Black Hops "Trading Insolvent Since December 2022"

At the same time as publishing this post, I also released the book “Black Hops Down: The Rise and Fall of Australia’s Most Loved Craft Beer Brewery”. This post is an excerpt from the book. If you were a BH investor, please read this post, there is no need to buy the book, I’ll explain at the end. If you want to read the book, go grab the book on Amazon in Kindle format or Paperback – Australian Amazon Store | US Amazon Store.

On 7 May 2024, 2 months after the collapse of Black Hops Brewing Pty Ltd, Deloitte consultants David Mansfield and Tim Heenan delivered their Administration report. In the report they considered whether or not they thought the company was Trading Insolvent, which is a crime by the Directors. They looked at continuing losses, liquidity of assets, overdue taxes (like Excise), poor relationships with the bank (Judo Bank), suppliers changing terms, unpaid creditors, special arrangements for selected creditors and more. These things had been established in case law over time as indicators of insolvency.

They came to the following position:

“In light of the above, we have formed the preliminary view that the Company may have been insolvent as early as 1 December 2022.”

This was a shocking claim given the Directors didn’t put the company into VA until March 2024.

They also commented on “Unreasonable Director-Related Transactions (Section 588FDA)” relating to Director Tony Sutherland.

“Our investigations have identified potential unreasonable director related transactions relating to Coltone Properties Pty Ltd, a related entity by way of a common directorship with Mr Sutherland.

We have identified transactions totalling $77,000 paid to Mr Sutherland’s related entity between October 2022 and March 2024…..

If appointed, a liquidator would conduct further investigations in relation to the services provided to the Company to determine whether the payments made would be voidable in a liquidation.”

Well, I don’t know anything about “Unreasonable Director-Related Transactions”. When I appointed Tony as a Director it was an unpaid position. Perhaps at some point money started being sent his way, I’m not sure.

But I do know a bit about the claim around insolvent trading.

Let’s dig into it.

In December 2022 me, Eddie and Tony had a Board meeting. This was a full 5 months since I stepped down from the company as CEO because of the relationship investigation.

I told Eddie and Tony that there was no point in discussing all the normal things we had lined up to discuss. The company was borderline insolvent and we needed to talk about that. I scrapped the agenda, and we spoke about the insolvency issue alone.

At the meeting, I proposed that the company was dangerously close to insolvent, and we had to be seriously worried about illegally trading insolvent. This was not a new sentiment from me. I had been warning about this since the start of 2022 when I was working with the Production manager on restructuring production, because I believed the increased wages would push us into loss making territory. By the end of 2022 it was clear we were not growing, so any ongoing losses couldn’t be simply covered up by future growth.

We were changing from a growth company to a normal company that can’t afford to lose money every month. Financial responsibility was critical.

At the meeting, I explained that it’s a crime for Directors to knowingly trade a company when it’s insolvent. I ran through the P&L, and the other complicating factors. We had only just raised a huge fund the year before, the biggest in the history of the industry for an Equity Crowdfunding raise, and our bank Judo Bank was pretty much maxed out on debt finance for us. Plus with our lack of profit that I was projecting for FY 2023, we wouldn’t be able to pay it off.

We all agreed we were dangerously close to insolvent. I managed to get Eddie and Tony to agree that if we didn’t have a clear plan within 30 days, we would pass a resolution that we were insolvent and we would go into Voluntary Administration (VA).

In hindsight if we did that, the company would have most likely worked it’s way through VA with all investors still owning shares.

I thought if we had a plan for the future that we could agree on, which in my mind was scrapping the 4 day on 4 day off brewer roster to go back to the 5 day a week roster, and cut wages by $1m (back to where they were in 2021 when we did the same production volume), we could probably survive. It was dicey, and it would be challenging, but I believed it would be possible, and the only major losers would be the ATO. I never supported not paying our ATO obligations, but by December 2022, after the company had no leadership since I left in July, this was where we were at.

I documented the discussion and agreement in the Board minutes, and sent it through to Tony and Eddie to sign. Tony asked me to take out the bit about trading insolvent and edit what I’d written. On reflection, he wasn’t keen to have any of this in writing.

