Page 70 - Introduction & Preamble

BrewDog’s entrepreneurial founders James Watt and Martin

Dickie had achieved this by relentless self-promotion,

challenging convention, and creating an identity through

social networks, bloggers, and funny videos that

undermined the hold of stuffy ales that industry dominant

brewers produced in 2020. They challenged the prevailing

industry norms and broke the established business

concepts on how to grow and finance an enterprise. They
generated a raft of detractors due to their aggressive,

irreverent publicity grabbing actions. A result of this was
that BrewDog created an almost cult following of customers

they called ‘Punks’ and when the company had to raise

funds instead of relying on banks they turned to their Punks.

From 2010 to 2020 these punks bought into a series of

crowdfunding rounds called ‘Equity for Punks’ which was

massively successful making BrewDog a global leader in

crowdfunding finance. However, in 2017 more funding was

called for and TSG Venture Capital took a 22.3% stake in the

company for £213m valuing the company at £1bn. A plan

then followed to float the company through an IPO. But

before this happened one last EFP was sought which valued

the company in 2020 at £1.8bn. How this valuation was

arrived at and its potential impact on Equity for Punk

shareholders’ investment is examined.

Then COVID-19 struck, and a second lockdown occurred.