I recently dug through my couch cushions to find some loose change. Meanwhile, one 26-year-old man is already valued at a net worth of $1.1 billion. Okay, that’s fine. I’m not salty at all. But just who is this guy, and why is he the youngest billionaire in the world? His name is John Collison, and you’ve probably never even heard of his company.
Irishman Collison is one of the cofounders of Stripe, a payment processing system for both businesses and individuals that makes it easy to accept payments over the internet. He recently won the title of “world’s youngest self-made billionaire” in Forbes’ 2017 Billionaires List.
Collison is just two months younger than Evan Speigel, the cofounder of Snapchat, which recently went public. But while Speigel might not hold the title of youngest billionaire, that doesn’t really matter—Forbes says Spiegel’s net worth is $4.3 billion, compared to Collison’s $1.1 billion.
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Last November, Stripe raised $150 million in their latest round of funding. The company is now valued at $9.2 billion. It was this specific transaction that turned Collison into the world’s youngest self-made billionaire.