The Team

The first third of his career was spent inside large corporates disrupting from within across strategy, M&A, marketing and innovation.

The second third was spent as a serial entrepreneur across food and drinks, technology, fashion, e-commerce and innovation agencies.

In the final third, he was co-founder at Distill Ventures - the world’s first dedicated accelerator for drinks startups. Over 8 years he built and led a dedicated NoLo specialist practise with a successful portfolio of rapid growth, disruptive NoLo brands.

The first of these was Seedlip, where he mentored Ben Branson and his team on strategy, growth model, team and investment which eventually led to Seedlip being acquired by Diageo. Along the way he acquired a deep understanding of the entire global NoLo category and developed unique insights leading to a playbook for success across NoLo spirits, beer and wine.

At Diageo, Andy was a member of the Global Executive from 2008 to 2015 as Chief Marketing Officer and then President of the Africa region.

Andy has repeatedly created environments where brands and innovation have thrived. Amongst many examples, his teams invented the extra cold beer category, rolled out Smirnoff Ice to 76 countries, doubled Diageo’s global luxury business, selling scotch at up to $150K per bottle, quadrupled the innovation contribution to sales in Africa in two years and established Distill Ventures to disrupt drinks innovation.

Since 2015, Andy has supported numerous founders around the world as a Chairman or long-term advisor in the marketing services, technology and drinks industries.

Maverick Drinks’ disruptive approach to brand building saw the business win multiple awards before being acquired by ZX Ventures (as part of Atom Group) in 2018. As a founder himself, Michael understands the challenges early stage businesses face and he now advises other innovative drinks brands on their growth, bringing his deep network and experience of route-to-market to help them scale.

Helen spent 17 years of her career at Diageo, working to establish a world class innovation organisation and culture. During this time, she successfully innovated across categories including whisky, vodka, gin and RTD’s. Helen led the creation and set up of Distill Ventures for Diageo and since 2016 has continued to work with founder led businesses across a variety of sectors – from DTC letterbox flower delivery to wine, rum and Scotch whisky.