Fortune favours the brave — Tim Warrillow, co-founder of Fever-Tree

Tim Warrillow is the co-founder and CEO of Fever-Tree, the mixer maker extraordinaire. The company was set up in 2003, when Tim and his co-founder Charles Rolls realised there were all this lovely gin sloshing about the place, but a pretty lacklustre selection of tonics. So he trooped off to the Democratic Republic of Congo to find the best ingredients in the world — and just about lived to tell the tale. There were naysayers, of course — there always are. But the product has always spoken for itself. Today, Fever-Tree is the number one tonic in the UK, in the face of some pretty serious competition.  In this episode, recorded at Fever Tree’s global HQ in West London, Tim told us how an article in a discarded newspaper changed everything; what he thinks of the new hard seltzer trend; and why the phrase ‘pivot’ should be banished from the earth.