Nationality Irish Name Patrick Collison | Organizations founded Stripe | |
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Known for Auctomatic; Croma; Stripe Notable awards Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition (2004)BT Young Scientist of the Year (2005) Siblings John Collison, Tommy Collison Profiles | ||
Blitzscaling session 11 patrick collison
Patrick Collison (born 9 September 1988), is an Irish entrepreneur from County Limerick. 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. He lives in San Francisco, California. The brothers are now worth at least $1.1 billion each after San Francisco-based Stripe raised $150 million from CapitalG, an investment division of Google parent company Alphabet, and General Catalyst Partners.
Contents
- Blitzscaling session 11 patrick collison
- Running Your Company by Patrick Collison
- Early life
- Young Scientist
- Auctomatic
- Recent events
- References
Running Your Company by Patrick Collison
Early life
Patrick Collison was born to Lily and Denis Collison in 1988. The eldest of three children (two younger brothers, John and Tommy), he took his first computer course when he was eight years old at the University of Limerick and began learning computer programming at the age of ten.
Collison was educated in Gaelscoil Aonach Urmhumhan, Nenagh, before attending Castletroy College in Castletroy, County Limerick.
Young Scientist
He entered the 40th Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition with his project on artificial intelligence (nicknamed 'Isaac' after Isaac Newton, whom Patrick admired), finishing as individual runner-up. He re-entered the following year, and won first place at the age of sixteen on 14 January 2005. His project involved the creation of Croma, a LISP-type programming language.
His prize of a €3,000 cheque and a trophy of Waterford Crystal was presented to him by President Mary McAleese. His younger brother Tommy participated with his project on blogging in the Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition in 2010.
Auctomatic
After attending Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a time, Collison dropped out. In 2007 he set up software company 'Shuppa' (a play on the Irish word 'siopa', meaning 'shop') in Limerick with his brother John Collison. Enterprise Ireland did not allocate funding to the company, prompting a move to California after Silicon Valley's Y Combinator showed interest, where they merged with two Oxford graduates, Harjeet and Kulveer Taggar, and the company became Auctomatic.
On Good Friday of March 2008 Collison, aged nineteen, and his brother, aged seventeen, sold Auctomatic to Canadian company Live Current Media, becoming overnight millionaires. In May 2008 he became director of engineering in the company's new Vancouver base. Collison attributes the success of his company to his win in the Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition.
Recent events
Both Collison and his younger brother John were featured on a young Irish persons rich list aired on an RTÉ television show during the 2008 Christmas period.
On 18 July 2009, at the age of 20 and following the publication of McCarthy Report, Collison outlined his ideas for the future of Ireland on popular talk-show Saturday Night with Miriam.
In 2010, Patrick co-founded Stripe, which received backing from Peter Thiel, Elon Musk 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 Partners valued the company at $9.2 billion.