- In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady talks to Naveen Jain about how to raise your kids as a billionaire.
- The big story: Trump sides with Russia.
- The markets: New all-time high.
- Analyst notes from Saxo (on equities and war), Goldman Sachs (on gold), UBS (on federal job cuts), JP Morgan (on housing).
- Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. Even the greatest managers often struggle to inspire their own kids. It’s easy to veer between tough love and indulgence, micromanaging and being too hands off. So I’ve long been intrigued with Naveen Jain’s approach. I first met him around 15 years ago, when his son Ankur, a Wharton undergrad who’d started the Kairos Society as a network for young entrepreneurs, invited me to be a mentor at the Kairos Global Summit. I was struck by how much he said he’d learned from his dad, both directly and indirectly. Kristin Stoller and I spoke with them in this week’s episode of Leadership Next.
Naveen, a serial entrepreneur who became a billionaire by founding companies that include the internet pioneer Infospace, Intelius, Moon Express, Blue Dot and now Viome Life Sciences, has long believed in exposing his two sons and daughter to business. “I started doing road shows with him when I was six,” says Ankur, who went on to found Humin, which was acquired by Tinder in 2016, and is now a billionaire himself as founder and CEO of Bilt Rewards. (Ankur’s sister Priyanka is cofounder and CEO of women’s health startup Evvy while his younger brother Neil went from consulting to investment management.)
There have been struggles and there have been many lessons in taking risks, identifying problems to solve and learning about the fickle nature of funding, timing and disruptive technologies. Demographics shaped their outlook, too. At 35, Ankur is trying to address issues like isolation, housing costs, polarization and student debt, describing his stint in San Francisco as “crypto monkeys and NFTs and all this baloney and, in the meantime, nobody in San Francisco could afford rent.” Naveen, 65, is now focused on personalized health, nutrition, and longevity.
Naveen thinks good parenting comes down to encouraging kids to constantly learn—and recognize that they learn most from what they see their parents do. “If you have a successful exit you think, ‘I want to spend time with my children … What your children see is very different. They see dad sitting on the sofa, watching CNBC, and they want to do that.”Adds Ankur: “It’s amazing to me how many of my friends barely even know what their parents do. Because both my mom and dad were working at a startup, we got dropped off at the office after school, and ended up sitting in meetings because we had nothing else to do. “ You can watch and listen to the podcast here.
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Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady, diane.brady@fortune.com, LinkedIn.
