Stripe's 22-Year-Old Irish-Born Founder Is Just Getting Started

http://www.inc.com/matthew-wong/stripe-john-collison-irish-entrepreneur-tipperary-to-silicon-valley.html

by jkuria • 14 years ago

223 89 14 years ago

inc.com

ronnier• 14 years ago

Wow, this guy is amazing. Read his wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Collison

DigitalSea2• 14 years ago

He's also a pilot and pianist and he's only 22. I'm now asking myself where did my life going wrong?

clicks2• 14 years ago

He also got his company sold to eBay at the age of 17 for $5 million.

Our Dani Fong here has a similar story -- dropped out of Princeton at the age of 17... where she was doing her doctorate.

I think the parents of these two need to come out and explain to us what exactly their parenting methods are.

skeletonjelly• 14 years ago

I was thinking this before I read your comment.

subsystem• 14 years ago

Not to take anything away from him, but I think his other achievements are far more impressive. Learning to fly or play the piano generally "just" takes time and money. The really hard things are those where you can apply yourself fully and still fail.

thewarrior• 14 years ago

I was born the same year as this guy . How do I reconcile myself to the fact that I may never achieve so much even in my entire life ? Is it a matter of lowering ones expectations ? If this is the kind of brilliance it takes to succeed in the start up world I'm quite discouraged.

microtonal• 14 years ago

How do I reconcile myself to the fact that I may never achieve so much even in my entire life ? Is it a matter of lowering ones expectations ?

Just let go. If there is success, there is success. If there is no success, there is no success.

If you reach a decent standard of living, there will be plenty to enjoy. Do not forget to do so.

jacquesm17• 14 years ago

No, that kind of brilliance is not what it takes to succeed.

It doesn't hurt either, but the biggest factor is perseverance.

If you get discouraged because someone younger than you can succeed when you can't then that perseverance element is exactly what you have to work on.

For every Patrick and every John there are 10's of thousands of people that succeed. And almost all of them are not nearly as brilliant or as young. Imagine a world without them. In that world you would be closer to the top. But your chances of success would not be diminished, nor would they be decreased.

Now repeat that process for all those that are smarter, richer and more dedicated than you. At some point you'll be the one at the top. What would you blame it on if you then still did not succeed?

In the end, all that matters is when and how you decide to make a go of it, how much you apply yourself, how well you'll deal with the unavoidable hardships and how much luck you will have and how the timing will favor you.

It doesn't really matter how much higher than 120 your IQ is, plenty of people with less than that have succeeded at a level that even Patrick or John will never exceed simply by being in the right place at the right time and making use of every opportunity that life threw at them.

If you want to measure yourself do it with people that started off with less than you had and that still made it. Then figure out what they did right that you're doing wrong and go for it.

pc2• 14 years ago

Don't stress out over it.

I'm Patrick, John's brother.

I too constantly feel that I should be more successful, and I'm pretty sure the feeling doesn't go away -- no matter what's achieved.

I think looking at others can be a useful gut check: am I working as hard as I could? Am I as focused as I'd like to be? But given that there's so much randomness and circumstance there too, it's a bad benchmark for anything.

(For what it's worth, the check I use personally is: "is there a difference between how those who know me best would describe me, and how I'd like to be?" Most of the time, I just try to fix those gaps.)

Good luck!

adamnemecek• 14 years ago

"[Julius] Caesar served in 63 BC as a quaestor in Spain, where in Cadiz he is said to have broken down and wept in front of a statue of Alexander the Great, realizing that where Alexander had conquered most of the known world at thirty, Caesar at that age was merely seen as a dandy who had squandered his wife’s fortunes as well as his own." [1]

[1] http://www.roman-empire.net/republic/caesar.html

mibbitier2• 14 years ago

IMHO you might want to reassess your idea of success. Having a great family life, bringing up children, enjoying each day. Those are good measures of success.

petercooper• 14 years ago

One of Britain's richest people was a bum until he was 30 (and he did it all from scratch): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2h_GIP019c .. so you don't have to reconcile. Just be a late bloomer.

safetyscissors• 14 years ago

Really amazing guy. Kinda makes me feel inadequate all of a sudden :(

jacquesm17• 14 years ago

I wouldn't worry about it, just try a little harder. In the long run it doesn't really matter what your situation is today, what matters more is how you allocate your future time and how you will deal with the opportunities that come your way.

