Imagine what he’ll do when he’s 30.
Having been declared the world’s youngest self-made billionaire by Forbes back in March, Limerick man John Collison isn’t letting his minted status go to his head.
In a new profile with the BBC, the 27-year-old reveals how he leads a fairly normal life when it comes to both his business and when taking time to switch off.
“People ask ‘how has your life changed?’, and they want me to have taken up some elaborate new hobby, like Faberge egg collecting or yacht racing,” he said.
Alongside older brother Patrick, John runs San Francisco-based software company Stripe, a platform used by over 100,000 customers that counts tech giants Elon Musk and Peter Thiel among its investors.
With Stripe currently valued at $9.2 billion, business is very much booming, not bad for something that was initially created to solve a simple problem.
“You might wonder what is hard about starting an [online] business,” says John.
“Creating a product that people actually want to buy, and getting them to hear about it, all that we could handle. But getting money from people over the internet was extremely difficult. I remember saying to Patrick, ‘How hard can it be? Maybe we should give it a try?'”
As for the whole ‘world’s youngest billionaire’ tag, John doesn’t seem to be all that pushed.
“Mostly it’s just a calculator exercise. The valuation is predicated on us continuing to execute and launch very compelling products in a highly competitive space – so good signs, but still a lot to do.”
You can read the BBC profile of John Collison in full here.
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