65. BeerBods

Founder: Matt Lane
Founded: May 2012 (launched September 2012)
Website: www.beerbods.co.uk

On a mission to get people “drinking better beer”, online beer club BeerBods has achieved impressive growth since launch. The Worcester-based beer subscription service, founded by 28 year old entrepreneur Matt Lane, recently closed £150,000 in 36 hours on equity crowdfunding platform Crowdcube; one of the site’s “fastest ever funded businesses”, and has amassed over 1,500 subscribers to date.

Lane got the idea for BeerBods after witnessing the success of subscription models with films and coffee and, after starting out with a “few mates tasting beer in a shed”, Lane turned this beer tasting into a business proposition, with the added USP of making it possible (with some tricky logistics) for all BeerBods’ subscribers to drink the same beer at the same time. With Dan Germain, head of brand and creative at smoothie giant Innocent, just one of the beer community’s backers, it’s not surprising that the site – which claims to the first of its kind in the UK –  is on target for a £600,000 turnover and has rather ambitious plans for the next 12 months. Overseas expansion, a 10 fold increase on subscribers, and new products and services are all in the pipeline with founder Lane determined to make BeerBods one of the leading players in the craft beer industry.