John Collison Net Worth

John Collison (born 6 August 1990) is an Irish billionaire entrepreneur and the co-founder and President of Stripe which he co-founded in 2010 with his brother Patrick. Collison was the youngest self made billionaire in 2016. As of 2022, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index, his net worth was estimated at US$11.4 billion, ranking him the 187th richest person in the world and one of the wealthiest people from Ireland.

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.

Biography

In 2007, Collison founded “Shuppa” with his older brother Patrick in Limerick, Ireland. The company later merged with Auctomatic, which was funded by Y Combinator, and Collison moved to Silicon Valley.

Auctomatic was a software company that built tools for the eBay platform. The company was also funded by Chris Sacca. Auctomatic was acquired for $5 million in March 2008, when Collison was 17.

In 2009, Collison (having returned to finish secondary school at Castletroy College) received 8 A1 and 2 A2 grades in the Irish Leaving Certificate examination. He continued to study at Harvard University, commencing his studies in September 2009. Collison is a pilot and a pianist.

In 2010, Collison co-founded Stripe, which received backing from Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, and Sequoia Capital.

In November 2016, the Collison brothers became the world’s youngest self-made billionaires, worth at least $1.1 billion, after an investment in Stripe from CapitalG and General Catalyst valued the company at $9.2 billion. In the same year, 2016, John was ranked by Forbes the 15th in the list America’s Richest Entrepreneurs Under 40.

In 2018, Stripe, under the direction of the Collison brothers, contributed $1 million to California YIMBY, a pro-housing development lobbying organization. The Collison brothers are citizens of Ireland.

In 2021 and 2022, Collison bought the Abbeyleix Estate and the derelict Millbrook House, neighbouring properties in County Laois, Ireland. He has stated he will spend several millions of euros over some years restoring Millbrook House to make a family home.

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.

Forbes article

A profile of the brothers published in Forbes in 2021 claimed the brothers had “escaped” from Limerick, describing it as a “warzone” because of a gang feud and it was “the ‘murder capital’ of Europe”. It claimed “shootings, pipe bomb attacks, and stabbings” happened there every night. It also claimed that “Some bad neighbourhoods are even walled off by a dirty graffitied 10-foot-high barrier, like the Berlin Wall”.

The article received a lot of publicity online, causing a backlash. Patrick tweeted “Not only mistaken about Limerick but the idea of ‘overcoming’ anything is crazy. We are who we are because we grew up where we did”. John tweeted it was “daft”. Patrick O’Donovan called on the magazine and author to apologise to the people of Limerick “or the insult and hurt caused” by it. He also tweeted “I am calling on them to come to Limerick where I will gladly set the record straight in respect of what our county and city has to offer as opposed to what your work of fiction depicts,” and “Please let me know when suits to visit.” Niall Collins tweeted that the article was a “disgraceful description of Limerick, home to so many fine and decent people”.

The article was removed from the website on 9 April 2021.

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.