One of the UK’s fastest-growing technology companies has announced the move of its headquarters to Bournemouth as cloud accounting scale-up iplicit positions itself to become the south coast’s next billion-dollar ‘unicorn’.
The company, which delivers a next-generation cloud accounting platform for medium-sized businesses and charities, will base its frontline support team in Patch Bournemouth, boosting the city’s reputation as an emerging technology hub. iplicit previously operated from London and Poole under a remote-first model.
iplicit has been on a steep growth trajectory since launching in 2019, growing from 11 to 198 employees and securing 48,000 daily users in 103 countries. The company was named one of Europe’s fastest growing companies in the Financial Times FT1000 rankings and has achieved average annual growth of over 100% for seven consecutive years.
In January, the company secured £25m in its first institutional round from growth fund One Peak, having previously raised £18.5m from members of the management team in the bootstrapping phase. The new investment drives key product innovations, including expanded mobile features and AI-driven functionality.
CEO Lyndon Stickley said Bournemouth provided an ideal base for the company’s next phase. “We needed a dynamic environment that could scale with us and accommodate the South Coast’s next unicorn – and we found that at Patch,” he said. Stickley added that iplicit fills a “critical gap” in the mid-market market, where around 100,000 UK businesses continue to rely on legacy on-premise financial systems.
“Legacy software has dominated this market for 30 years,” he said. “iplicit is quickly becoming the most popular SME financing solution in the UK and we expect our strong growth to continue over the next decade and beyond.”
Local hiring is expected to increase significantly, with iplicit forecasting 330 employees by 2028, most working remotely in the UK and Ireland, but with a growing presence in Bournemouth.
Patch CEO Freddie Fforde said iplicit’s arrival reflected the company’s vision of bringing high-growth companies into city center workspaces. “iplicit is proof that great technology companies can be built anywhere,” he said. “Bournemouth has a lot to be proud of.”
Stickley said the new headquarters caps a pivotal year for the company. “Our information tells us we deploy more systems than any other provider in this space,” he said. With more than 50 distribution partners, including many of the UK’s leading accountancy firms, “we are well placed to continue to grow rapidly.”
