Meet the teenager aiming to build a £30m cloud consultancy

19-year-old hoping to one day appear on cover of Forbes magazine

A 19-year-old entrepreneur is aiming to build a £20m-£30m-revenue cloud comms consultancy that produces vendor shortlists matched to customers' commercial and technical needs.

Naming James Watt and BrewDog as role models, Oliver Taylor says he wants his new outfit, TECHGIANT, to be an "industry trendsetter".

Taylor's business is being supported by his father, Ian Taylor (pictured left), an industry veteran who has worked at BT, NTT and Telefonica.

TECHGIANT claims it can arrive at a shortlist of 10, five, or three ideal vendors "in rapid time", with all recommendations supported by hard facts presented in a comprehensive report. Its technology portfolio spans UC and collaboration, contact centre, AV, datacentre, cloud and infrastructure, among other areas.

It has a three-year goal of hitting £5m revenues and five-year target of £20m-£30m revenues.

"Together with my father I have developed a carefully orchestrated blueprint, based on the solid foundations of market understanding, operational excellence and technology-led business innovation," Taylor said.

"We recognise the pace of change within ICT is often simply far too fast for any one chief information officer to maintain, whether this is around vendor solutions or changes across the wider technology landscape. This is a key area of the consultative value we provide, surveying the whole marketplace based on the particular areas being assessed, but always with a great consideration around the bigger picture and longer term strategic vision each organisation is wishing to achieve."

Taylor claimed his vision was "not some naïve pipedream", arguing that his young age is a benefit because he "understands the aspirations and demands of this emerging generation in relation to business asks".

"On a personal note, I would love to one day be on the front cover of Forbes Magazine and appear on the hit TV show Dragons' Den, not pitching but actually as one of the dragons, allowing me to help organisations and individuals grow from start-up to success," he said.

"There's a lot of activity planned ahead for us right now, and I look at how James Watt and BrewDog impacted the drinks industry early on, admiring both their determination and creativity to simply get the job done with a novel approach to market share. They're a big influence in terms of an innovative market approach.

"Some people may perhaps snigger at our huge ambitions, but it is based on service excellence, a solid structural framework and meticulous planning, so they need to know we mean business. We aim to serve customers better, with honesty and integrity and the highest standards of delivery and performance. For me there's been far too much complacency in some quarters for far too long."