What would you do if you became an overnight multimillionaire? That’s exactly what happened to Brian O’Kelley in 2018, when he sold his ad-tech company, AppNexus, to AT&T for $1.6 billion.
But instead of buying a yacht or a fleet of sports cars, O’Kelley sat down with his wife for what he calls a “really interesting conversation” about how much was enough—and everything else went to causes they care about.
“I don’t believe in billionaires. I think it’s just ridiculous,” the serial entrepreneur exclusively told Fortune, adding that he kept less than $100 million from his 10% stake in the startup after it was acquired.
“We just figured out a number that we thought was enough money—to be able to buy a house and things like that—and then we doubled it, and we gave the rest away.”
For O’Kelley, the decision to cap his wealth isn’t just about generosity. “We never wanted to have so much money we didn’t have to make choices. It’s meant that we can’t be completely ridiculous about our life,” the Gen X CEO said. “We have an amazing life, we can do almost everything we want. But we can’t quite do anything we want—we have to talk about our budget like anybody else does.”
“I don’t get why you need $200 billion, $500 billion, or even $1 billion. The joy of appreciating what we have and making those hard choices is really foundation.”
Part of Brian O’Kelley’s philosophy comes down to not wanting his kids to become spoiled. “I feel terrible because they get to fly business,” he says, adding that at 6-foot-5, he does it for the comfort, but is uneasy about his children becoming accustomed to a life of luxury.
“I’ve flown all around the world in coach so many times, this is me spoiling myself, but I don’t want to spoil my kids,” O’Kelley adds. “And a lot of this comes back to me thinking about how life looks from their eyes. I want them to have a bit of that struggle that I had.”
He says amassing billions—and flaunting it—only keeps leaders further removed from reality.
“I wish more folks would ask the question of, why do I want the lifestyle that Jeff Bezos has?” O’Kelley says. “You can’t have a yacht and a helicopter and an island, and a big building with your name on it and all these things, because then you’re just sort of obnoxious. No human can actually truly appreciate that.”
O’Kelley’s says billionaires represent “such an incredibly ludicrous waste of money in a world where there’s so many people who don’t have that,” but he says actually being one is also “othering”—separating you from the limits and consequences that define normal life.
“There’s something about keeping connected to normalcy that is really, really important,” the entrepreneur explains. “I don’t want a yacht and I don’t ever want to be able to be without consequences. I think that’s the biggest risk, is, how can we be accountable when we have so much money we can buy anything?”
“Look, there’s days where I am like, ‘man, I wish I had some money,’ because my company could use an infusion of cash. That would be great if I didn’t have to ask VCs. But you know what that is? That’s accountability.”
