A Chat with Rob Follows: Founder and Chairman, STS Capital Partners; Founding Chairman of Altruvest Charitable Services

This week, Stephen Ibaraki has an exclusive interview with Rob Follows.

Rob Follows' purpose and passion is to help entrepreneurial business owners achieve maximum value when the right time comes to sell. Today, Rob has been involved with or led over a thousand M&A transactions, with a total transaction value of over $100B.

Rob led STS as its Founder and Chief Executive Officer for over two decades until he scaled to the role of Chairman in 2023. As Chairman, Rob works to further external business development efforts that include engagements with clients, participating and recruiting in the speaker circuit, and writing his book "Everyone has Their Own Everest, What is Yours?" among other initiatives.

In addition to being Chairman and Founder of STS Capital Partners, Rob is also the founding Chairman of Altruvest Charitable Services, a Canadian charity that provides training and tools to improve the performance of local charities so they can give more to their causes. In 1998, Rob received the Top 40 Under 40 leadership award for the work he had done in creating 1,000 new jobs in Canada, as well as founding and growing Altruvest Charitable Services which has now contributed over $10 million since its establishment.

Rob is a true believer in contributing leadership. He has held various roles with YPO-WPO (Young Presidents' Organization - World President's Organization), including founding chapter chair; former Chair of the Global Deal Network; Founding Chair of the Executive Committee of the Social Enterprise Networks; serving on the networks committee of the international board of YPO for over five years and contributing to over 100 events as a YPO best of the best premier speaker.

Rob's academic accomplishments include: BA with distinction from the University of Toronto); LL.B from Osgoode Hall Law School at York University; certificate in Not-For-Profit Management from the University of Toronto and Sheridan College; Arbor Award from the University of Toronto as an international leader in corporate philanthropy; and MSc (Oxon.) from Oxford University's Saïd Business School in Advanced Strategy. He was also honored by being identified as one of the "Group of 175": the 175 most visionary and philanthropic living graduates in the history of the University of Toronto.

Along with his work and charitable accomplishments, Rob is also an extreme adventurer. When Rob summited Everest on May 24, 2006, he became part of an elite group of people who have climbed all Seven Summits.