Brewing up a storm by smartphone, Brewbot's co-founder Jonny Campbell is part of the Belfast-based team bringing the art of making craft beer to your own home.
"I studied multidisciplinary design at the University of Ulster, graduating in 2011. I'd been working freelance with start-ups, where the big visions and exciting ideas gave me the bug. I grew up around Lego, art and drawing. Then I started playing with kits like Arduino, which is like electric Lego for grown-ups; but the idea for Brewbot came about, naturally enough, over a pint.
"We were working as an App agency, and we'd attended the XOXO conference in Portland Oregon, which is all about creativity and independence.
“But we were also amazed at the variety of craft beers available, and realised that we couldn’t get that at home.
“Invest NI helped us to create the Brewbot concept, which marries smartphone technology, cool design (made in wood and stainless steel, it’s like a piece of furniture), service design, and also touches on the craft and maker movement.
"We wanted to see if there was a market for us, so Kickstarter was a good way of doing research . . . We launched that in 2013, and were selected to join the Techstars accelerator programme in Austin, Texas.
"I'm told it's harder to get into Techstars than Harvard, and since then we've been featured in Wired, New Scientist, and NBC News.
"We hired an RV and put Brewbot in the back and drove down to San Francisco. It was at the time Breaking Bad was on TV, and there were the five of us in the RV, pitching up to companies like Dropbox and Twitter. We were pinching ourselves, they were so receptive.
“Now there’s 29 of us, and we’re still growing. We were looking for a new office and development base, and found a pub on the Ormeau Road, so now we have a bar too. We’re in the final stages of engineering, and we’re hoping to have the first units out over the coming few weeks.”
Jonny Campbell speaks at the Design Hub, in Dublin Castle, on August 20th. The Brewbot is available to pre order for €2,100. brewbot.io
