Dara Khosrowshahi's family fled Iran after the 1979 revolution and lost everything. His mother took two jobs while his parents paid for private school, instilling in him an unspoken duty to rebuild what was lost. His grandparents had built businesses from scratch, a legacy that shaped his drive to succeed.
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Within our family, and I know other families that, you know, who came from Iran and the revolution, not everyone reacts to loss the same way. The way my parents and Hadi and I reacted, first of all, like losing all of our wealth, we went straight to like learning how to save money. My mom worked 2 jobs. I definitely felt motivation that like I need to somehow re-earn and rebuild. What we lost. The greatness that our family once had. And I think, I mean, for sure, I had pride in our grandparents and, you know, so on, had built all those enterprises in Iran from the ground up. They weren't like inherited wealth or royalty.
Totally.
They were entrepreneurs. And so I felt like that's in my blood. I can do it. But I'm wondering, like, did you have the similar kind of feelings of duty to build something back for the family?
Totally. And the funny thing, I'm curious as to how you felt. It was never communicated to me.
Yeah, same way.
Not once did my dad say anything about losing everything and rebuilding here, or my mom, or even my brothers. We didn't talk about it. But there was this weird undercurrent that all of us were aware of, and clearly you were aware of as well, and this almost a responsibility, which is, we're getting a second chance. I knew that for my parents, again, they were a little bit idealistic or dumb, whichever one you want to say, but they didn't take their money out of Iran. A lot of people who made their wealth in Iran took it out of Iran during those times. I think our family wanted to rebuild. They wanted to reinvest. Part of it was building a local operation that could expand in the Middle East and hopefully globally. And so we lost everything. And my brothers and I knew that my parents, one, obviously, our lifestyle got much smaller.
Yeah.
And at the same time, my parents were investing everything that they had to send us to private school. And there was this unspoken sense of responsibility for, I think, all of us in our family, which in hindsight might be why we've done quite well. in life and careers, et cetera, to rebuild. It was much harder on my dad because he tried his hand at being an entrepreneur in the US. And for various reasons, he took a couple of shots and he missed. And after those couple of shots, he kind of gave up a little bit.
He should have just been a starving researcher like my dad.
He should have anticipated the AI revolution. Can you imagine? But my mom, she got to work. So just like your mom, she worked as a salesperson, et cetera. She got to work. She put her heads down. And then I think we as kids adjusted very quickly. And I think that's one of the great things about being a child. You can adjust. And while we didn't have everything we had in Iran, we had a pretty good middle-class life in the US. And that's certainly nothing to sneeze at.
