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 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, 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. “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 14 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 there are things, Arison says, that parents can do to instill grit in their young ones. It’s a conversation Arison and his husband have had: How to help them overcome any future challenges that life throws at them, without taking anything “away from them” right now.
In the end, he came up with two solutions: Skiing and shadowing.
Grindr CEO wants his kids in the office young—because nothing builds character like watching dad work 12-hour days
Instead of shielding his children from the pressures of his job, Arison is planning to bring them along for the ride.
“I want them a lot more involved in my work than I think most parents would have their children involved in their work because I actually think that’s one of the ways to learn about greatness,” Arison explains. “I still work insanely hard. I usually work 10 to 12 hours a day and I think seeing what I do and how important the love for work is will be really crucial.”
He knows firsthand the impact of watching ambition up close. In fact, Arison used shadow his grandfather at work in a “senior role in the Soviet system” from the age of 7.
“He would bring me to work a lot when I was little,” the 47-year-old chief adds. “I think a lot of my work grit very much comes from watching him…. And so I think having my kids observe me at work is going to be a really important thing for them in understanding why it is that you should be working very aggressively, and that with great opportunities comes even greater responsibilities.”
At home, Arison makes it a point to bring his job into everyday conversation—even if his kids are still too young to really understand what running a company entails. “They don’t get it, but I do it on purpose,” he says, adding that he’ll definitely be taking them to Grindr HQ in a couple of years.
Taking the kids skiing to help build resilience
While skiing sounds like the stuff of luxury holidays, Grindr asserts that he put his kids on the slopes from a very young age because it’ll test their resilience.
“Skiing is actually not easy. It’s a complex sport, and you will need to deal with stuff while you’re doing it,” Arison says, adding that he used to have to jump out of the lift 3 to 4 seats short of the end, because it would sometimes stop running.
“My kids probably won’t have to do that, but skiing is still difficult, and I want them to learn, probably both the pleasure of it, but also the adversity of dealing with something like that.
It’s also a way of bonding. Like many parents, he is often wrapped up in work in the day-to-day. Skiing is a chance to truly switch off together.
“The other thing that a lot of my mentors or friends who have children, who are older and in a similar financial situation to what I am or better, have said that one of the things you can do is be very involved in one of their sports,” the CEO adds. “Because if you’re really involved in one of their sports, they develop a much closer relationship to you in ways that they wouldn’t otherwise, especially if you’re not the primary parent every day—the there all day kind of thing.”
“So that’s another reason I put them on skis, because I wanted that with them. We do this together. And it’s very important that I’m there for them when they’re skiing.”
