The Billionaire Who Learned Leadership at the Poker Table

In partnership with

Self-made billionaire Jenny Just has built a career defined by calculated risk. Before co-founding trading and fintech firm Peak6, she spent years trading options, learning firsthand how markets reward discipline and punish emotion. But when she reflects on her path to success, she points to a surprising gap.

She believes she could have saved a decade of losses if she had learned poker earlier in life.

On the “CNBC Changemakers and Power Players” podcast hosted by Julia Boorstin, Just shared a candid assessment of her career. The skill she acquired late, and at significant cost, was not a new financial model or technical breakthrough. It was poker.

For Just, poker is not gambling. It is a laboratory for decision making under pressure.

The Power of Reps

In trading, experience compounds. Each decision builds pattern recognition. Each win and loss shapes instinct. Just describes poker as a fast track for that kind of learning. A compressed environment where you repeatedly make high stakes decisions with incomplete information.

“Poker would have just given me more reps,” she said.

Those reps matter. They train you to evaluate downside risk, recognize asymmetric upside and detach emotion from outcomes. Over time, the accumulation of these experiences strengthens your baseline judgment.

As an options trader, Just gained one type of repetition. As a business builder, she gained another. But poker, she argues, accelerates the process. It creates a concentrated arena where strategic patience, probability and psychology intersect.

For founders and fintech operators, that skill stack is invaluable.

Learning to Sit at the Table

One of Just’s key observations is that many men start collecting these reps early. Poker games often begin in childhood or adolescence. By the time they enter finance or entrepreneurship, they have already practiced calculated risk taking for years.

Many women, by contrast, are socialized differently. They are often not encouraged to engage in structured risk. Particularly financial risk.

Just believes that gap has real consequences.

“Those money tables are where the power is,” she has said. And if you want to influence change, you need to be comfortable sitting at them.

In 2020, she and her daughter Juliette launched Poker Power, a platform designed to teach women and girls how to play poker and apply its lessons professionally. The goal is not to produce professional card players. It is to build strategic thinkers who are comfortable navigating uncertainty.

By introducing poker earlier in life, Just hopes to close confidence gaps that limit career advancement.

Patience as a Competitive Advantage

One of the most valuable lessons Just gained from poker is patience.

In markets, impatience is expensive. In startups, it can be fatal. Poker forces players to wait. To observe. To fold more hands than they play. To accept that not every opportunity deserves capital or attention.

For Just, patience did not come naturally. But poker sharpened that muscle.

It taught her to avoid emotional reactions and to think several moves ahead. To understand that restraint can be as powerful as action. In leadership, this translates into better hiring decisions, clearer capital allocation and steadier crisis management.

In fintech, where volatility and innovation collide daily, patience often separates enduring platforms from short lived hype.

Turn AI into Your Income Engine

Ready to transform artificial intelligence from a buzzword into your personal revenue generator?

HubSpot’s groundbreaking guide "200+ AI-Powered Income Ideas" is your gateway to financial innovation in the digital age.

Inside you'll discover:

• A curated collection of 200+ profitable opportunities spanning content creation, e-commerce, gaming, and emerging digital markets—each vetted for real-world potential

• Step-by-step implementation guides designed for beginners, making AI accessible regardless of your technical background

• Cutting-edge strategies aligned with current market trends, ensuring your ventures stay ahead of the curve

Download your guide today and unlock a future where artificial intelligence powers your success. Your next income stream is waiting.

Get Your Guide

Failure as a Strategic Asset

Just is open about the long list of failures that shaped her career. As a trader, losses were part of the learning curve. As a founder, mistakes came in different forms, from strategic bets that did not pay off to operational missteps.

She keeps reminders of those failures visible. Not as a source of regret, but as embedded lessons.

Had she internalized those lessons earlier through poker, she believes the journey might have been faster and less costly.

Poker normalizes loss. Even the best players lose hands. What matters is not the single outcome but the expected value across many decisions. That mindset is critical in venture building and financial innovation.

Too often, professionals fear failure because it feels personal. Poker reframes it as statistical.

From Seed Capital to Scale

Peak6 was launched with just $1.5 million in seed capital. Over time, it evolved into a diversified financial technology firm supporting companies that play major roles in the financial lives of millions of Americans.

Its portfolio includes connections to platforms such as Robinhood, SoFi and Betterment.

That trajectory required strategic conviction. It demanded comfort with ambiguity and the ability to act decisively without perfect information.

In other words, it required the poker mindset.

Just does not regret her path. The setbacks and detours shaped her resilience. But she is clear that earlier exposure to structured risk would have accelerated her growth curve.

The lesson for fintech leaders is straightforward. Risk literacy is not optional. It is foundational.

Structured Risk vs Reckless Risk

It is important to distinguish between structured risk and reckless risk.

Poker is structured. There are rules, probabilities and repeatable patterns. Success depends on discipline, bankroll management and psychological insight.

Similarly, in fintech, risk is not about boldness for its own sake. It is about informed decisions, capital efficiency and understanding downside exposure before chasing upside potential.

Just’s advocacy reframes risk as a skill that can be practiced.

Too often, risk tolerance is treated as innate. In reality, it can be developed. Through repetition. Through reflection. Through environments that simulate real consequences.

Poker offers that simulation in a concentrated format.

Closing the Confidence Gap

For women in particular, early exposure to financial decision making can alter career trajectories.

Research consistently shows that women often hesitate to negotiate aggressively or invest confidently, not because of capability but because of conditioning. If structured risk taking becomes familiar earlier, those hesitations diminish.

Poker Power’s mission sits at that intersection of skill and empowerment.

By teaching girls to calculate odds, read opponents and manage chips strategically, the platform builds transferable competencies. Negotiation. Capital allocation. Strategic patience. Emotional control.

In fintech, where capital and code converge, those competencies are powerful.

The Bigger Takeaway for Fintech

Jenny Just’s story underscores a broader truth about financial innovation.

The edge rarely comes from information alone. It comes from judgment under uncertainty.

Markets move fast. Regulatory environments shift. Customer behavior evolves. Founders must make decisions without full clarity. The question is not whether uncertainty exists. It is how prepared you are to navigate it.

Poker compresses that preparation.

For fintech operators, investors and product leaders, the takeaway is not to host more casino nights. It is to seek environments that stress test your decision making. To build comfort with incomplete information. To treat losses as tuition rather than identity.

Reps matter.

And the earlier you start accumulating them, the greater your compounding advantage.

As fintech continues to reshape how money moves, saves and grows, leaders who master structured risk will define the next chapter.

Perhaps the next breakout founder is not just studying code or capital markets.

Perhaps she is also learning when to hold, when to fold and when to push her chips forward with conviction.

Until next week,
Fintech Forward