John Collison Net Worth

What is John Collison's Net Worth?

John Collison is a billionaire entrepreneur from Ireland with a net worth of $5 billion. He amassed his fortune as the co-founder of Stripe, a pivotal software-as-a-service company, alongside his brother Patrick Collison. Stripe primarily provides payment-processing software and application programming interfaces for e-commerce sites. In 2016, at just 26 years old, Collison became the youngest self-made billionaire in the world.

Early Life and Education

John Collison was born on August 6, 1990, in Dromineer, County Tipperary, Ireland. He attended Castletroy College before moving to the United States to study at Harvard University.

Career Beginnings

In 2007, John and his brother Patrick launched their first business in Limerick, Ireland. This business eventually merged with the software company Auctomatic, which designed tools for the eBay platform. In 2008, Auctomatic was acquired for $5 million, leading Collison to move to California's Silicon Valley.

Stripe

In 2009, John and Patrick Collison founded Stripe in Palo Alto, California. Initially backed by Y Combinator in 2010, Stripe soon attracted investments from influential figures like Elon Musk, Liam Casey, and Peter Thiel, along with notable venture capital firms including Sequoia Capital, SV Angel, and Andreessen Horowitz. The company moved to San Francisco in 2011 and made its first acquisition in 2013 by purchasing the chat and task-management application Kickoff.

Stripe's growth continued, and by 2021, it had launched several new services, including Payment Links and Stripe Identity, and reached a valuation of $95 billion. In addition to acquiring multiple companies like Paystack and TaxJar, Stripe introduced new products such as antifraud tools, a billing product for online businesses, and the point-of-sale service, Terminal. In 2022, Stripe launched Stripe Financial Connections and Data Pipeline, and started Frontier to focus on carbon removal initiatives. John's success with Stripe has cemented his status as a billionaire.

Forbes Article Controversy

In 2021, a Forbes profile about the Collison brothers generated controversy by describing Limerick, where they grew up, as a "war zone" and the "murder capital of Europe." The article's exaggerated claims were criticized, and the Collison brothers publicly denounced the inaccuracies. Forbes ultimately removed the article from its website.

Real Estate

In 2022, the Collison brothers purchased Millbrook House, a derelict Victorian mansion on the former De Vesci Estate in Ireland. The previous year, John had acquired the 1,050-acre Abbeyleix House, which is adjacent to Millbrook House.