Patrick & John Collison
MIT / Harvard · Stripe
Two Irish Teenage Brothers Who Built the Internet's Payment System
1 April 2026
Patrick Collison was at MIT and his brother John at Harvard when they started building Stripe in 2010. Growing up in rural Limerick, Ireland, both had been programming prodigies — Patrick won the Young Scientist of the Year award at 16.
Seven Lines of Code
Their insight was simple: accepting payments online was absurdly complicated. Stripe let developers add payments with just seven lines of code. Early adopters included Y Combinator startups who spread the word.
Peter Thiel's Backing
Stripe raised $2 million from Peter Thiel, Sequoia Capital, and Andreessen Horowitz in 2011. Patrick was 22 and John was 20. The company grew by making developers love using it.
$65 Billion Valuation
Stripe now processes hundreds of billions of dollars annually and is valued at approximately $65 billion. The Collison brothers became the world's youngest self-made billionaires. They proved that even "boring" infrastructure can become one of the most valuable companies in tech.
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