Just like most people, John Collison had a plan. Go to Harvard, finish it, get a job and live happily ever after, or something like that. But the story of this 27-year-old self-made billionaire is a little bit different.
For wast majority, dropping out of a prestigious university isn’t anything good, but this man did it and later on managed to create a successful company. A few years ago, Collison had co-founded and become a President of Stripe. His company is in e-business and helps people with various payments over the internet making this process much easier than before.
The idea of creating a company like Stripe came while he and his brother Patrick went for a trip to South Africa. A few years later, about seven to be more precise, their business growth and now it allows you to make payments in total of 25 different countries all over the world. Every year millions of transactions are conducted with Stripe, and billions of dollars change “hands” using their service. The total worth of the company has been estimated at $9.2 billion, and it currently hires 550 people.
Forbes list of billionaires shows that at this moment there are about 2,043 billionaires all over the world and John Collison is one of them. Both the total number of people on this list and their net worth has jumped and reached an all-time record. The list received 195 new entrants with the net worth going up to $7.67 trillion which is a rise of 18%.
Don’t think that this was only luck for this young man to create such a successful company as it wasn’t his first. He again had the help of his brother when they started Auctomatic together. This startup was later sold for $5 million in 2008, so the brothers managed to become teenage millionaires. Similar to Stripe, Auctomatic was there to help out e-retailing websites with payments, so it is clear that they are constantly aiming the market segment that is heavily dependent and in need of a reliable payment service.