I wasn’t comfortable changing what was discussed, so I agreed to include slightly less detail, but keep the sentiment the same. The exact words written into the Board minutes were:

“After reviewing the numbers the Board agreed to an urgent review of all operational areas and a recovery plan be put together in conjunction with Wayne for the Board to reassess in 4 weeks.”

Wayne was the consultant I had managed to convince Eddie and Tony to hire to do a financial review. I believed we were going to be insolvent by February 2023 and I was happy to get approval to hire Wayne to write an unbiased report on our situation.

This was December 2022. I stayed on as a Director for 2 more months. Eddie and Tony ran the company for 15 more months, losing tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars each month.

The Board minutes seemed like absolute corporate bullshit to me, but at least I had them agreeing to the fact that we had a serious financial issue on our hands. It had taken months to even get to that point.

Tony was working in his accountancy firm, and barely ever went into Black Hops. Eddie was planning his third interstate or overseas trip in 6 months, and Andrew, an employee and clearly slimy individual, was pretty much running the operation.

Wayne was getting close to finishing his report, but we also had Nathan, the new GM coming on board in a few months to run the company.

I thought they would believe me once they saw Wayne’s report, but in hindsight I think they were just waiting for Nathan to make decisions, because they didn’t want to, or didn’t have the balls to.

At the same Board meeting I proposed to Eddie and Tony that we go back to investors and explain our financial situation, and the full story of why I was no longer CEO. Investors had been told nothing about what had gone on, and I was increasingly uncomfortable with that.

I was willing to go out on my sword if investors agreed that was the best approach, but if I had it my way, I would be there inside the building as it burnt to the ground. I desperately wanted to get back to work, to see if I could save the company, which at that time was possible.

Investors deserved better. I knew it, I’m sure Eddie and Tony knew it.

I wanted to organise a meeting with investors, run them through everything that’s happened and work out a way forward. If the general sentiment from investors was that my behaviour was inappropriate and I should be removed then fine, after all they are the ones that own the company, and they would then have been involved in the process and not completely shocked when it ultimately collapsed. I thought the more likely outcome would be a loud sentiment of “get this shit over and get back to work, if staff quit, hire more staff and move on”.

I had reached a point where I was very uncomfortable with all of these important decisions being made by two people who clearly didn’t want to make a hard decision.

“I don’t agree. We should only go back to investors when we have a clear plan”, Tony said.

“I agree with Tony”, Eddie offered.

And that was that.

The cover up continued.

In all of our history, we’d built the business on the basis of transparency. It’s the way I do things, and I’m very aware not everyone operates in this way. But it had served me well, and it had become a core value of ours.

It’s very fair to say that if we didn’t have this approach, we would probably be a tiny brewpub in Burleigh, and not one of the top brands in the country. This is what people loved about Black Hops. It was who we were, and what we stood for.

Until this point, Eddie and Govs had always supported the idea of transparency and sharing everything. I’d written 95% of the book and all of our content, probably more, but they always supported the process. We’d launched a podcast that we’d all contributed to, Govs was always keen to jump on. We’d publicly shared our recipes which Govs was a big proponent of. I’d been very open with investors with quarterly reports detailing every aspect of what we were doing. I always included targets vs actual performance, numbers from the accounting system, and anything that wasn’t going as well as we hoped. Investors had come to expect that from us, and that’s what drew them to us in the first place.

In fact the last report I sent before I stood down in July 2022 was very direct, and it made the guys nervous about how honest I was. The report, as usual, included a full historical P&L line chart showing clear decline.

It also included these words “It was a very tough quarter. Revenue was down in all areas. Hospo was struggling, weather was bad, people are sick. Sentiment isn’t great, the extra money in the economy last year isn’t present now, all around a very tough quarter.”

“The business isn’t growing as fast as it was and we are going to have to make some adjustments to overheads to compensate for that to get back into profitable territory.”

This was an update sent to all of our investors, including Crowdfunding investors which I regarded on equal footing as non crowdfunding investors (because they are).

It wasn’t an inspiring message, but it was the transparent truth, and that’s what I promised our investors.

