{"id":17886,"date":"2012-10-04T10:40:53","date_gmt":"2012-10-04T10:40:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.clearbooksltd.com\/?p=446"},"modified":"2014-01-13T17:31:50","modified_gmt":"2014-01-13T17:31:50","slug":"london-accountant-starts-6m-software-empire-from-his-lounge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/london-accountant-starts-6m-software-empire-from-his-lounge\/","title":{"rendered":"London accountant starts \u00a36m software empire from his lounge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>British cloud accounting startup, Clear Books, has transformed from a one man band\u00a0working from home to a SaaS technology company valued at \u00a36 million in four years.<\/p>\n<p><strong>4th October 2012<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>(London, UK) Clear Books, a leading provider of online accounting software to British businesses,\u00a0has accepted an offer of investment of \u00a3300,000 which values the fledgling company at \u00a36 million,\u00a0but it\u2019s not getting complacent.<\/p>\n<p>The investment brings with it new investor, WAKR! Holding B.V. run by Tjeerd Kramer, a\u00a0successful Dutch entrepreneur. Mr Kramer is highly experienced with rolling out web products\u00a0in different languages and geographies and specialises in conversion optimisation. Whilst the\u00a0company has no current plans for international expansion Mr Kramer\u2019s experience opens doors for\u00a0the future.<\/p>\n<p>31 year old Managing Director of Clear Books, Tim Fouracre, explains, \u201cAs a Chartered\u00a0Accountant who trained at KPMG, I have always kept a tight control on the company\u2019s finances.\u00a0This investment provides a small injection of capital to build our team as we anticipate continued\u00a0strong growth and increasingly take market share away from Sage and QuickBooks.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Clear Books was started in the depths of the credit crunch, and although a daunting prospect,\u00a0it proved to be the perfect time to launch its disruptive new cloud technology. People made\u00a0redundant in the recessionary climate have set up new businesses and flocked to Clear Books in\u00a0their droves, attracted by the cost effective pay as you go subscription plans and flexible access to\u00a0their financial data.<\/p>\n<p>From July 2008 to November 2009 Clear Books was operating as a one man band with a trading\u00a0address that read, \u201cfounder\u2019s lounge\u201d. Fast forward to today and in the six months to September\u00a02012 the company is profitable on annualised revenue in excess of half a million pounds. Almost\u00a05,000 businesses use its online accounting software, supported by a London based team of 17.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Fouracre concludes, \u201cClear Books is passionate about changing how small businesses do\u00a0business. This investment allows us to push ahead with helping our small business customers\u00a0succeed that little bit quicker. We want to help as many businesses as possible and we won\u2019t rest\u00a0until we\u2019ve displaced Sage as the UK\u2019s largest accounting software provider. Admittedly, we still\u00a0have a lot of work to do, but our team is up for the challenge\u201d.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Notes to editors<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Clear Books is a London based Software as a Service company that provides cloud accounting\u00a0software to thousands of small business customers. It has been praised for its simplicity and ease\u00a0of use by non-accountant business owners.\u00a0The company aims to help its customers become more innovative, have fun, keep things simple,\u00a0do things faster and work in more open and collaborative ways.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Spokesperson<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Lizzie Fouracre<br \/>\nClear Books Limited<br \/>\ne: press@clearbooks.co.uk<br \/>\nw: www.clearbooks.co.uk<br \/>\np: 08448 160 616<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>British cloud accounting startup, Clear Books, has transformed from a one man band\u00a0working from home to a SaaS technology company valued at \u00a36 million in four years. 4th October 2012 (London, UK) Clear Books, a leading provider of online accounting [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>London accountant starts \u00a36m software empire from his lounge | Clear Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.clearbooks.co.uk\/blog\/london-accountant-starts-6m-software-empire-from-his-lounge\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"London accountant starts \u00a36m software empire 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