Patrick Collison is an Irish entrepreneur known as the co-founder and CEO of Stripe.
Early years and education
Patrick Collison was born in Dromineer, County Limerick, Ireland on 9 September 1988. At the age of 8, he took his first computer course at the University of Limerick and started learning computer programming when he was 10.
Collison studied in Gaelscoil Aonach Urmhumhan, Nenagh and in Castletroy College in Castletroy, County Limerick. From 2006 – 2010, Collison also attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
At the age of 16, he entered the 40th Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition with the creation of Croma, a LISP-type programming language and won the first place. He was awarded a €3,000 cheque and a trophy of Waterford Crystal.
Career
After attending MIT, Collison dropped out and set up his own software company “Shuppa” in 2007, with his brother John Collison. Enterprise Ireland did not have any fund for the company which prompted Collison to move to Silicon Valley after Y Combinator showed interest. It was then that they merged with two Oxford graduates, Harjeet and Kulveer Taggar, and the company became Auctomatic.
In March 2008, the Collison brothers sold Auctomatic to Canadian company Live Current Media and became instant millionaires. In May of the same year, Patrick became director of engineering in the company’s Vancouver base.
In 2010, Patrick Collison co-founded Stripe, backed by Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and Sequoia Capital. In November 2016, Patrick and his brother John became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire, worth $1.1 billion, after an investment from CapitalG and General Catalyst Partners valued Stripe at $9.2 billion.
Net Worth
Patrick’ Collision’s net worth as of February 2019 is 2.1 billion.