But by late 2022, transparency was dead at Black Hops. The idea of going back to investors was not happening.

Tony was old school, he was very uncomfortable with us presenting anything outside the group that wasn’t positive.

Eddie went along with Tony, which meant another month at least of dragging this bullshit out.

When Wayne finished his report, I thought the penny would finally drop. By this time it was February 2023, a few weeks out from Nathan starting in his GM role. I had Wayne attend our monthly Board meeting and discuss the implications.

He brought his report for discussion, and his numbers were almost identical to mine. He found that if we continued on the current path, we would stand to lose $1.5m in the 2023 calendar year. He agreed the business was dangerously close to insolvency, and would be there certainly within weeks if we continued with the status quo.

Just to be clear, the status quo was zero meaningful cost cutting, a few growth ‘initiatives’ presented to Judo Bank by Andrew, and a financial forecast that was millions of dollars away from what me (the former CEO, lead shareholder and Director), and the financial expert Wayne believed to be true.

But still, Eddie and Tony weren’t convinced. Eddie had checked out. A few months prior he had gone on a holiday to Tasmania convinced he wanted to move there. But he came back and had changed his mind. Then he said he wanted to move to Europe and just take Director fees and turn up to monthly Board meetings on Zoom. He was about to go on his 3rd trip since I’d stood down.

I was getting increasingly concerned that the company was trading insolvent. This is illegal, criminal in fact, and there are potentially big implications for Directors for doing it.

I had come back to work part time to work on figuring our inventory and finance, but me being back at work was clearly difficult, and my role was still unclear. The whole time Eddie and Tony had said that once the dust settled, I would just come back as normal, and Nathan would be GM.

Just to be 100% clear. A GM is an employee who reports to the Directors (me, Eddie and Tony at that time). Nathan was not a Director and had zero equity. He did not have the authority to make important financial decisions – those legally have to be made and signed off by the Board (the Directors).

We had all assumed the mess would be cleaned up well before he started. But by early 2023 it seemed clear it wouldn’t be.

As interim GM, Eddie had just continued doing his normal job in the warehouse and hadn’t done anything differently, as far as I could tell. Effectively no one was leading the company. There hadn’t been any discussions about my role or me returning, each month the sales team were missing targets and nothing was spoken about. Eddie was just overseeing the decline, getting comfort from Andrew’s relaxed state, and waiting for Nathan to come and solve all of our problems.

As we got close to Nathan starting, I began filling him in on some of the details of the whole situation. The financial position, my papers I’d given to the Board about costs, Wayne’s report, the relationship situation, all of it.

I was still coming in part time to work on the finance and inventory project, but I was getting no support from Eddie or Andrew. It was a very uncomfortable situation. It was super clear Andrew didn’t like me and didn’t want me there. He could tell I could see through his bullshit.

I never saw Eddie in the office, he was in the warehouse. Andrew would turn up to work at 11 and leave at 3, and spend most of the day having long winded conversations with people about random things. This was the guy that Eddie had all but handed over the reigns to.

The situation was truly bizarre, and heartbreaking.

This was our company, that we started, still owned the majority of and still had control over. WTF!

I started wondering if I was the crazy one and everyone else was right. There’s only so many times you can try to convince people of things that are so obvious to you, only to have them do the opposite, before you start questioning yourself.

I explained to Tony, Eddie and Nathan, I needed to return to work full time.

Believe it or not, it had been 8 whole months since I stepped down. I was still getting paid as the CEO! I’d brought this up a few times, and Eddie and Tony had decided to just buy a bit more time. We were now paying 6 figure salaries to Andrew and a multiple 6 figure salary to Nathan (both salaries more than I had ever been paid as CEO). All of this at a time when the company was losing money and had no cash.

There was no way any of this was going to add up. The whole situation needed a resolution.

I believed the right call was for me to come back full time on projects, first off to figure out our inventory / finance problem and then to run investor relations, or marketing, or both. And at the same time, I hoped Nathan would agree with me and talk some sense into Eddie and Tony about our cost issue. I was desperate at that point to do anything to get the message through.

