News

This 26-year-old Irish entrepreneur is the world's youngest self-made billionaire

Picture:
Picture:
Getty / Naoise Culhane / SPORTSFILE

John Collison has been listed as the world’s youngest self-made billionare by Forbes.

Its billionaires list states that there are 2,043 billionares around the world. That’s the most billionaires in the 31 years Forbes has been tracking them down.

John is two months younger than Snapchat cofounder Evan Spiegel.

Along with his brother Patrick, who’s two years older, 27-year-old John cofounded San Francisco-based Stripe, a software platform that enables online payments.

They’re two of just four four self-made billionaires in their 20s.

In 2007, when he was just 17 years old, John co-founded an online auction-management system called Shuppa, and sold it in 2008 for $5 million.

He then studied physics at Harvard University, before co-founding Stripe with his brother in 2011 while he was still a student (although he did later drop out).

So far, Stripe has raised more than $450 million from investors including Visa, American Express and Elon Musk. Today it’s worth more than $9.2 billion, according to Wired.

He also shared with Wired the advice he’d give to his younger self, even though he is still incredibly young:

It's easy for people to think the best opportunities are taken. I absolutely don't think that is true at all.

My advice to my younger self would be not to be too OK with the ways the world is broken, and instead see them as opportunities.

For instance, I don't think anyone's particularly happy with their mobile-phone provider. If a better provider were to come around, I don't think anyone would be particularly surprised.

More: The truth about whether you will become a billionaire if you work very hard

The Conversation (0)
x