Business Daily meets: Dean Forbes

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 20 December 2024

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We meet the CEO of Swedish software firm, Forterro.

Dean Forbes twice became homeless as a teenager, then got dropped from a career as a professional footballer. He points to that failure as a key moment in his eventual success, because it made him more determined. Now the business executive has topped a list celebrating influential black Britons.

(Picture: Dean Forbes. Credit: Getty Images)

Presented by Theo Leggett Produced by Theo Leggett and Sam Clack

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Business Daily Meats. I'm Theo Leggett.
0:06.0	This is the program where we meet the entrepreneurs, the influencers and the go-getters in the world of business.
0:12.0	And in this edition, it's the turn of one of Britain's most successful black entrepreneurs to tell us his secrets.
0:19.0	Dean Forbes came from a poor background, and as a teenager,
0:22.8	he twice experienced homelessness. Now he's a multi-millionaire. So sit back and listen as we talk
0:29.2	about how he did it, a story of failure, resilience and fortune, with just a little bit of
0:34.5	football thrown in. Well, today I'm sitting in a rather pl of football thrown in.
0:43.8	Well, today I'm sitting in a rather plush office building in the fashionable Soho district in the heart of London.
0:50.3	It's the kind of place where you probably would expect to meet the chief executive of a successful software company.
0:55.8	We're in a large boardroom, there's plush carpeting on the floors, fancy artwork on the walls. Everything's neat, tidy and clean. And the man I'm about to meet is the boss of a successful
1:02.9	software company, Swedish firm Fortero, to be precise. He's led a number of others during his
1:08.2	career or been involved with them. He was named Tech CEO of the year at the UK Tech Awards in 2022.
1:14.3	And this year he topped the Power List.
1:16.5	That's an annual publication that ranks the most influential people of African and African Caribbean heritage in the UK.
1:23.6	And if that wasn't enough, he runs a foundation aimed at championing social mobility and helping young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.
1:31.7	Dean Forbes, welcome to Business Daily Meets.
1:34.1	Thank you. Thank you very much.
1:36.0	Now, you started not a million miles from here in geographical terms, but in many ways it was a world away, wasn't it?
1:43.2	Yeah, in many ways it was. And to be wasn't it? Yeah, in many ways it was.
1:44.7	And to be sat here today in this situation and this role, as you described,
1:50.5	was something I just didn't really dream about when I was young growing up in Lewisham.
1:55.0	So it's quite a different situation to find myself in.
	...

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