The luck element is out of control for everybody, timing you only control so much, execution and attitude you control 100%.

jacquesm17• 14 years ago

Patrick and his brother John are two of the smartest cookies on the planet that I know about. These guys will go very far, and I'll be cheering them on all the way. They are not only successful and smart, they're genuinely nice, and that's a pretty rare combination.

sjtgraham• 14 years ago

+1 I've met John and spoken to Patrick on email. Both super nice dudes.

destraynor• 14 years ago

Never was there a comment I agreed more with on HN

wiradikusuma2• 14 years ago

Loosely related with the article, do you need to give significant share to "locals" if you're starting a company in the US? For example, in Malaysia and Singapore (CMIIW), unless you put huge amount of money up front, foreigners are required to partner with locals and give >50% share to them. I.e. foreigners cannot have majority share if they start a "normal" company (not big).

jacquesm17• 14 years ago

No, you don't. You can even incorporate as a sole proprietor without any locals having a stake at all. Ditto in Canada and most of Western Europe with some exceptions.

czcar• 14 years ago

Just to clarify - this is not the case in Singapore. A local director is required if the directors do not have work visas, but the companies can be wholly owned by foreigners.

ngsayjoe• 14 years ago

No way what you're saying is true for both Singapore and Malaysia. Some shares need to be allocated to locals though if you IPO in the country.

wiradikusuma2• 14 years ago

http://onlinebusinessmalaysia.com/starting-a-business/settin...

and read the first comment (by Denis)

vecinu• 14 years ago

It's interesting to see people put their studies on hold to pursue something they loved.

I don't quite understand why they moved to San Francisco; the article didn't really make that clear.

I'd love to have a cup of coffee with either of them though. Great people!

GuiA• 14 years ago

Probably pressure from investors/YC/friends/etc and own desire. TBH, if you're starting a tech company and have the opportunity to move to the SF Bay Area (ie no family imperatives etc.), you'd be silly not to take it.

lynchdt• 14 years ago

Patrick writes about this extensively here http://patrickcollison.com/post/stripe-ireland

vancouverite2• 14 years ago

Very impressive achievement for his age, though there is of course also a lot of spin-doctoring involved[1]. Stripe seems to be heading into the right direction.

[1] The whole "millionaire at 17" bit decodes to getting a big stock-based exit for Auctomatic with modest cash. Said stock then dropping to pennies shortly thereafter (~40x drop in stock price). Add in the merger and $600k in financing and there probably wasn't left other than a bailout for the investors. http://www.otcmarkets.com/stock/LIVC/chart

jacquesm17• 14 years ago

So, if we limit the 'millionaire at 17' bit to 'those that made a non-cash exit for 6 figures and up' would that satisfy you?

To take cash or stock is a difficult decision for seasoned business people, I really can't fault a 17 year old for going that route and through no fault of their own see the value of that stock evaporate a short while later.

I've known quite a few people that went bust during the .com debacle in exactly the same way and none of them was 17 or even close to it.

It's easy enough to identify your mistakes after the fact (heck, I've made plenty, just this particular one I've managed to avoid), but the big trick is to predict them ahead of time.

How are you doing?

What company did you sell for any amount when you were 17?

And was that in stock or cash?

jacalata• 14 years ago

I didn't read the parent as saying 'not actually a millionaire because he's an idiot', you seem a little touchy here. It seems reasonable to ask for that clarification - if you make the assumption that both brothers came into control of millions of dollars worth of available assets, you might wonder what they were doing with the money, especially as related to their continuing business ventures. The additional information that they don't actually have it answers that question.

vancouverite2• 14 years ago

Jacques, I don't see what relevant my track record has on the argument [1]. I have nothing but admiration for the two brothers. They have done impressive things for their age. My comment was directed at the spin doctoring of Silicon Valley which is likely the aggregate results of marketing effort by Ycombinator (great exit story), their other investors (same), the brothers themselves (CV building) and the general SV media frenzy ("teen millionaire" sells). The problem is that such craziness only fuels silly perceptions. Look at this post. Much of it is devoted to finding some magic process in their parenting! The story real story here is likely along the lines of: be born with good intellectual capacity (genetics), have educated parents of reasonable means in an advanced country who can provide good schooling (lottery), don't have too many social strains during upbringing (divorces, violence, drugs, etc.), enroll in an elite program (Ycombinator), and rely on the efforts of a whole ecosystem to enable PR wins. Much of the above is luck and not some kind of easily repeatable process for creating successful people. Note that this doesn't take anything way from the brothers. They still needed to follow the path, work hard and make good decisions. That's impressive but there is no magic here.

Regarding the Auctomatic exit, keep in mind that they were not bought by some gigantic company whose stock price was subject to many outside factors (like ebay - spin doctor much?). Their buyer, Live Current Media, was specifically created as a new public company for their acquisition. The stock price of the company at $2/share is almost entirely an imaginary number (no meaningful capital was raised during the founding "IPO" so there is no external validation - the first real material share transaction a few months later pegs the price below $0.2 already). Cash payment during the transaction appears to have been around $800k which was later converted to convertible notes when Live Current Media couldn't pay and had to restructure the deal in 2009. The remaining stock portion of ~$4M converts to ~2M shares (at $2/share) which then dropped to about $100k. Allocation to the four (or three) founders seemed to have been ~400k shares, so $20k on liquidity (for all of them together) [2].

