A millionaire tech entrepreneur will not be sending any of his five kids to prviate schools because he wants them to have as ‘grounded’ a childhood as they can.
Sam Kroonenburg and his wife Claire, who live in Victoria, will enrol their children, aged between six and 13, to state schools instead.
After inspecting the state’s best private schools, Mr Kroonenburg said that he felt uncomfortable with what quickly felt like a ‘race for status’.
He thought that in order for his children to thrive in their own right they needed to focus on themselves and their passions instead of having life being handed to them.
‘I think if it’s too easy, or handed to you, then maybe you’ll lose the passion for it,’ Mr Kroonenburg told the Australian Financial Review.
‘I don’t know. I could be wrong. We’ll find out if I was wrong.’
Mr Kroonenburg pocketed $500million after selling his online education company, A Cloud Guru, that he developed with his brother, Ryan, in Karratha, Western Australia.
Mr Kroonenburg is among the wealthiest people in the country and ranked 137 on the Financial Review Rich List in May 2024.
Sam Kroonenburg has hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank but despite this he will be sending his five children to public schools – not private schools
Mr Kroonenburg and his wife, Claire, inspected Victoria’s very best private schools but ultimately decided that life should not be ‘handed’ to their kids
Mr Kroonenburg devoted himself to the company after he was rejected from a job at Amazon and the product was initially designed to help others secure high-paying jobs at the same company he had been rejected from.
The two built the program out of Mr Kroonenburg’s bedroom in three weeks in 2015 and sold it six years later to US company Pluralsight for $2billion.
Once Mr Kroonenburg began building the software in earnest he quit his job as an IT consultant and moved into a new home with his wife and children.
‘I kind of felt like the weight of wanting to deliver it for her and for the kids,’ he said.
‘I could only spend all that time in the business because my wife was holding down the fort at home and putting everything into the kids and the family to hold up the part of that I was kind of letting down.’
This fight to build his own company, he said, is what made him opposed to the easy ride that private schools would provide for his children.
Mr Kroonenburg believes the best people in life are those who have struggled in proving themselves and he added that these people typically end up in better positions.
Instead, Mr Kroonenburg admires those who endured the ‘journey’ of builing something from nothing.
He said his children would not be able to develop this kind of drive and determination at a private school.
Mr Kroonenburg built an online education company called A Cloud Guru with his brother Ryan (left) and ultimately sold it with guidance from Ms Kroonenburg (right) for $2billion in 2021
Before launching his own company in 2015 Mr Kroonenburg was an IT consultant who could not land a job at Amazon (pictured with his wife at the time)
Mr Kroonenburg’s wife has been at the centre of his business ventures and the millionaire encouraged others to include family in their work.
Within a year of creating A Cloud Guru Mr Kroonenburg and Ryan were offered $8million to sell but Ms Kroonenburg urged him not to.
At one point while his wife was dealing with their children, Mr Kroonenburg said his mother-in-law pulled him aside to tell him how hard it was to watch her daughter suffer through the hard times but they persevered.
Since selling A Cloud Guru when he was 40 everything has been uphill for Mr Kroonenburg who has since co-founded another company called Cuttable.
He hopes the challenges he faced developing his first company will help him make Cuttable, which is an advertising agency, even better.
