James Watt is inviting former BrewDog Equity Punks to join him in his new beer business, Second Best, by offering them a free equity stake that mirrors the holdings they lost in the collapsed brewery. On the newly registered Second Best website, he says thousands of people trusted him to build a successful beer business and create value for them, framing that trust as an obligation he still feels bound to honour.
Watt sets out a plan to allocate up to 19.3% of Second Best’s shares to past Equity Punk investors, allowing them to claim the same percentage stake they once held in BrewDog without putting in fresh money. He stresses there are no catches and no cash required, and that their equity in the new company will sit on a par with his own holding.
He characterises the offer as effectively gifting part of the new venture back to those who backed him the first time around, pitching it as a way to “make good” on their original faith in the brand. Rather than describing them as conventional shareholders, he recasts these returning backers as “second founders”, indicating that he wants them to be embedded in the identity and growth of Second Best from the outset.
On the Second Best website, James Watt stated: “Thousands of people trusted me to build a brilliant beer business and create value for them. It was an obligation I took very seriously.
“And I, for one, am not done with that obligation. So, I am introducing my plan to launch Second Best – a new beer business and an open invitation.
“A business that we own together, and a business that I will fund and build from the ground up.
“And as for the name, well if we get this right then the second beer business that we build together might just be the best one
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“You’re not shareholders this time. You’re Second Founders.”
The move comes as Scotland’s beer sector grapples with rising costs, changing drinking habits and lingering scepticism among small investors burned by previous fan‑funding schemes. Watt’s proposal will test whether the promise of free equity and a more collaborative ownership model is enough to persuade BrewDog’s bruised retail investors to back the same founder for a second time.
