Piers Linney

Jonathan Piers Daniel Linney (born 15 February 1971, in Stoke-on-Trent) is a British businessman and investor with a professional background in the City. Linney has been recognised as one of the top 100 Black Britons and is known as a champion of entrepreneurship and growth businesses.

Linney is a non-executive director of the UK government-owned development bank, British Business Bank, which has facilitated over £12 billion of financing for UK small and medium-sized businesses and also operates the StartUp Loan Company and British Patient Capital, a £2.5bn fund launched in 2018.

He was the co-CEO and owner of Genesis Communications and was the co-CEO of cloud-based IT business Outsourcery. He is best known for being a "dragon" on the BBC Two business series Dragons' Den (known as Shark Tank in the USA) from 2013 to 2015.

Linney also appeared on the Channel 4 series The Secret Millionaire in 2011, where he worked in Wolverhampton at a young offenders' institution.

In November 2018, Linney was named in the top 20 of Financial Times's list of the top 100 minority ethnic leaders in technology. Linney was also named in the FT as one of the top 100 BAME Leaders in Tech.Linney is also content creator and public speaker focused on supporting entrepreneurs with ambitions to start-up or grow their businesses as part of his #ScaleUp initiative.