Interviews  >  Piers Linney: Enter if you dare...

Piers Linney may be the latest ‘Dragon' on the BBC series Dragons' Den, but it's his success as an entrepreneur that got him there. Nick Kirby finds out what makes the man tick

As the 11th series of Dragons' Den hit our TV screens this summer, two new faces took their places alongside regulars Peter Jones, Duncan Bannatyne and Deborah Meaden – interior designer Kelly Hoppen and Piers Linney, Co-CEO of Cloud company Outsourcery. The two newcomers wasted no time settling in, making a joint investment in their very first episode.

The spotlights of the BBC studios are a long way from Rossendale in Lancashire where Piers Linney was born and raised by his Barbadian mother and English father, and where he ran his first business at the age of 13. The journey has been a very interesting one, with Piers qualifying as a lawyer and working as a banker in the City for a while before branching out on his own with a number of tech companies.

Despite an insanely busy schedule running Outsourcery and fulfilling his duties as a ‘Dragon', Piers took time to speak to businesslife.co about his colourful professional life so far.

Setting up your first business at 13 could be called precocious…
I was delivering papers five days a week, in the depth of Lancashire winter, and earning £5 for the ‘pleasure'. I thought it was rubbish! My dad hated going out to get the Sunday papers because they didn't deliver them, so I flyered the local streets asking who wanted their Sunday papers delivered and quite a lot did. So I bought the newspapers from the wholesaler and I delivered them on the Sunday – I made four times as much money on that one morning than I made in the whole week. At the time I wasn't thinking about it being a business, all I wanted was to buy a new BMX!

Have you been given one particular piece of business advice that you stick to?
I've never really had business mentors. I didn't have 10 years with some great mentor like the Karate Kid – I really had to work it out as I went along. Now I have a board of directors, a very experienced Chairman, and a fantastic business partner, and we get to lean on each other and share our ideas.

Is entrepreneurship nature or nurture? Are you born with it or do you learn it?
It can be a bit of both. Entrepreneurs range from those people who are starting up small companies from scratch – like those who come to the ‘Den' – right through to those who are going through a massive MBO and taking a company over. Some people are naturally creative and are risk-takers, other learn the skills as they go along and then put them to use. My mum's an entrepreneur. She was a health visitor, then she went into business and had a wedding flower business – she became an entrepreneur after she retired.

So where do you fit?
I was always a bit entrepreneurial, but I still went to university and spent seven years working to qualify as a lawyer. As soon as I got to the other side of that, I was working in the City – I was a comprehensive-school kid who was now working in Canary Wharf and I knew that this was my time to soak it up, so I worked really hard to be very good at what I was doing. I barely left the office for three years. I knew that I was learning skills that I would be able to use later in life.

Was going from the mainstream into your own business always part of the plan?
I've never really had a plan, to be honest. I had to take my A levels twice. I did my law A level at night school and found it interesting, so I went on to study law at Manchester University. When I actually got into it, I realised I didn't want to be a lawyer, so someone said ‘why don't you get into investment banking?' – which I did. So there wasn't a plan at all – when I get to a certain place I look ahead of me and say ‘I want to go there now'. I even say today I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up…

Is risk-taking part of the genetic make up of an entrepreneur?
I'm not a risk-averse person, that's my natural state. I was quite happy to leave a fantastic job because I got bored with it and went to do something else. Other people would never do that because they think about responsibilities and mortgages and car payments, whereas I just said: “You know what? I don't want to be a lawyer, I'm going to be something else”. I'm not afraid of making decisions and I often find that is what holds people back.

Outsourcery is at the cutting edge of cloud technology – are you something of a ‘geek'?
I wouldn't say I'm a geek, I know enough about technology, but my core skill set is business structure, raising money, vision, execution, making it happen. If I really need to get deep into tech, we have a fantastic team who are far geekier than I am ever going to be, and that's what they're good at. Starting a business – big or small – is about collaboration and knowing when to bring someone in that knows more than you do. I honestly don't feel the need to know how software coding works!

Is cloud the real ‘game changer' in technology right now?
Absolutely. It would take a very brave person to say that the way businesses consume ICT isn't going to be transformed. Through the cloud, companies of all sizes can access the latest technology and expertise – something they simply might not be able to if they were doing it all in-house. And the ROI is a lot higher with cloud. Your tiny SME company can now have the same technology and capabilities as a FTSE 100 company – so it's a leveller that makes you more productive and competitive.

Is success in technology all about first-mover advantage – if you don't get there first are you going to be forever playing catch up?
Not necessarily. There are plenty of cases of first movers who probably moved too quickly. If we had built Outsourcery and put £30 million into it and arrived at where we are today in 2009, we would have had a problem. There is a market now for the technology that we make available, but there wouldn't have been back then – so there would have been a gap that could have turned into a loss. I don't think you have to be first mover, but there is an inflection point after which you will be an also ran.

You are the new Dragon in Dragons' Den – how nervous were you about coming into such an established set up?
To be honest with you I just had to get on with it. The thing is, you are approached and asked if you want to do Dragons' Den, and you're not going to say no! And then suddenly you're in the green room, and then you are sitting in the chair and entrepreneurs are coming out and pitching to you. You don't have a huge amount of time to think about what is going on. Also, when you see the programme it's edited – but when they come out we grill them for two hours. My thought processes are: I'm an accountant, I'm a banker, I'm a lawyer. I'm going through all the permutations to work out whether I should invest £30,000, £60,000 or £100,000 of my own money. When you get into that mindset, you almost forget there are cameras on you.

Dragons' Den has really caught the public's imagination, but it's clear that some ideas are a bit bonkers…
I don't know about bonkers, but sometimes you get someone who walks in with a product that you think is going nowhere fast. When you talk to them, you ask why they have invested their time and money in this product and they say because family and friends think it's a good idea – but they aren't objective. So in cases like that, the Den can be a reality check. Unfortunately, some get the reality check once they've already invested their life savings. I think that people aren't put on Dragons' Den for us to tear to pieces, as that wouldn't be credible.

They say that part of being an entrepreneur is to have failures – have you had any?
I've had businesses that I've set up which have run their course and we've shut them down. I've had failures in investments where I've invested money and lost it, but that's life. However, I've never had a blowout where it's all gone horribly wrong and I've lost money.

Do you think that Dragons' Den has inspired a number of wealthy individuals to explore ‘angel investing'?
I think it is probably partly responsible for that. I know what we do is a TV show, but it is still real angel investment in that we are finding young businesses and investing money, helping them, advising them, monitoring them, opening doors for them and telling them what mistakes to avoid – and that's what angel investors do. Unfortunately, in the UK there isn't a particularly large venture capital industry, so the angel investors have stepped in to assume that mantle.

What is your take on crowdfunding – is it the future of business start-ups?
I think there's a place for it, but the issue with crowdfunding is that you end up being funded by a crowd, which means you may have trouble managing your shareholder base. And you might not end up with the mentoring that you need – there is no real focus. However, if you are an entrepreneur and you need money, it's a source of capital – so if that is the mechanism by which you are able to start your business…

If the Channel Islands came to the Dragons' Den and pitched to you about why people should do business with them, what would you want to hear?
I have no idea! The thing about any business is that it has to have a point of differentiation otherwise what's the point? If you are selling yourself as a digital centre, for instance, what is it that you do that others don't? 

Nick Kirby is businesslife.co's Editor-in-Chief

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