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Moneywise

Rajiv Khaneja Made Millions Young, Then Refused to Upgrade His Lifestyle

Moneywise

Hampton

Investing, Entrepreneurship, Business

4.7 • 701 Ratings

🗓️ 9 September 2025

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Stop making million dollar decisions alone. Hampton gives you a personal board of eight vetted founders in your city who meet monthly to tackle your hardest problems. Find your group: joinhampton.com


Rajiv Khaneja made tens of millions running an ad tech company, but still lives in the same city he grew up in, wears the same clothes, and told friends he rented his house—even though he owned it. Here’s why.


Here’s what we talk about:

  • How Rajiv built a profitable tech business as a teenager (and hired adults while still in high school)
  • Turning down a $2.5M acquisition offer... then heading back to chemistry class
  • What 25 years of “anti-lifestyle inflation” looks like
  • The impact of immigrant parents and a “worst-case-scenario” money mindset
  • Why he lived undercover for years, and how finding a peer group unlocked everything
  • How he built AdButler into an 8-figure, bootstrapped business
  • Rajiv’s idea of a lifestyle upgrade: attentional freedom > private jets
  • Happiness optimization: spending $7M on a home to be closer to friends 
  • His new obsession: using AI to help cure cancer
  • Co-founding Arvita Therapeutics — and why he’s still building, even with $50M+ in net worth

Sponsors:


Cool Links:

Chapters:

  • (0:00) Teen Millionaire: How Rajiv Made His First Money
  • (0:45) Living Cheap on Purpose: Why He Drives a Prius
  • (1:59) Managing Wealth & Long-Term Investing Strategy
  • (3:36) Monthly Spending Breakdown & Frugal Habits
  • (9:02) The Origin Story: From Web Polls to Ad Butler
  • (19:16) Family, Upbringing & Money Values
  • (24:49) Social Life, Hiding Wealth & Finding Founder Friends
  • (31:56) Resisting Lifestyle Upgrades After a Big Exit
  • (35:40) Choosing the Right Life & Business Partner
  • (41:29) Future Bets: Biotech, Longevity & Playing the Long Game

This podcast is a ridiculous concept: high-net-worth people reveal their personal finances. Inspired by real conversations happening in the Hampton community.


Your Host: Harry Morton

  • Founder of Lower Street, a podcast production company helping brands launch and grow top-tier podcasts.
  • Co-parents a cow named Eliza.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

And I remember they offered 2.5 or something like that, million to acquire the company.

0:08.0

And then I said no in my like squeaky teenage voice, gone on the plane, flew back, and then went to chemistry class.

0:16.0

By 15, Rajiv Khadha was already hiring adults to work for him, and by 19, he'd done over a million in profit.

0:23.3

Yet today, at 42, worth over $50 million,

0:26.9

not much in his life has actually changed.

0:29.0

And that's intentional.

0:30.1

I can see the people whose mind is consumed by their business,

0:35.5

and in many cases, that's because they've upgraded their lifestyle.

0:38.3

Rajiv is the anti-lifel lifestyle upgrade founder.

0:41.3

And not only that, he also spent many of his early years even lying about his fortune.

0:45.3

You know, I tell friends that I rented the house, but I never told him I owned it.

0:51.3

In this episode, we're digging into why Rajiv lives like this.

0:53.3

Does it help him?

1:13.7

Does it hurt him? And if he's not spending the money, why keep making so much of it? My name's Harry Morton, and this is Money Wise, a podcast not about how to get rich, but about how your life changes once you're there. By the way, this is a podcast for the community of high net worth founders over at Hampton. If you're a founder doing at least three million in revenue, definitely go and check it out at joinhampton.com.

1:21.5

Now, I said not much has changed in his life, and that's actually more true than you might have assumed. Yeah, so I live in Victoria, BC, born and raised, one of the few.

1:26.5

By the way, it's a small, quiet island city off the coast of Vancouver.

1:30.2

Rajiv grew up there, built his business there, went to college there, kind of, started his family

1:35.5

there, and yeah, still there.

1:37.3

But staying in your hometown doesn't automatically make you the anti-upgrade guy.

1:41.3

There's a lot more to it.

1:42.5

Though, as always, we've got to start with what we're

1:44.4

working with here. What's your net worth today? That really depends on how you value the illiquid

...

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