Grindr CEO graduated with $500 in his pocket. Now a self-made millionaire, he plans to bring his kids to the office at 10 years old to teach them grit

Grindr CEO George Arison knows what it means to start from scratch. Born in the Soviet Union, he immigrated to the U.S. as a teen, hustled through odd jobs while studying, and graduated from college with just $500 in his pocket. Far from seeing hardship as a setback, he credits it with giving him the grit to build himself into a self-made millionaire. 

Now, his biggest concern is whether his two children will have the same fire in their belly. So much so that he’s planning to bring them into the office from around the age of 10.

“When I was their age, 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 told Fortune. “There’s a very sharp contrast there between what I was getting as a six-year-old and what my kids are getting as six-year-olds.”

Arison made his mark founding Taxi Magic (sold for an undisclosed sum and now called Curb). He took the reins at Grindr, the LGBTQ dating app with 15 million monthly users, in October 2022—landing a $1 million-a-year salary, plus bonus and stock options.

“It’s no question that as of right now, they’re not going through enough problems to be set up for success in the way I went through those—there’s no disputing that. My kids are growing up in Palo Alto, California, one of the most safe and wealthy places in the world.”

But........

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