Why We Will Never Do Equity Crowdfunding

Equity for Punks raised roughly seventy-five million pounds from about two hundred thousand retail investors between 2009 and 2021. It was, for a long time, held up as the model for how a challenger brand could fund itself through its own customers.

BrewDog plc entered pre-packaged administration on 1 March 2026. Tilray Brands acquired the brand and the UK operations for £33 million the following day. The Equity Punks received nothing. The founders had reportedly cashed out around £50 million each in 2017.

The mechanism that destroyed the value was dilution combined with illiquidity: successive rounds at rising notional valuations, shares that could not readily be sold, and a structure in which the retail holders were last in the queue.

So we will not be doing it, in any form. If capital is ever needed from the people who care about this place, the routes are community shares under co-operative and community benefit society rules — interest-capped, one-member-one-vote, and exempt from the financial promotion regime — or a straightforward forward sale of goods. Both of those give people something real. Equity crowdfunding gave two hundred thousand people a certificate.