This technology start-up unlocks the world of whisky. It has developed proprietary image capturing software that allows mobile phones to scan and identify any bottle of the ‘golden elixir’. The Bevvy app displays a variety of information on the scanned whisky, including an estimated valuation, tasting notes, user ratings and distillery history. Its database stores details of more than 200,000 bottles, and the app is aimed at anyone from novices to collectors and distillery owners. Headquartered on the Isle of Islay, the company was set up in 2021 by leading whisky expert Laurie Black, and entrepreneur Luke Heron, co-founder of medtech firm TestCard.
Entrepreneurship is a disease…but I don’t want the cure’
More Founder Stories
How I overcame illness, tragedy and humiliation to build a multimillion-pound global brand
Rob Law has conquered more challenges than most, including family tragedy, personal illness and humiliation on national TV. Here, Rob reveals the tools he uses to dance around seemingly immovable obstacles and we uncover why having these tools in your kitbag is often the difference between success and failure…
“Plan for a new world. Don’t dwell on the negatives.”
Sixty-five-year-old Mike Clare brims with boyish enthusiasm, even over Zoom. As he chats, it’s not hard to imagine him turning a £20,000 investment into £222m Dreams Beds, which is precisely what he did. And his energy is such that it makes you believe you could do something similar – even during a pandemic…
‘To be extraordinary you need to be ‘extra’ ordinary’
A wardrobe malfunction with ill-fitting tights that would not stay up inspired Brigitte Read to set up this hosiery business in 2018. Snag Tights caters for a wide range of sizes from four to 36 and offers 1,500 product lines. The online retailer has diversified into leggings, T-shirts, skirts and swimwear and has more than 2m customers in 90 countries. The Scottish-based brand is now eyeing expansion in America.
“We started out with one cow”
Business origin stories are often intriguing and inspiring, but that of free-range meat-box supplier field&flower is even better – it’s sublime. Because co-founders James Mansfield and James Flower launched their £13m food business in 2012 not with a glitzy website or fancy app, but with a single cow. The two James’s (we’ll stick to surnames from now on for clarity) met at agricultural college, but this wasn’t your typical farmer-farmer friendship. Mansfield is a South London lad who somehow ended up studying agriculture:
Fancy-dress costumes, robots and £1bn
This is a story about robots, a six-year-old company worth £1bn, and a costume-wearing CEO. This incredible ‘unicorn’ business is on a mission to disrupt how surgery is done around the world. So, how did this unicorn with more than 500 staff come about? Read their amazing story here…
How we secured a slam-dunk deal with the NBA
Two years ago, we wrote about James Macfarlane under the headline: ‘The quiet tech entrepreneur who’s building a half-billion-pound empire’. Hands up. We low-balled him. In April 2021, PM Connect signed a contract with the NBA. The agreement, means that fans in Europe and South Africa can now pay to watch the New York Knicks, LA Lakers et al via their mobile phone. Where the business could go from here is dizzying…