I did not believe the business would survive without me. It sounds arrogant, but the reality was, that I had personally managed pretty much everything to do with our marketing, our story, investor relations, crowdfunding, and I was now the only person who understood the inventory problem and the finances. Plus we’d built the business off the back of a community of investors getting behind our story of ‘beer made by 3 mates in Burleigh’, and the whole idea of transparency and sharing everything along our journey. If I left it would just be plain weird for investors, especially if we didn’t explain why. It would be a gigantic red flag.

Because I knew I was the only one taking the financial situation seriously, I knew if I left, it would get swept under the carpet and it would ultimately just lead to certain collapse.

Plus the only other source of finance was Judo Bank, and I was the only one who’d had any involvement in that relationship other than Andrew’s dodgy projections. Not to say other people couldn’t step in and raise funds, but it would surely be a huge red flag to the Bank that the guy who founded the company, ran the company and publicised most of the stories and marketing around the brand, was just not going to be there anymore. Weird!

Either way, we clearly needed to make a decision. I had put Tony in a Board seat, so me and Eddie no longer had a deadlocked Board. They had the power to remove me if they wanted to the entire time, and a decision needed to be made.

I pleaded with them to either agree to fire me, or agree to have me return to work full time. Whatever the case, something had to happen.

I planned an in person meeting to discuss the matter with Tony, Eddie and Nathan on Friday. A few hours before the meeting, Tony messaged me and said we were meeting on Zoom instead.

I thought this was very odd, there was no reason to meet on Zoom. Well post Covid and we were all on the Gold Coast which is a small place.

When I called in, it had a sombre vibe. I wrote about what happened in my post Inappropriate Conduct or Falling in Love at Work – What happened at Black Hops. Essentially Nathan did the talking “I’ve reviewed the report, I think the behaviour is inappropriate for a CEO and you should step down, as an employee and as a Director”.

Tony and Eddie didn’t say a word.

I told them I’d think about it over the weekend.

I fully believed it was an awful decision to have me removed from the business. But by this point, I believed the company to be insolvent, and I realised there was no way I could influence things to help that, as long as Eddie and Tony remained Directors, and Andrew’s plan was being followed. I had tried so many times to talk some sense into them about our financial situation, and they were never coming around.

There was nothing else I could do, so it was either refuse to resign, hang around powerless and watch it all crumble while being a Director as a company traded while I believed it to be insolvent, or step away.

The only option in my mind was to step down. It would ruin our whole story. It would be a huge red flag to investors and the Bank. It would take away the only person who understood how to effectively market the business and raise money. And it would take away the only person seriously trying to solve the financial problems. I also believed it was grossly unjust, but by this point fairness really didn’t come into it. I was well past worrying about the investigation and how I was being treated. I was convinced what was going on in relation to the company continuing to trade in this way was a crime.

It was clear to me that going forward, Eddie and Tony were handing over all decision making to the employees, Nathan and Andrew. I knew Andrew would lead the agenda and Andrew had zero desire to urgently address the financial problems.

Technically I could have saved my own job if I really wanted to. I could have removed Tony as a Director. He was only there because I put him in place with one of my voting rights to break the deadlock between me and Eddie. And to be honest, it hadn’t gone as planned. I thought he would be on board with making tough decisions about the business. But he just wanted to go with the flow with what Andrew was suggesting and wait months and months for Nathan to start so he could throw him a hospital pass.

Tony was an accountant, so I figured if anyone could understand how critical our financial situation was, it would be him. But he didn’t want to get into the details of anything, and didn’t pick up any issues in the dodgy finances Andrew was putting out.

If I removed Tony as a Director, Eddie would not have the power to remove me. I had enough shares to hold two Board seats, so stepping down would be my choice.

Plus if they fired me, I believed if I really wanted to, I could challenge it legally. I believed if it went through a legal process, there was absolutely no way that any kind of proper process was followed, and I didn’t believe I’d done anything legally wrong to begin with.

But I definitely didn’t want to drag the company through that, and I’m sure they didn’t want that either.

