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 had a valuation of about $70 billion in July 2022. It has received more than $2 billion in total funding since it was founded.
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Collison's fortune is derived from his calculated 14% stake in closely held Stripe, which has raised about $1.6 billion from investors. The mobile payments startup received a $95 billion valuation during a March 2021 fundraising round but dropped about 27% by July 2022, according to a company statement and a Bloomberg News report. The valuation was updated on July 15, 2022 to reflect the latest valuation for Stripe and this led to a decrease in the calculation of about $3 billion. The confidence rating was also lowered on this date due to uncertainty about the size of the stake held.
Stripe's founders own 28% 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.
John Collison was born in 1990 in Limerick, Ireland. His older brother Patrick won Ireland's Young Scientist of the Year competition in 2005, according to a July 11, 2016 article in the Daily Telegraph.
While at school he set up a software company with Patrick in 2007. 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 online payments startup Stripe, which has raised about $800 million from investors since 2010, according to Bloomberg News. The mobile payments startup received a $35 billion valuation as part of a fundraising round in September 2019.
Collison lives in San Francisco.