringing businesses on as advertisers, but only ones our users would genuinely want, people already aligned with what this community values. I make sure of that personally before anyone comes on board. It’s slower, but every part of it feels like a fair exchange.”
In business, nothing ever goes as smoothly as planned. I asked Brehoni about her challenges in building the app for the first time and the hardest thing she had to overcome.
“I had the original development team audited and found out they had not made as much progress as they were claiming. I wasn’t willing to keep building on a foundation I couldn’t trust, so I chose to let them go.”
In the same week, in addition to losing her dev team, her partner of four and a half years ended the relationship. She moved in with her little sister and her sister’s fiancé.
“It felt like my whole life was crumbling. I couldn’t see the next step. I thought, maybe this is it, and the money I put in was for nothing. I had a huge breakdown.”
At this point Brehoni had accepted the worst-case scenario and was okay with it. Two days later, a friend with over 30 years of coding experience reached out, offered to help, and he’s built it since.
When I asked Brehoni what the future holds for Incaberry, she answered without any hesitation.
“I want Incaberry to be the first place people go when they look for produce. Not just in Australia, anywhere. Millions of people sourcing locally instead of buying something that’s been sprayed and shipped when there’s already an abundance right there.”
A waitlist is now open for people outside Australia.
She shared a couple of stories near the end that make the case better than any pitch deck would.
A new dad messaged her. He saw her post, told his wife immediately and wrote to her. They’d just had a baby, they cared about what they were feeding her, and they’d watched a two-part Four Corners investigation addressing where food comes from on ABC called “Duped: Food Exposed”, reported by Adele Ferguson earlier this year.
“That’s exactly who I built this for. People who care what they’re feeding their family and want to be part of a community that shares what it has.”
And the second story was of a neighbour who pulled out an apple tree, probably the most common situation in any street or suburb.
“Everyone on the street would have happily taken that fruit. They were just too shy to ask, and the tree owner didn’t know they wanted it or what to do with it.”
A street full of people who wanted the fruit, a woman who would have given it away and nothing to connect them. Brehoni Renk has built an app for that connection.
Lastly, I asked Brehoni what help she needs right now. Most founders would have a dollar on their mind, but she told me two things.
“What I’d love is a mentor. Someone who’s built something similar at scale. Melanie Perkins is the dream,” she said.
“She’s from Perth too, her journey’s been building something valuable, then doing good with it. That’s what I want for Incaberry. So much happens behind the scenes nobody sees, and I’d love to talk to someone who understands it.”
The second thing she needs is simple: more growers.
“I’d love help reaching people with produce to share or sell, whether it’s excess they didn’t expect or extra they’re growing on purpose,” says Brehoni.
“If you know growers, run a gardening business, or have a community who’d connect with this, I want to hear from you. That’s what scales Incaberry.”
- George Hedon is the founder of Pause Fest & Awards, a community builder, designer and enabler of awesome.