With my concern that the company was trading insolvent, I worried about whether I would be legally liable for that if I stayed on as a Director. I had zero confidence in the fake plan that Andrew was executing, and even less confidence that Eddie or Tony would make competent decisions going forward. Eddie was checked out, Tony would do whatever Andrew and Nathan said.

It’s supposed to be the other way around, the Board is supposed to set the criteria for the GM. But this clearly wasn’t happening – quite the opposite.

The inmates were running the asylum.

We had all agreed in a meeting months ago that if we continued trading with the current finances, then we would be trading insolvent, so I knew the other Directors knew that too. We were still trading, we’d lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in that time, things were significantly worse than before.

But we were still trading. And clearly, they were going to let Andrew and Nathan make decisions going forward. For me, without majority voting rights on the Board, I would not be able to change that. All I could do is continue standing by, nagging people being seen as a naysayer because I didn’t believe in “the plan”.

I knew if I saved my own job, I would stay on as a Director in a very dicey situation. And because nothing had been done about costs, I believed we were very close to a point of no return, if not passed it. I would be liable as a Director for continuing to trade a business, when I didn’t believe it should be traded, essentially committing a crime.

I was very uncomfortable with this, and despite knowing that they couldn’t sack me, I took the decision to step down as a Director, and resign from my position.

It was a heartbreaking moment in the middle of many more before, and many more to follow after.

Personally guaranteed

When you take out a loan in business, Banks will often want you to personally guarantee the loan. When we had expanded, we bought a huge multi million dollar packaging line, and I had personally guaranteed the debt.

I wrote about this in Judo Bank tricked me into giving away my business ($10m value) and now they are taking my family home, so I won’t rehash it here. But essentially I was still on the hook for our big equipment loan. I knew it, Tony knew it and Eddie knew it.

After leaving I was worried about this, a lot so I agreed to Judo’s plan to give back all of my shares for $1. These shares were previously valued at over $10 million dollars. I did so on the basis that Tony take on a small guarantee (about one tenth of mine). Eddie, Tony and Judo Bank agreed to it, but I found out much later on (2024) that Tony never signed off on his agreement and the bank came after me for all of it ($1.9m at the time). As of today 5 July, at the time of writing it has gone up to $2.1m because of their apparent legal costs (someone literally came to my house yesterday with a document saying I’m being sued in the Supreme Court).

In May 2023 a few months after leaving, Tony tried to get me to sign an agreement with Judo to give the company interest free finances. While I didn’t want to hurt their prospects going forward, I believed that this would send a dishonest signal to Judo. Here are the messages, first from me:

“Hey mate I’d be very nervous signing anything related to Judo. It would send a message to them that I’m on board with the direction of the business. As you know I feel like BH has misled judo with fake numbers and I said that at the time and it’s proven to be right in terms of the forecast being miles off and based on drastically bad data.

I don’t believe we can pay Judo back, I believe the company has been insolvent now and said so many months ago. I’m aware you don’t agree with me and obviously I very much hope you are right, but I have not seen anything that would change anything for me. I still haven’t seen a plan from Nathan, payables are out or (sic) control, there’s very little money in the bank. A lot of things are not being paid or being paid late, even major things like rent. BH is clearly unable to pay its bills when they are due and to me that is the definition of insolvency. Staff costs haven’t come down, I think they may have gone up. As a result of not bringing staff costs down which was my recommendation as well as Wayne’s, we have racked hundreds of thousands perhaps millions more debt unnecessarily, to the point where I don’t believe we will be able to pay it back.

I’m open to being wrong so for that I would need

1. A clear description of what is wrong about my current understanding of our financial position (that I accept).

2. Some plain English description of exactly what I’m signing with Judo and what it means.

3. Exactly what Judo have been told and what numbers they have been given and the workings behind those numbers.

4. A plan from Nathan that I believe will enable us to pay off our payables, right the balance sheet and return to profitability.

Another thing that I think would be worth doing is a conversation with a VA consultant to get another opinion on where the business is at.

I want the business to succeed obviously but I need something that will convince me it will at which point I’ll sign anything and be happily proven wrong and offer full support for everything.”

It wasn’t the first time I’d encouraged Eddie and Tony to speak with a VA consultant, I’d suggested it in late 2022, for which there was no appetite.

