What is John Collison's Net Worth?
John Collison is a billionaire entrepreneur from Ireland who has a net worth of $5 billion. John Collison earned his fortune as the co-founder of the software-as-a-service company Stripe. He co-founded the company with his brother Patrick Collison. The company primarily offers payment-processing software and application programming interfaces for e-commerce sites. In 2016, Collison became the youngest self-made billionaire in the world, at the age of 26.
Early Life and Education
John Collison was born on August 6, 1990 in Dromineer, County Tipperary, Ireland. His older brother is Patrick. Collison was educated at Castletroy College in Ireland before coming to the United States to study at Harvard University.
Career Beginnings
With his brother Patrick, Collison co-founded his first business in 2007 in Limerick, Ireland. The business later merged with the software company Auctomatic, which built tools for the eBay platform. Collison eventually moved to Silicon Valley in California. In early 2008, Auctomatic was acquired for $5 million.
Stripe
In 2009, Collison and his brother founded the company Stripe in Palo Alto, California. A financial services and software-as-a-service company, it primarily offers payment-processing software and application programming interfaces for e-commerce sites. John serves as the president, while Patrick serves as the CEO. After receiving an initial investment from the tech startup accelerator Y Combinator in 2010, Stripe received investments from such major names as Elon Musk, Liam Casey, and Peter Thiel, as well as from the venture capital firms Sequoia Capital, SV Angel, and Andreessen Horowitz. The company moved to San Francisco the following year. It went on to make its first acquisition in 2013, purchasing the chat and task-management application Kickoff. Stripe continued to grow over the subsequent years. In 2018, it launched antifraud tools and a billing product for online businesses. The year after that, the company made its point-of-sale service, Terminal, available to US users, and also launched a merchant cash-advance scheme.
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In 2020, Stripe acquired the Nigerian payment processor Paystack. The same year, it announced Stripe Climate, a service for businesses to fund atmospheric carbon research and capture. In 2021, Stripe acquired the tax services company TaxJar, and launched the services Payment Links and Stripe Identity. The company also reached a valuation of $95 billion, with plans to expand its European headquarters. Stripe introduced Stripe Financial Connections in 2022, and also announced Data Pipeline. Also that year, the company began a new subsidiary called Frontier to direct spending on carbon removal initiatives. Due to Stripe, Collison has become a billionaire, and in 2016 was the youngest self-made billionaire in the world, at the age of 26.
Forbes Article Controversy
In 2021, a profile of the Collison brothers published in Forbes generated controversy due to its description of the city of Limerick. The article claimed that the brothers had "escaped" from the city, describing it as a "war zone" and the "murder capital of Europe." It asserted that "shootings, pipe bomb attacks, and stabbings" were nightly occurrences. Amid the backlash, the Collison brothers themselves denounced the article's hyperboles and fabrications. Ultimately, the article was removed from the Forbes website.
Real Estate
In 2022, the Collison brothers purchased Millbrook House, a derelict Victorian mansion on the former De Vesci Estate in Ireland. It was previously under the ownership of Laois County Council. The previous year, John Collison had purchased the 1,050-acre Abbeyleix House, located next door to Millbrook House.
