Grindr CEO George Arison knows what it means to start from scratch. Born in the Soviet Union, he immigrated to the United States as a teenager, hustled through a string of odd jobs while studying, and graduated from college with just $500 in his pocket. Far from seeing that hardship as a setback, he credits it with giving him the grit to build himself into a self-made millionaire.\nNow 49, Arison is thinking hard about how to pass those same lessons on. His biggest concern is whether his two children will grow up with the same fire in their belly—and he is so determined to make sure they do that he is planning to start bringing 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 getting as six-year-olds."

Arison first made his mark as the founder of Taxi Magic, which was sold for an undisclosed sum and now operates under the name 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. The company went public on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker GRND in November 2022, shortly after he took charge, a milestone that put the app's growth—and his own performance as chief executive—under the added scrutiny of public-market investors.

The contrast with his own childhood is stark, he acknowledged. "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." That gap—between a boyhood spent bracing for a collapsing superpower and a childhood spent in one of the world's safest and wealthiest places—is precisely the problem he is now engineering against.

Still, Arison believes there are things parents can do to instill grit in their young ones. It is a conversation he and his husband have had: how to help the children overcome whatever challenges 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's CEO wants his kids in the office young—because nothing builds character like watching dad work 12-hour days

Rather than shielding his children from the pressures of his job, Arison is planning to bring them along for the ride. In his view, watching a parent work—and work hard—is one of the most valuable educations a child can get.

"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 explained. "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. From the age of 7, Arison regularly tagged along with his grandfather, who held a "senior role in the Soviet system"—an experience he now wants to replicate for his own children.

"He would bring me to work a lot when I was little," the 49-year-old chief added. "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 a point of weaving his job into everyday conversation, even though his children are still too young to really understand what it entails to run a company. "They don't get it, but I do it on purpose," he said, adding that he will definitely be taking them to Grindr's headquarters in a couple of years. The timeline, as he lays it out: conversation now, office shadowing starting around age 10.

Taking the kids skiing to help build resilience

To an outsider, regular family ski trips might sound like the stuff of luxury holidays. Arison asserts, however, that he put his children on the slopes from a very young age for a different reason: the sport will 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 said, adding that he used to have to jump out of the lift three to four 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."

The sport doubles as a way of bonding. Like many parents, Arison is often wrapped up in work in the day-to-day, and skiing is a chance for the family 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 added. "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."

A version of this story was originally published on Fortune.com on October 1, 2025.