Former Rightmove boss exits proptech directorship three months after joining

Former Rightmove boss and multi-millionaire Scott Forbes’ stint as a director at proptech and smartphone lettings platform Movebubble has proven to be very short.

Forbes, who is 63, left Rightmove in April this year after 14 years at the portal’s helm including many years as its chairman, joining Movebubble in October.

But the London and Manchester-based smartphone service has now revealed that Forbes has left as a director just two months after joining, although he has plenty to keep him busy.

He is also a director of US firm Cars.com, data analytics firm Ascential Plc, and two residential property management companies in London.

Build to rent

Founded in 2014, Movebubble hopes to be the next Rightmove for the build-to-rent sector and so far has had 750,000 downloads of its proptech app and reported 152% growth year on year growth for the past 12 months.

Movebubble originally launched in 2014 as an ‘Uber for the property world offering two-click viewing bookings and the ability to rate an agent’s service in the same way TripAdvisor does’.

But it more recently changed direction to embrace build-to-rent and one of its shareholders is Tipi (now known as Quintain Living), which operates the huge build-to-rent ‘city’ next to Wembley stadium.

Movebubble, which describes itself as London’s ‘No.1 rental app’ raised £800,000 in 2018 and £1 million via crowdfunding site Seedrs, and has raised nearly £4 million in total from different investment funds and venture capitalists.

The Negotiator approached its CEO Aidan Rushby for comment.