John Collison

Collison was born in 1990, the younger brother of Patrick Collison, and grew up in Dromineer, County Tipperary, Ireland; both of his parents are scientists. From the age of seven he attended the Centre for Talented Youth at Dublin City University every summer, and in 2003 he entered Castletroy College in Limerick for secondary school. While at school he became a student pilot with more than 40 hours of flying time, took part in the Science Olympiad, enjoyed debating and playing the piano, and taught himself Spanish.⁠[1][2][3][4]

In August 2009 he received eight A1s in the Leaving Certificate, one of 11 students in the country to achieve that result, with 10 A grades in all. His principal, Martin Wallace, described him as “a very level-headed student.” In 2021 he recalled on social media that he had “lucked out with an amazing set of teachers at Castletroy,” adding, “They were really invested in us and we could tell.”⁠[4][3][5]

While still in Transition Year, Collison and his older brother Patrick founded the software company Auctomatic, which helped people selling on online marketplaces such as eBayeBayeBay Inc. is an online marketplace company headquartered in San Jose, California, United States, founded in 1995 by Pierre Omidyar; it started out with person-to-person online auctions and listed on Nasdaq in 1998. As of the end of 2025, it had 135 million active buyers, and its platform’s gross merchandise volume in 2025 was nearly $80 billion.Open the full entry manage their stock and sales. After being refused funding in Ireland, the founders were backed by private investors in Silicon Valley. In 2008 the Canadian company Live Current Media (formerly Communicate.com) bought Auctomatic for $5 million, while both brothers were still teenagers.⁠[4][3][6]

In the autumn of 2009 Collison entered Harvard University, one of three Irish students admitted there that year; he had also received offers from StanfordStanford UniversityStanford University is a research university in California founded by Leland and Jane Stanford in 1885 and opened in 1891.Open the full entry and MIT. On arrival he joined the rowing team and was considering physics and statistics with a minor in Chinese. He later left Harvard without completing his degree.⁠[3][7]

In 2010 Collison and Patrick founded the online payments company Stripe, where he has since served as co-founder, president and director; Patrick is chief executive. By 2018 Stripe was processing tens of billions of dollars in digital commerce transactions a year for clients including AmazonAmazonAmazon is a publicly traded U.S. technology and retail company founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, with its principal corporate offices in Seattle. Its businesses span e-commerce, logistics and fulfillment, digital advertising, membership and entertainment services, consumer electronics, and Amazon Web Services cloud computing.Open the full entry, Lyft and Facebook.⁠[8][7]

In November 2016 Stripe raised $150 million at a $9.2 billion valuation. In March 2017 Forbes, in its new list of the world’s richest people, named the 26-year-old Collison the world’s youngest self-made billionaire, with an estimated net worth of $1.1 billion; he is about two months younger than Snap co-founder Evan SpiegelEvan SpiegelEvan Spiegel is an American entrepreneur who, while a student at Stanford University in 2011, developed the disappearing-photo app Snapchat with Bobby Murphy and others, and has served since 2012 as Chief Executive Officer of its parent company, Snap Inc. Snap went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2017 with non-voting shares; he has made a long-running bet on the augmented reality glasses Spectacles and Specs.Open the full entry, who had previously held the title.⁠[6]

In 2021 Collison bought Abbeyleix House and Farm, an 18th-century estate of 1,120 acres in County Laois, Ireland, from the Welsh businessman Sir David Davies for €20 million. In 2022 Comhlacht na Feirme, a Jersey-based company backed by the Collison brothers, paid €400,000 for Millbrook House, a derelict Victorian mansion at the edge of the estate.⁠[2][9]

As of September 2026 Collison spent at least part of each year in Abbeyleix. He has funded the refurbishment of the estate’s buildings, main house and gardens; Ómós, a restaurant and guest house in Millbrook House that he part-funded, opened in July 2026 with 16 rooms; and with the local Tidy Towns group he funds a shopfront scheme offering business owners grants of up to €10,000. About 25 people work at the house and farm, and 38 at Ómós.⁠[2]

