The chief executive of BrewDog has revealed that it was being broke at an airport after a US launch gone wrong that inspired the Equity for Punks crowdfunding scheme that turned the company's fortunes around.
Writing on LinkedIn, James Watt explained that in 2008, the Ellon-based brewery shipped its first container of beer across the pond.
"Unfortunately, we did not ship the beer it refrigerated and the beer cooked in a hot steel box all the way to LA - I arrived shortly afterwards to launch BrewDog in America but our beers tasted terrible - the importer refused to pay us the £30,000 for the beer at a time we had precisely zero in the bank."
Flying home via Chicago, Watt said that both his own bank card and the company account were empty, so he couldn't afford a meal when his plane was delayed.
"Becoming increasingly hungry, I searched my pockets and found a BrewDog pin badge," he stated. "I somehow managed to persuade the person behind the counter of a small kiosk to accept that pin badge as payment for an apple - I told them my bank cards were not working because they were ‘Scottish’.
"Shortly thereafter I was sitting on the floor of O’Hare airport, eating my apple when an email flashed up from our accountant, to this day those pixelated words are etched into my brain: 'BrewDog is technically insolvent and is obliged to cease trading'."
The company co-founder recounts that this was rock bottom, but it focused his mind on finding a solution.
During the flight home, inspiration hit, to offer a small - but loyal - group of customers the opportunity to invest.
"By the time we landed I had a two-page plan and a working title for the concept: Equity for Punks; this was equity crowdfunding before equity crowdfunding even existed."
However, the legal fees to launch the scheme were £100,000 so it was a gamble to place everything on this completely untried and untested business model.
The rest is company history. BrewDog raised £570,000 from the first round of Equity Punks and started building the community that underpins the business.
"During our first few years we were constantly running out of cash," Watt added. "In a fast-growth company, unless you are constantly teetering on the edge of financial oblivion you are not stretching your limited supply of cash hard enough - it is a high stakes game."
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