Born in Soviet Union, Grindr CEO was told he had two career options: Learn English or how to shoot a gun

Most young people are told the path to prosperity is to study hard, maybe go to college, and get a grad job. Not Grindr CEO George Arison. Born in the 1980s Soviet Union, his father told him he had only two shots at success—one of which was learning to be proficient with a firearm.

“My dad would come to say good night and spend 30 minutes talking to me about the fact that, in his view, the Soviet Union would collapse by the time I was 15, and the only people who would succeed if the Soviet Union collapsed were people who either spoke English or knew how to shoot guns,” Arison exclusively tells Fortune.

“And seeing that he did not expect me to know how to shoot guns or be good at it, my only alternative was to be really, really good at speaking English.”

While other kids his age were raised on tightly controlled messaging, he says he was fortunate to have access to global news channels—and that’s how he perfected his English, opening him up to a world of possibilities when he eventually moved to the US as a teen. 

“I had a great grandfather who lived in the same apartment building that we lived in, across the hall, and he had been a very senior officer in the Soviet military during World War Two, so as a result, he had special privileges,” he explains, while adding that one of those privileges was access to a radio which would sometimes catch non Soviet radio frequencies.

“So oftentimes, when something was happening, he would be able to listen to Voice of America… and so I could actually absorb some of this stuff in ways that most other kids could........

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