New Dragon in Den but firm is still in the red
A NEW Dragon entered the Den on Sunday night as Piers Linney, the co-founder of cloud computing firm Outsourcery, made his first appearance on the long-running BBC Two show.
The Capitalist cheered Linney’s first investment – a mere £30,000 for a five per cent stake in Skinny Tan, a fake tan product that promises to reduce cellulite – but we do wonder whether he shouldn’t be concentrating on his main business.
Because while Outsourcery was valued at £34.6m when it listed on Aim in May, filings show the cloud computing company remains firmly in the red, with pre-tax losses widening to more than £10m in 2012 on revenues of just £3.6m.
Since Linney and his family still own around a quarter of the company’s shares – currently worth just over £9m – he will be hoping that the firm stops burning through cash in the near future.
That said, Linney could have a second career as a daredevil – when not filming Dragon’s Den the former City worker likes to go BMX riding and has booked a flight to space with Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic.