John is the world’s youngest self-made billionaire

 

John Collison who grow up in rural Republic of Ireland, and a drop out of the university, is the co-founder of a US-based software business called Stripe, which is not widely known because it does not sell anything that consumers can buy instead its software enable companies around the world to accept more easily online payments and to run their websites. John 26, is a confident business leader and excellent communicator is the world’s youngest self-made billionaire, who  set up the business and now runs the San Francisco based company with his older brother Patrick, 29, who is the third youngest self-made billionaire ( Evan Spiegel 27, the co-founder of social media firm Snapchat stands between the two brothers as the second youngest).

Both brothers keen computer programmers  grew up in a small village in County Tipperary, in the west of the country, after their stint in the state secondary school in the city of Limerick, they both decided to study at top US institutions. John was accepted at the Harvard University and Patrick applied to study maths at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, near Boston, USA in 2007.

Even before going to Harvard, John and his brother had already become millionaires when their first business venture a software firm that enabled small firms and sole traders to do business more easily on the auction website eBay, which they ultimately sold in 2009 for $5 million ( £3.8 million) a year after they had set up its first iteration.

With over 100, 000 global customers, including computer giant Apple and Deliveroo, who uses Stripe’s technology, announced a new round of funding that valued the company at $9,2billion ( £7.2 billion) which means the brothers are each worth at least $1.1bn according to Forbes magazine.