Collison is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Stripe, a mobile payment startup used by companies such as Twitter, Salesforce and Lyft. The San Francisco-based company received a $50 billion valuation during a March 2023 fundraising round. It has obtained more than $2 billion in total funding since it was founded.
Collison's fortune is derived from his calculated 12% stake in closely held Stripe, which has raised more than $2 billion from investors. The mobile payments startup received a $50 billion valuation during a March 2023 fundraising round, according to a company statement. The valuation was updated during March 2023 to reflect the latest valuation for Stripe and this led to an overall decrease in the calculation of about $2.5 billion.
Stripe's founders own about 24% of the company, according to an analysis by Bloomberg News and Forge, a marketplace for shares in startups. Co-founders Patrick and John Collison are each credited with half of this stake to reflect their status as co-founders. A discount of 15% is applied to the valuation to account for the typical discounts applied to similar startups on the secondary market, according to two brokers who asked not to be identified as the information is private.
A Stripe spokesperson declined to comment on the Collisons' stakes.
Patrick Collison was born on Sept. 9, 1988 in Limerick, Ireland. He began learning computer programming as a child and won Ireland's Young Scientist of the Year competition in 2005, according to a July 11, 2016 article in the Daily Telegraph.
After briefly attending Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he dropped out and set up a software company in 2007 with his younger brother, John Collison. They sold the company a year later for more than 3 million euros ($5 million), according to the BBC.
The brothers parlayed the proceeds into Stripe, a mobile payment startup. It has raised about $800 million from investors since 2010, according to Bloomberg News. Stripe received a $35 billion valuation as part of a September 2019 fundraising round.
Collison lives in San Francisco.