Piers Linney’s net worth was estimated to be £69 million.
Of English and Barbadian descent, Linney aspired to have his own business from the tender age of 13 when he was still a newspaper boy. He cut the newsagent out of the arrangement and made a direct deal with the wholesaler for his own paper round.
Is this how Linney built his multi-million pound empire?
To materialise his dreams, the business whiz studied law and accounting at the University of Manchester. In 1995, he got a job at renowned law firm SJ Berwin, specialising in corporate finance and venture capital. The year 1997 saw him drawn to Barclays de Zoete Wedd as an investment banker. Credit Suisse First Boston followed in 1998, which he left two years later to begin the first of a series of businesses – including Doctorsworld, a pharmaceutical research company, and record label TrusttheDJ, for which he acted as COO. In 2003 Linney started Tower Gate Capital Plc, a venture capital firm.
Partnering Simon Newton in 2007, he purchased Genesis, a mobile and data service provider, from FTSE 100 company DSG International. In 2010, after generating a whopping £45 million, the two sold it to concentrate efforts on cloud-based solutions, such as outsourced telecommunications. Branded Outsourcery, their firm was valued at £35 million on AIM, after a £13 million raise from asset management firm BlackRock and billionaire George Soros.
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Joint CEO Linney was instrumental in driving Outsourcery, churning out an annual turnover of around £10 million with a 150-strong workforce. In 2011, Daisy Group bought Outsourcery’s Vodafone mobile services division for £12 million. Riding the wave of a £4 million fundraiser last year and a £6.4 million deal inked with publishing ‘padrone’ Pearson Group, a confident Linney predicts a £100 million turnover by 2015.
Proving its potential, the cloud computing business advanced through four acquisitions and was named Microsoft’s worldwide Hosting Partner of the Year in 2010. £10 million of Linney’s own money was invested in Outsourcery, which was floated in May 2013 to raise £13 million as funds for business development.
Founding member of the governance board of the UK’s Cloud Industry Forum and cloud computing bigwig, Linney never fails to discuss its benefits with the media. His views have been featured on BBC, Sky News, Bloomberg, CNBC, CNN and throughout the regional, business and national press.
Spurred on by Sir Richard Branson, the young Linney is the most recent ‘Dragon’ – along with Kelly Hoppen – to grace the reality show Dragons’ Den, where entrepreneurs are allowed to put their business ideas forward to attract wealthy potential investors. Linney’s little daughters aged five and two were among those most excited to see him debut as a ‘Dragon’. His eldest wanted to see what he’d be wearing, as she thought that it’d be a dragon costume.
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In 2009, Linney was one of the twenty National Role Models representing the Government-backed programme REACH, an initiative to inspire black youth. Today, Linney is one of the top 100 most influential black Britons on the annual ‘Powerlist’ sponsored by Thomson Reuters.
Outsourcery’s accomplishments also saw the entrepreneur featured on Channel 4’s reality series Secret Millionaire in 2011, where he worked with charities including The Shannon Trust. Linney also worked with prisoners in a Young Offenders Institution, even inspiring one into his own employment and company.
A family of fitness enthusiasts, wife Tara operates a dance studio, while Linney, a BMX freak, can still get his mountain bike to execute wheelies.
