Poppi’s CEO and cofounder, Allison Ellsworth, said that she’s opened $5,000 investment accounts for her three kids under 10.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal released on Sunday, Ellsworth spoke about how she’s teaching her three children about investing after their latest windfall.
Ellsworth and her husband, Stephen Ellsworth, sold their prebiotic soda brand, Poppi, to PepsiCo last year for $1.95 billion. She said her children, who are four, seven, and nine years old, are very curious about investing.
“So we opened them three Fidelity investment accounts,” she said. “The stock market hasn’t been great, so they lost $65, and their just, like, minds are blown.”
The Journal reporter asked whether the children are picking stocks or ETFs. Ellsworth replied that they were buying “safe” and “slim pickings” stocks, such as Apple and Microsoft.
She added that she’s started their investing journey with $5,000 apiece.
“We put $5,000 in each account, which is a lot of money for, you know, the kids to see it grow,” Ellsworth said. ”But then at the end of the day, I feel like if you put in $100, $200, you’re really not gonna be able to do a lot with it, so we thought $5,000 was a good number to start with.”
She said it was “really cute” that her oldest child has bought PepsiCo stock to be an “investor in Poppi.”
Ellsworth said she and her husband weren’t shying away from money conversations with their children, telling them in “age-appropriate ways” about their newfound wealth and how not to be “that kid in school.”
“I want them to be stewards of their money in this generational wealth,” she added. “So it’s a balance that we’re kind of learning together at the same time.”
Ellsworth and her husband started Poppi in 2016, getting funding on Shark Tank while she was pregnant with her first child. They are now advisors to the company after exiting the brand last year following the PepsiCo acquisition.
She said she’s enjoying spending the money on a monthlong Europe vacation with her family, splurging on stylists, hiring a private chef, and buying a new house near Austin.
She’s not the only business leader who’s encouraged her children to start investing early.
Daniel Ramsey, a millionaire founder of virtual assistant company MyOutDesk, told Business Insider last year that all three of his children have brokerage accounts with Roth IRAs to teach them to set aside their money and watch it compound interest over time. He said parents should advise their children on investing correctly.
Dayssi Olarte de Kanavos, the cofounder of real estate company Flag Luxury Group, told CNBC last year that she and her husband gave each of their three children a “low-risk” amount of money in middle school and got them to pick companies to invest in. She also encouraged them to explain why they chose certain stocks to “demystify investing.”
