John Collison | |
---|---|
Born | Dromineer, County Tipperary, Ireland | 6 August 1990
Education | Castletroy College |
Alma mater | Harvard University |
Known for | Croma; Stripe |
Relatives | Patrick Collison (brother) |
John Collison (born 6 August 1990) is an Irish 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. [1]
In 2007, Collison founded "Shuppa" [lower-alpha 1] with his older brother Patrick in Limerick, Ireland. [2] The company later merged with Auctomatic, which was funded by Y Combinator, [3] and Collison moved to Silicon Valley. [4]
Auctomatic was a software company that built tools for the eBay platform. [5] The company was also funded by Chris Sacca. [6] Auctomatic was acquired for $5 million in March 2008, when Collison was 17. [7] [8] [9] [10]
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. [11] Collison is a pilot and a pianist. [12] [11]
In 2010, Collison co-founded Stripe, which received backing from Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, and Sequoia Capital. [13]
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. [14] In the same year, 2016, John was ranked by Forbes the 15th in the list America's Richest Entrepreneurs Under 40. [15]
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. [16]
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. [17] [18]
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". [19] It claimed "shootings, pipe bomb attacks, and stabbings" happened there every night. [19] It also claimed that "Some bad neighbourhoods are even walled off by a dirty graffitied 10-foot-high barrier, like the Berlin Wall". [19]
The article received a lot of publicity online, causing a backlash. [19] 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". [19] John tweeted it was "daft". [19] Patrick O'Donovan called on the magazine and author to apologise to the people of Limerick "or the insult and hurt caused" by it. [19] 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." [19] Niall Collins tweeted that the article was a "disgraceful description of Limerick, home to so many fine and decent people". [19]
The article was removed from the website on 9 April 2021. [19]
Jeffrey Preston Bezos is an American businessman, media proprietor and investor. He is the founder, executive chairman, and former president and CEO of Amazon, the world's largest e-commerce and cloud computing company. He is the second wealthiest person in the world, with a net worth of about US$205 billion as of April 5, 2024. He was also the wealthiest from 2017 to 2021, according to both the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and Forbes.
A billionaire is a person with a net worth of at least one billion units of a given currency, usually of a major currency such as the United States dollar, euro, or pound sterling. It is a sub-category of the concept of the ultra high-net-worth individual. The American business magazine Forbes produces a global list of known U.S. dollar billionaires every year and updates an internet version of this list in real time. The American oil magnate John D. Rockefeller became the world's first confirmed U.S. dollar billionaire in 1916.
Lakshmi Niwas Mittal is Indian steel magnate, based in the United Kingdom. He is the executive chairman of ArcelorMittal, the world's second largest steelmaking company, as well as chairman of stainless steel manufacturer Aperam. Mittal owns 38% of ArcelorMittal and holds a 3% stake in EFL Championship side Queens Park Rangers.
Bernard Jean Étienne Arnault is a French businessman, investor and art collector. He is the founder, chairman and CEO of LVMH, the world's largest luxury goods company. Arnault is the richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$233 billion as of April 2024, according to Forbes.
Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani is an Indian businessman and the chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries. With an estimated net worth of $113.7 billion as of March 2024, he is the richest person in Asia and 11th richest in the world. Sometimes characterized as a plutocrat, he has attracted both fame and notoriety for reports of market manipulation, political corruption, cronyism, and exploitation.
Joseph Safra was a Swiss-based Lebanese Brazilian banker and billionaire businessman of Syrian descent. He was Brazil's richest man and the richest banker in the world. He ran the Brazilian banking and investment empire, Safra Group.
Patrick Collison is an Irish entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and CEO of Stripe, which he started with his younger brother, John, in 2010. He won the 41st Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition in 2005 at the age of sixteen. In 2020, he founded Fast Grants to accelerate COVID-19-related science with Tyler Cowen.
Pallonji Shapoorji Mistry was an Indian-born Irish billionaire construction tycoon. He was chairman of the Shapoorji Pallonji Group and a major shareholder of India's largest private conglomerate, Tata Group.
Black billionaires are individuals who are of predominantly African ancestry with a net worth of at least US$1 billion.
Castletroy College is a Community School in Newtown, Castletroy, County Limerick, Ireland. It was founded in 2000. It has over 1,200 students.
Christopher Sacca is an American venture investor, company advisor, entrepreneur, and lawyer. He is the proprietor of Lowercase Capital, a venture capital fund in the United States that has invested in seed and early-stage technology companies such as Twitter, Uber, Instagram, Twilio, and Kickstarter, investments that resulted in his placement as No. 2 on Forbes' Midas List: Top Tech Investors for 2017. Sacca held several positions at Google Inc., where he led the alternative access and wireless divisions and worked on mergers and acquisitions. Between 2015 and 2020, he appeared as a "Guest Shark" on ABC's Shark Tank. In early 2017, Sacca announced that he was retiring from venture investing. In 2021, Sacca announced that he was back into venture investing with a focus on Climate issues.
Aliko Dangote is a Nigerian businessman and industrialist. He is best known as the founder, chairman, and CEO of the Dangote Group, the largest industrial conglomerate in West Africa. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimated his net worth at $25.1 billion in November 2023, making him the richest person in Africa, the world's richest black person, and the world's 72nd richest person overall.
Leonid Viktorovich Mikhelson is a Russian-Israeli billionaire businessman, CEO, chairman and major shareholder of the Russian gas company Novatek.
Stripe, Inc. is an Irish-American multinational financial services and software as a service (SaaS) company dual-headquartered in South San Francisco, California, United States and Dublin, Ireland. The company primarily offers payment-processing software and application programming interfaces for e-commerce websites and mobile applications.
The World's Billionaires is an annual ranking of people who are billionaires, i.e., they are considered to have a net worth of US$1 billion or more, by the American business magazine Forbes. The list was first published in March 1987. The total net worth of each individual on the list is estimated and is cited in United States dollars, based on their documented assets and accounting for debt and other factors. Royalty and dictators whose wealth comes from their positions are excluded from these lists. This ranking is an index of the wealthiest documented individuals, excluding any ranking of those with wealth that is not able to be completely ascertained.
The Bloomberg Billionaires Index, launched in March 2012, is a daily ranking of the world's 500 richest people based on their net worth. It features a profile of each billionaire, and includes a tool that allows users to compare the fortunes of multiple billionaires. The index is updated every day at the close of trading in New York.
Fast Grants is an American charity that provides funding for scientific research. The project was created in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to provide quick funding to scientists working on research projects that could help with the pandemic.