Dean Forbes: Homeless to Billion Euro Exits

Danielle Newnham Podcast

Interview with Dean Forbes - hugely successful turnaround tech CEO who has led several companies to massively successful exits.

But let’s go back in time. Dean experienced hardship growing up and his family were made homeless twice but Dean always had big aspirations. His first goal was to make money doing what he loved which was football and whilst he did get to play for a Premiership, the experience was short-lived and he was soon ushered into a soulless call centre where he honed his sales skills.

He then found himself at Primavera – an American software company where he grew the business to its sale to Oracle where he stayed on, making him the youngest vice president at Oracle for 30 years.

From there, Dean joined Paris-based KDS a SaaS software company where as CEO, he led it to an acquisition by American Express – their largest tech acquisition at the time.

Dean then went on to be CEO at CoreHR - a cloud-based HR solutions provider, where he led its growth and expansion up to acquisition by The Access Group in the UK’s largest private to private Human Capital Management M&A deal.

Then in 2021, Dean became CEO of Forterro which is home to a portfolio of specialised ERP (enterprise resource planning) software products (think the software that organizations use to manage day-to-day business activities such as accounting, procurement, project management, risk management etc). Having been hired to drive the company’s growth in Europe - within a year, he led the business to a 1 BILLION Euro exit!

If that wasn’t enough, Dean is also the founder of Forbes Family Group where he coaches and mentors young leaders and entrepreneurs from underrepresented backgrounds. Like I said, this is a special episode where we focus on Dean’s journey as CEO and how and why he makes the decisions he does in business – all of which have led him to so many hugely successful exits.

Enjoy!

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Dean on Twitter / Instagram / Forterro / Forbes Family Group

Danielle on Twitter @daniellenewnham and Instagram @daniellenewnham / Newsletter