Tony replied with the following, including threats which were discussed in my article about the ongoing threats.

“Mate that all very disappointing to hear and you are so far off the mark I sit here gobsmacked. If all what you say is true then all our share are worthless. Judo are not prepared to release you from your guarantee as you are the major shareholder and you’ll be the first one they come after if VA happens.

Looks like we’re not going to get the temporary assistance from Judo now without your cooperation.

There is a shareholder meeting planned for next week 17th and invites going out today. You’re welcome to come along and hear Nathan’s plan in full.

Even if we were to put together everything you have asked in 1-4 above I seriously don’t think you’ll ever be convinced so probably a waste of time and we’ll move on to other initiatives. Judo have been fully briefed since Nathan started and forecasts updated. And FYI, speaking to VA consultants is what I do regularly as part of the profession. We know where the business stands.

Given our shares are all worthless at this time and you may be happy to get released from your guarantee by Judo then I’m happy to discuss you selling your shares for some value now so you are in the clear and let someone else take the risk. If interested let me know and I’ll pass it on to to Nathan.”

Admitting that all the shares are worthless at the same time as raising money from investors. This was not the Black Hops that I co-founded.

I never spoke to Tony or Eddie again (other than ongoing threats from Tony via message). I was never included in any company events or celebrations. They were seriously gung ho about covering up the issues. Pretty much the opposite of the values we had started the company with.

The company I had created was dead to me.

It was an excruciatingly painful time and at the time of writing, years on, it continues to be painful.

While I was excluded from all investor updates, at the end of FY 23 I was able to organise a call with Andrew after the yearly finances came out, to see how accurate my projections were.

This was for the calendar year 2023 where Andrew had projected $1.5m in profit and the Directors had sent those projections to Judo despite my providing a massive report on why they were inaccurate, and Wayne’s report saying exactly the same thing. I had predicted at least $1m in losses, as had Wayne.

On the call Andrew was very far from his usual relaxed demeanour. His words were “we thought we were bringing costs down, but they have just gone up”. The results were on par with what I had projected – actually worse. Multiple millions of dollars in losses, and no money left.

The company continued to trade.

They had gone back to investors, presented Andrew’s plan and raised a few months worth of funding by doing an investment round at a fire sale valuation. But that just kicked the can further down the road, and drained more money out of investors who didn’t know what was going on.

The company was in a dire state, no doubt also impacted by having only one founder left in the business, who had pretty much checked out. The whole marketing engine I’d built was around ‘Made by 3 mates in Burleigh’. Losing one was a hit, but losing basically all founders was an additional shot which no doubt contributed to making the numbers even worse than I had predicted.

Be careful replacing the founders of a business with a professional CEO. This has proven to be the case over and over again in business, and was certainly the case here.

The Directors finally put the company into VA in March 2024 and the debts were so high ($7.2m) that it couldn’t be saved by a DOCA. All 1,000+ investors and all creditors lost everything. A group of existing and new investors bought the assets in a fire sale for a few million dollars and kicked it off again. Investors were told on a call that they had lost all of their money but they would get some taproom discounts. I heard it as run by the new manager, and Eddie didn’t say a word on the call.

I’m told Eddie still works at “Black Hops” under the new ownership.

Moving on

At the same time as publishing this post, I also released the book “Black Hops Down: The Rise and Fall of Australia’s Most Loved Craft Beer Brewery”. It’s available on Amazon in Kindle format or Paperback – Australian Amazon Store | US Amazon Store.

There is no need to buy the book if you are a Black Hops original investor, I believe I have covered everything significant that resulted in your money being lost in my posts on this site. Namely:

This is a painful story to a lot of people right now and I understand that. I believe that it’s also a story that will ultimately help a lot of people going forward, and that’s part of why I wanted to share it.

I have zero interest in making money on this topic, especially from Black Hops investors. The reason the book is not free, is you can’t make books free in Amazon’s main online book store. I want the information to be in the main Amazon book store because I believe the story is significant, and needs to be told. I’ve made is super cheap as a Kindle book on the Australian Amazon store ($3.99). However I don’t believe Black Hops investors should have to pay for it, and that’s why I’ve put the main information that led to the collapse in public posts on my site (more than 10,000+ words).

