Dragons' Den star sets out IPO route for his cloud-based business

Technology entrepreneur Piers Linney is listing his company on the Alternative Investment Market, where it will possess a market cap of £34.6 million.


Technology entrepreneur Piers Linney is listing his company on the Alternative Investment Market, where it will possess a market cap of £34.6 million.

Having joined Dragons’ Den in March, Piers Linney is pursuing fast growth for his Outsourcery business on the capital markets.

The business, which provides cloud-based IT and communications services and was set up in 2007, will raise £13 million when it joins the Alternative Investment Market (AIM). It currently has commercial partnerships including Pearson and London Business School.

Linney, who took the position of Theo Paphitis on BBC investor show Dragon’s Den, qualified as a solicitor specialising in private equity and also worked as an investment banker and venture capital fund manager. He is also a founder shareholder of Tower Gate Capital, a London-headquartered merchant bank which offers advisory and investment services.

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He comments, ‘We aim to exploit the opportunities we are seeing at this exciting time in our development and see this fundraising as a great endorsement of our business model, technology platform and growth prospects.

‘The funds will enable us to continue to grow rapidly, support the development of our portfolio of unique products and provide the financial resources to help us scale our business and our leading market position.’

According to a statement, Manchester-headquartered Outsourcery has spent £30 million to date in developing its O-Cloud platform, a service which provides servers to customers.

Trading in Outsourcery shares is expected to start on 24 May 2013.

Hunter Ruthven

Bernard Williamson

Hunter was the Editor for GrowthBusiness.co.uk from 2012 to 2014, before moving on to Caspian Media Ltd to be Editor of Real Business.

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Venture capital funding