A couple of weeks ago we gave Her.ie & JOE.ie readers the power to choose their favourite business from a Wildcard list to take the final place in The AIB Start-up Academy in association with The Irish Times. We're delighted to announce that the votes have been counted and you have chosen Vanguard Beer Collective as the Wildcard spot! Vanguard Beer Collective will join the ten other lucky finalists who have already been chosen for the exciting programme kicking off in January. You can find out more about the rest of the finalists here. Major congratulations are in order for James Winans (pictured above), the man behind Vanguard Beer Collective, a marketing and distribution agency to the burgeoning Irish craft beer industry. The business was set up in mid-2013 by James in order to address the many issues publicans were experiencing when sourcing beer from independent Irish craft breweries.Vanguard Beer Collective gives publicans and restaurateurs easy access to many different independent microbreweries across the country through a single contact, order, delivery and invoice. The agency also gives pubs and restaurants the opportunity to have rotation taps and access to many limited and seasonal beers. So the next time you're sipping on a snazzy new craft beer in your local, just think it could potentially have been brought to you via James and the Vanguard Beer Collective! We caught up with James today (pictured above with Maximum Media founder, Niall McGarry) to find out what it's like to have been crowned the AIB Start-up Academy Wildcard. You can check out a sneak peak of our chat below and stay tuned later this week when we'll be posting a video of our full interview with James. Her.ie: James, firstly, congratulations on winning the AIB Start-up Academy Wildcard! How does it feel to make it through to the next stage? James Winans: Thanks very much. I have to say, it’s very, very exciting. It was great to hear the news this morning. Talk about a fantastic way to start a Monday morning! Her.ie: Did you fancy your chances of winning the Wildcard? JW: Well, we tried not to get too excited, but we were definitely secretly hoping we could make it through. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it during the first phase, but we’re glad to have made it through thanks to the Wildcard. Her.ie: Did you do anything in particular to get more votes during the final stages of the Wildcard? JW: Absolutely. During the beginning, middle and final stages we really hit our network hard and asked all of our breweries to vote for us and get our name out their. And it evidently paid off! Thanks are due to everyone who helped us out and voted for us!

Her.ie: So how many people would you have in your network?

JW: We have 16 breweries, with around 150 customers and all the assorted barmen and everyone else who goes along with that. So lots of support and a big thanks to everyone who took the time to vote for us. We really can’t stress that enough.

Her.ie How will you use this opportunity to your advantage? JW: I suppose the immediate opportunity is the media exposure that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to achieve right now. And the AIB Start-up Academy is a fantastic way to hone our skills and make sure we’re doing the best we can do right now. So we’ll be looking forward to getting stuck into that in January. Roll on the new year. ​   For more about Vanguard Beer Collective check out their website, Twitter and Facebook pages.