An entrepreneur who is 65 years old left his job and drained his savings to launch a business is now worth $11 billion.

Jay Chaudhry never imagined he would run a business, accumulate wealth, or contribute to the growth of an entire industry. Despite not growing up in rural India and not having a background in engineering or marketing, he still achieved all of these accomplishments.

Zscaler CEO Chaudhry, who comes from a family of small-scale farmers, did not consider entrepreneurship in his childhood or early career.

In 1996, Silicon Valley's dot-com boom inspired Chaudhry to start his own company. He left his job as an executive at IQ Software and his wife Jyoti quit her job as a systems analyst at BellSouth to join him in this venture.

They invested their entire life savings, approximately $500,000, into SecureIT, a cybersecurity software company they founded in 1997. At that time, less than 5% of Fortune 500 companies had firewalls. Within 18 months, they had deployed firewalls in about 50% of Fortune 500 companies.

In 1998, Chaudhry sold SecureIT to VeriSign in an all-stock deal worth nearly $70 million. Over the next ten years, the couple founded three more cybersecurity companies and an e-commerce business, all of which were acquired.

In 2007, Chaudhry, who gets bored without work, decided to launch a big company and focus 200% on it.

Zscaler, a company that aimed to help companies transition away from outdated firewalls and into the cloud era, was founded by Chaudhry. The couple invested $50 million of their own money, and today it brings in $1.6 billion in annual revenue and has a market value of roughly $30 billion.

Chaudhry's own net worth is estimated at $11.5 billion by Forbes.

Chaudhry discusses risking his family's savings to pursue his instincts, how his upbringing has shaped his views on money, and the advice he offers to those looking to leave their job to start a business.

What motivated you to risk your entire financial future on a new business concept in an emerging market?

I love to read and technology, so this thing happened.

In 1996, Netscape had just launched and gone public, and I was fascinated by it. I wondered, if Marc Andreessen, a young guy who had just graduated from college, could start a company, why couldn't I do the same?

We discussed the topic of Netscape's web browser and became more convinced of its effectiveness as we thought about it. However, we also recognized the potential security risks that come with every company being connected to the internet.

My initial assumption was that the market size was based on a simple gut feeling, without any IDC or Gartner research.

While a gut feeling can be a guide, staking all your money on it is a different matter entirely.

We initially proposed to obtain venture capital funding, but I lacked experience in raising funds. I soon discovered that it was not an easy task. It was 1996 in Atlanta, a city not known for its venture capital scene, and we frequently encountered the response, "You lack experience."

Although we were initially disappointed, our conviction grew, prompting me to suggest risking our life savings.

I didn't know anything about the risk, so I couldn't quantify it.

How did you make peace with that risk?

We discussed the possibility of the company shutting down and losing all our savings after a back-and-forth conversation.

"Could we find jobs?" was the next question, and there was a lot of confidence that we would be able to.

In my early childhood, I didn't have money, so I never felt the need to buy A, B, and C. Our lifestyle was simple, with a $200,000 house in Alpharetta, Georgia, which was typical of the middle class at that time, and we didn't have any fancy cars or payments.

At that time, we had only one child attending a public school, with minimal expenses. We decided to take a risk.

Did the success of your bet increase your confidence to take on greater risks? Have any of your other ventures been as risky as your first one?

The financial risk of SecureIT was 1,000 times greater than the risk of Zscaler. The amount I invested in Zscaler was a small fraction of my net worth.

I put more money into Zscaler than all the others combined, took bigger bets, hired people more quickly to solve hard problems, and wanted to do something big and lasting.

The success of solving a futuristic problem and the market's acceptance were uncertain.

If you asked me about the chances of success for Zscaler, I would have said there was a higher risk because SecureIT made it clear that firewalls are necessary when connecting to the internet.

What advice would you give someone considering leaving their job to launch their own business?

To build conviction, it's important to delve deeper into your goals and understand them thoroughly before taking action.

Putting in your own money is a crucial part of testing your conviction. If you truly believe in what you're doing, you'll take a risk on yourself. This shows that you've done your research, you're prepared, and you're committed.

If Zscaler had been largely owned by VCs, they may have shut it down. It took us several years to gain traction in the market, and VCs can easily dismiss and move on. They often say, "Zscaler is just one of my 20 investments."

This is the only business you have when you invest your own funds.

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