51 min
BrewDog: From Salty Sea Dog to Rebellious Beer Captain Secret Leaders with Dan Murray-Serter
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- Careers
From salty sea dog to captain of BrewDog in the space of a year. James Watt is the founder of the rocket ship brewery and brand known as BrewDog. Now valued at over $1 billion, this incredible startup began life in co-founder Martin Dickie’s mum’s garage.
“No one wanted to buy our beer. Everyone told us to make beer with less flavour, with less bitterness, with less hops, that our labels looked stupid, like nobody wanted to know and we were working almost 24/7, sleeping on sacks of malt on the floor, filling bottles by hand, doing deliveries out of the back of my beat up Volkswagen car, and just going absolutely nowhere.”
But it took a meeting with Michael Jackson (no, not that one), a punt at Tesco and playing two high street banks off against each other to give them the kickstart they needed.
Today, BrewDog are well known for their rebellious marketing tactics and have recruited a clan of investors known as equity punks, raising £80 million through a range of clever crowdfunding campaigns.
But how have they handled the COVID-19 pandemic? What have they done to ensure the nation’s thirst remains quenched - and how the hell have they produced and distributed over 250,000 units of hand sanitizer (free) to the NHS and charities? All the while operating the brewery AND adhering to social distancing measures?
If you’re an entrepreneur, James has one piece of advice for you:
“The only logical thing that my useless advice could be is don't listen to advice, which would also apply to this advice just now.”
We chat about:
From rebellious child, to quitting law, to making beer
Overcoming the first disastrous year
Fanvestors - advocate ambassadors AKA equity punk investors
Developing the next generation of leaders from within the company
The importance of culture fit when hiring
Managing BrewDog through the pandemic
Links:
Book - The hard thing about hard things - Ben Horowitz
App - Hop Drop
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Sponsors
Vorboss - get better internet: https://vorboss.com/secretleaders
Vanta - get 20% off security certifications like ISO27001 and SOC2: https://vanta.com/secretleaders
Vertice - save on your SaaS or cloud spend ($5k off or a free benchmark) using the code secretleaders: https://www.vertice.one/l/secretleaders
--
Newsletter
Sign up here: https://secretleaders.email/
You can find our historic newsletters here: https://www.secretleaders.com/episodes
From salty sea dog to captain of BrewDog in the space of a year. James Watt is the founder of the rocket ship brewery and brand known as BrewDog. Now valued at over $1 billion, this incredible startup began life in co-founder Martin Dickie’s mum’s garage.
“No one wanted to buy our beer. Everyone told us to make beer with less flavour, with less bitterness, with less hops, that our labels looked stupid, like nobody wanted to know and we were working almost 24/7, sleeping on sacks of malt on the floor, filling bottles by hand, doing deliveries out of the back of my beat up Volkswagen car, and just going absolutely nowhere.”
But it took a meeting with Michael Jackson (no, not that one), a punt at Tesco and playing two high street banks off against each other to give them the kickstart they needed.
Today, BrewDog are well known for their rebellious marketing tactics and have recruited a clan of investors known as equity punks, raising £80 million through a range of clever crowdfunding campaigns.
But how have they handled the COVID-19 pandemic? What have they done to ensure the nation’s thirst remains quenched - and how the hell have they produced and distributed over 250,000 units of hand sanitizer (free) to the NHS and charities? All the while operating the brewery AND adhering to social distancing measures?
If you’re an entrepreneur, James has one piece of advice for you:
“The only logical thing that my useless advice could be is don't listen to advice, which would also apply to this advice just now.”
We chat about:
From rebellious child, to quitting law, to making beer
Overcoming the first disastrous year
Fanvestors - advocate ambassadors AKA equity punk investors
Developing the next generation of leaders from within the company
The importance of culture fit when hiring
Managing BrewDog through the pandemic
Links:
Book - The hard thing about hard things - Ben Horowitz
App - Hop Drop
--
Sponsors
Vorboss - get better internet: https://vorboss.com/secretleaders
Vanta - get 20% off security certifications like ISO27001 and SOC2: https://vanta.com/secretleaders
Vertice - save on your SaaS or cloud spend ($5k off or a free benchmark) using the code secretleaders: https://www.vertice.one/l/secretleaders
--
Newsletter
Sign up here: https://secretleaders.email/
You can find our historic newsletters here: https://www.secretleaders.com/episodes
51 min