YouTube, Gin, and the Power of a Spreadsheet
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Few CEOs could claim their core growth strategy includes an on-camera personality who regularly urges viewers not to like, comment or subscribe. But for Vishap Patel, CEO of James Gin, that counterintuitive tactic appears to be working just fine.
"A year ago we didn't have a YouTube channel," Patel reflects. "Then we launched James May's Planet Gin. To date we've attracted over 600,000 subscribers (despite insisting that people should not like, comment or subscribe) and we're now releasing new video content on a weekly basis." This push into content hasn't just built an audience - it's built margin. "We're also extremely active on all social channels with around 2m views per month on Instagram and 3.3m likes on TikTok. From a business perspective, we think this is a fairly unique way to promote a spirits brand - particularly as the YouTube advertising revenue makes it more or less cost neutral."
It's an unorthodox marketing plan for a gin company - but Patel, who joined as CEO six months ago, hasn't come to preserve tradition. One of his first moves was to bring a dose of operational rigour to a business founded, in his words, by "people who have an allergic reaction to Excel spreadsheets." "I joined the business as CEO 6 months ago and the first thing I did was create a business plan and budget for 2025," he says. "Who knew, having a strategy, plan and structure in place could lead to faster organic growth?"
In Patel's world, planning doesn't quash creativity - it frees it. "There's still room for creativity and flexibility in the best laid plans, but we now have a clear direction of travel at the company which allows the team to be more clearly focused." Perhaps the most striking shift in his thinking, however, has been around venture capital. Where many founders see funding rounds as a rite of passage, Patel has become wary.
"That fundraising is a necessity for any founder," he says - "that's the belief I've changed my mind on." In his view, it stems from "a misconstrued belief that a start-up is generally loss-making by default, with a 'grow at all costs' mentality in the beginning which doesn't actually set the business up for long-term success."
The James Gin approach is different: deliberate growth, positive cashflow, and full control. "A smaller, more focused start can lead to better proof of concept and identification of a low-cost and scalable marketing model. Fundraising sucks up so much of a founder's time and energy. Running the business profitably... allows you to retain control of the business, its trajectory and ultimate value." Not all capital, he concedes, is bad. "But I'm now clear that you should raise funds to actually grow your business quicker once you have identified clear growth drivers, rather than fundraise to keep the lights on."
That humility - and strategic patience - may explain why Patel sees curiosity as a founder's most underrated strength. "I'm committed to getting things right and if I don't know the answer, I'm not afraid to ask. This business was founded by people who are experts in fields that are way outside my experience and I'm constantly learning new things - as, I believe, they are from me."
He's also quick to highlight the virtue of failure, and Britain's need to reframe it. "To learn more from our friends across the pond," he says, is the task ahead. "To embrace failure, and see it as a learning opportunity and not a negative." "Most successful founders fail two or three times before making it stick. The wunderkid who skipped school and became a millionaire by 20 - they are the anomaly, not the rule."
His vision for the next decade? A more experienced, more resilient start-up ecosystem: "More experienced, fearless founders in the UK, committed to building profitable and sustainable businesses will build a more robust and resilient startup ecosystem that can remain attractive for investment even in the face of macroeconomic uncertainty."
It's a future built not just on risk and ambition - but, occasionally, on a well-formatted spreadsheet.
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