62. Beer52.com

Founders: James Brown and Fraser Doherty
Founded: September 2013
Website: www.beer52.com

Co-founded by Startups’ ‘Young Entrepreneur to Watch’ 24 year-old James Brown, online craft beer club Beer52 has all the makings of a start-up success story. Launched last September, the Edinburgh-based subscription platform works with independent microbreweries to give members access to boxes of unique and speciality brews. Making a splash in this emerging, and already somewhat crowded, market, (Beer52 is one of three beer subscription sites to make the list this year) the site now has over 2,500 subscribers and is projected to reach an impressive turnover of £1.15m for 2014.

Since attracting SuperJam’s Fraser Doherty, a 2009 Growing Business Young Gun, to come on board at the company’s pre-launch, the craft beer community has gained further strong backing, having raised £100,000 through the Angels Den crowdfunding platform in just 38 days and securing a recent follow-on round from Secret Escapes’ Andrew Bredon.  In the last few months, Beer52 has been working with Ben Hopkins, the co-founder of wine marketplace Naked Wines, on customer acquisition and is now on target to increase its paying subscribers to 5,000 by the end of the year. We predict big things for this young company as it fights it out with competitors “to become the Virgin Wines of craft beer”.