I feel very bad about the collapse of Black Hops. I personally raised all the money from investors and if you are reading this as an investor, the collapse of Black Hops meant you wasted your money.

I am truly sorry to you. Many of you were my friends, family and other people I’ve had contact with online who believed in me personally. You helped us try to live the ultimate dream. I thought you would do very well out of it, and obviously you didn’t, and for that I apologise, especially because of how my actions at work contributed in a significant way to the collapse.

I also promised you transparency. It was our number 1 promise, and hopefully these last few posts can be seen in that context. Transparency was never just a marketing angle for me. It helped with our story and with marketing, but to me it was always a core value. It was something that I believed in years before Black Hops, and it’s something I will continue to believe in years after Black Hops. It’s how I think business should be done. It’s extremely uncomfortable at times, but it’s how I’m wired. Anyone who’s followed my content online over 20+ years knows this. Eddie, Govs, Tony, and all investors know this.

I believe investors deserved to know what happened, and I have put this content out with significant personal risk and a lot of years of anxiety-riddled life, which I’m sure will continue for some time.

I don’t believe anyone has lost more than I have as a result of Black Hops collapsing. I was a millionaire before we started Black Hops. I didn’t make a cent from Black Hops other than my wage. I was a multi-millionaire when I left Black Hops.

I lost the house I bought with the proceeds of my WP Curve business sale. I lost many of my friends and colleagues in the beer industry who believed things about me that weren’t true, and quite a few who weren’t happy with me because of things that were true.

I lost my reputation in the industry. I lost our house in Labrador. And in all likelihood because of the Judo deal that the Directors didn’t keep their word on, I will go bankrupt. I imagine I’m the only person who’s received credible, specific, physical threats to my safety, although I do know for a fact that there are other people who knew about the financial situation that were threatened financially.

I realise that putting this information out there is inviting a can of worms, but believe me, I don’t want this to go on any longer. I have done 2 interviews to speak about the book just so people can hear it in my words. And after that, I don’t want to continue talking about it. It’s my intention to not continue this as a story, unless I see something that’s not true or not fair, and I feel the need to defend myself.

None of the content I have put out about Black Hops Brewing Pty Ltd relates to the current incarnation of Black Hops, which I believe is under the entity name Black Hops Craft. I have nothing against the owners / investors in that entity (although I’m not super clear who actually owns it) and I have no issue with the team, I’m sure they are great. There may be people still there from when I was there, and I loved our team. I find it extremely weird that Eddie still works there but other than that, I have no idea what goes on there. Working in the beer industry is awesome and I wish the team there all the best. If they do well that’s great, and I hope my efforts to shed light on what happened isn’t seen as an attack on them. I have zero interest in harming the industry or the current version of Black Hops.

Actually the opposite, I hope the lessons from what happened, in particular the relationship stuff and the lessons around financial competence, will help a lot of people in the industry.

At the version of Black Hops that I ran, we had our fair share of scary press incidents and we only grew as a result. Bad press won’t kill a company, only bad management (or Directorship) will. If the leaders at the new incarnation of Black Hops are up to it, they’ll use this as a positive and the business will only benefit from the attention.

Finally, thank you to people who support me. I know everyone says this, but when you go through something as crazy as this, you REALLY find out who your friends are. I only have a few, but they mean more than ever. And you learn to really appreciate your supporters, and I know I have a lot of you. I imagine people read the comments on some of the stories out there and think that’s the sentiment, but I can tell you since creating the various bits of content I’ve created over the last few months, I’ve been flooded with support. Not everyone comments publicly, in fact I’ve learned the more important and meaningful thoughts happen by people contacting you directly, and if you have been one of those people I can’t thank you enough.

I’m looking forward to moving on, re-building and ending this story here.

Featured image by Jp Valery on Unsplash

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dan

Serial founder, owner of East Coast Roast, previously founded Black Hops Brewing, WP Curve, 6 books including The 7 Day Startup. I send a weekly email about startups, content marketing and entrepreneurship - join for free here.

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