In June 2025 Stripe launched Cheeky Pint, a technology podcast in which Collison interviews founders, builders and leaders over a pint. A trailer was released on June 16, and the first episode, with OpenAIOpenAIOpenAI is an artificial intelligence research and product organization founded in 2015 that develops the GPT model series, ChatGPT, Codex and a developer API, and conducts research on image, speech, video and intelligent agents. After its 2025 restructuring, the nonprofit OpenAI Foundation continues to control the for-profit OpenAI Group PBC. Its growth has involved large-scale fundraising and compute partnerships, and has also been accompanied by controversies over governance, copyright, privacy and AI safety.Open the full entry co-founder Greg Brockman, followed on June 18. By the end of October 2026 the show had released 39 episodes, with guests including Sam AltmanSam AltmanSam Altman is an entrepreneur and investor, and the co-founder and chief executive officer of OpenAI. He previously served as president of Y Combinator and founded the location-based social service Loopt. He also helped found Tools for Humanity and Merge Labs, has invested in energy and life sciences ventures, and has driven public discussion of AI governance, employment, and wealth distribution.Open the full entry and Toto Wolff; some episodes, such as a conversation with United AirlinesUnited AirlinesUnited Airlines is an airline based in Chicago, Illinois, United States. It is wholly owned by the Nasdaq-listed United Airlines Holdings, Inc. and is a member of Star Alliance. One of its founding carriers, Varney Air Lines, made its first flight in 1926, and the company merged with Continental Airlines in 2010.Open the full entry chief executive Scott KirbyScott KirbyScott Kirby is an airline executive who has been chief executive officer of United Airlines since May 2020. He was previously president of US Airways and of American Airlines, and joined United as president in 2016.Open the full entry, were co-hosted with the technology analyst Ben Thompson.⁠[10][11][12][13]

On October 25, 2025, Collison published a long essay in The Irish Times arguing that Ireland was going backwards and setting out how to get it moving. He argued that Ireland’s population had grown from 3.5 million in 1990 to 5.5 million while housing, infrastructure and energy systems had not kept up; that money was not the problem and the main bottleneck was the planning process itself; and that after scandals in the 1990s and 2000s discretionary power had shifted from ministers to officials, regulators and agencies, leaving no one clearly accountable. He cited projects such as MetroLink, 25 years in planning, and the North-South interconnector, in limbo for 23 years, and noted that 303 new agencies, quangos or departments had been created since 2000, compared with 74 in the previous 25 years. He proposed following Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Germany in accelerating consents for major projects and letting the Oireachtas grant planning permission for them directly.⁠[1]

The essay prompted debate among politicians. A spokesman for Taoiseach Micheál Martin said Collison was “quite right” that infrastructure delivery was too slow; Tánaiste Simon Harris called the intervention “thought-provoking”; and Jack Chambers, the Minister for Public Expenditure, said the government’s infrastructure taskforce reforms would address much of what Collison had raised. In the essay Collison said he backs Progress Ireland, an independent think tank, whose website lists Patrick and John Collison among donors giving €5,000 or more a year.⁠[14][1][15]

In January 2026, in a BloombergBloomberg L.P.Bloomberg L.P. is a global financial technology, data and media company founded by Michael Bloomberg in 1981. It began by providing terminal services that deliver data, analytics and news to financial professionals, and launched Bloomberg News in 1990. Michael Bloomberg has pledged the vast majority of the company’s profits to his philanthropic organization, Bloomberg Philanthropies.Open the full entry interview during the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Collison said Stripe had no near-term plans to go public: “We’re still not in any rush.” He said it was still very early for the company and that the industry was moving faster than at any time since Stripe was founded.⁠[16]

On February 24, 2026, Stripe published its annual letter, with the company’s valuation rising to $159 billion (about €135 billion) and total volume processed on Stripe in 2025 reaching $1.9 trillion, up 34% from the year before. At a media roundtable that day, Collison said he had been “pleasantly surprised” by the wide reaction to his essay on Irish infrastructure; asked whether things had improved, he said it was a multi-decade issue and too soon to judge, and that people in Ireland should be “fed up” about infrastructure delivery.⁠[17]

On October 21, 2026, Microsoft released the proxy statement for its annual shareholders meeting, nominating Collison as a new director to be voted on by shareholders at the meeting on December 8. The proxy listed him as 36, born in Ireland and an independent nominee with no other public company directorships, and stated that he “brings extensive entrepreneurial and operational experience, along with deep expertise in technology.” At the same meeting LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry co-founder Reid HoffmanReid HoffmanReid Hoffman is an American entrepreneur, venture investor, author and podcast host, co-founder of LinkedIn, Inflection AI and Manas AI, and a partner at Greylock. A former PayPal executive, he has built and backed businesses in professional networking, artificial intelligence and drug discovery. His co-authored books include The Startup of You and Blitzscaling.Open the full entry and Hugh Johnston, chair of the audit and finance committee, were leaving the board, reducing it from 13 members to 12.⁠[8][18]