During that period (new entity in 2008, restructuring in 2009), it appears that one or both of the brothers were part of the management team of the new entity (I am not saying that they caused the stock drop, just that this is different from selling a company to Google and then have Google's stock drop later).

Again, their accomplishment relative to their age is impressive. Building and selling anything is hard. But Live Current Media basically bought a domain name and paid domain name dollars for it (in real dollars).

[1] Ironically, I did sell a company for mid 7 digits (all cash), though I was a few years older than the brothers. Doesn't matter to the argument though.

[2] I know nothing about the transaction but I can read financial reports like this one: http://www.faqs.org/sec-filings/100329/Live-Current-Media-In...

MojoJolo• 14 years ago

This guy inspired me. I'm just reading about Stripe a while ago and I don't know the founder is just 22!

I'm 20, and I think I need to rush some things. I don't want to be late.

biot• 14 years ago

It sure would be a shame if you end up being a sluggard like Jeff Bezos who started Amazon at the ripe old age of 30. :)

majani• 14 years ago

Late for what?

bimozx• 14 years ago

The experience of reading young success stories is both exhilarating and depressing to me. On one hand it expands my vision of what is really possible at such young age, on the other I realize that I am at the point in my youth where people like Patrick and John have achieved so much. It shows a little ingenuity and complete persistence can make you go real far.

Kudos to both of them, and godspeed on their current endeavor.

kyro2• 14 years ago

That's it. I'm doing a startup after med school.

...so what's the policy on using investment money to pay back loans?

jacquesm17• 14 years ago

> ...so what's the policy on using investment money to pay back loans?

It's a no-no unless you negotiate that up front. And likely you'll get a bunch of rejections as a result unless you can come up with a really good reason for that (I can think of a few).

kyro2• 14 years ago

I'm all ears, Jacques!

sudhirj• 14 years ago

What's also impressive is the choice of project: pg has written about this (think he calls it the schelp filter or something). Payments is one of the most difficult, red-tape entangled, regulation-choked domains to start a company in. Not to mention the extreme security requirements and general unsexiness of it all.

Think they've managed to do an awesome through all the hurdles - if I ever decide to follow their example and start a payments company in India it will simply be "Stripe-API compliant". That's pretty much all the marketing / features it will need.

rsmaniak• 14 years ago

Amazing guy, inspiring and at the same time, depressing...

madaxe5• 14 years ago

Ok, stripe's wonderful, but... why is stripe wonderful?

It's a payment service provider. An expensive payment service provider. They have an API. It's nicely written - but a nicely written API doesn't make a product. They're available in the US and Canada. OK, but there's a whole planet out there.

So, yeah. What exactly is it that's so amazing about stripe?

I work in eCommerce, run and developed a little platform that does a few £bn a year through it, so know my PSPs, and fail to see the differentiation.

j_col3• 14 years ago

> So, yeah. What exactly is it that's so amazing about stripe?

You have to remember, they are a Y Combinator funded start-up and this is a Y Combinator site, so there is a fair amount of hype on here about Stripe.

That said, I think they are doing something interesting and useful (in a real-world commerce sense), and wish them well with it.

madaxe5• 14 years ago

Oh, likewise - I think they've real promise, but they're in a crowded marketplace with a lot of really entrenched players.

I guess their principle differentiator is the market they target - but pitching to developers is a big bet. If you've worked around enough enterprises you know by now that developers have little say in business decisions - meaning that their main opportunity is to be chosen by startups, and to hope to high hell that one of them makes it big, and piggyback - and hope to high hell that a big player doesn't use their clout and cash to undercut them and shoulder them out.

Either way, kudos to them for building what's undeniably a good product, but I just don't see it as a gamer-changer in the same way as others seem to.

olalonde• 14 years ago

> It's nicely written - but a nicely written API doesn't make a product.

I believe you should revisit that assumption. Stripe is successful because of its API and UI. Likewise, Facebook and the iPhone largely succeeded because of their UI and API.

madaxe5• 14 years ago

Facebook succeeded because they got the network effect right, and Zuck chose the initial rounds of members at Harvard carefully (mostly girls, mostly rabid networkers/socialisers), and the ensuing rollout to other colleges/countries were staged carefully to maximise demand.

iPhone - marketing, marketing, marketing, marketing, and the US had never really seen a smartphone before. Then, ecosystem and snowball.

That said, I agree that UI is a fundamental part of any product - API, however, not so much - Joe Public doesn't care and neither does your CFO - and as posited, developers, no matter how much we'd like to think we are, are not influencers in the markets where PSPs are entrenched.

yesimahuman• 14 years ago

The Stripe API is really good...but it's not perfect. It still requires a huge amount of manual development that services like Recur.ly and Spreedly already implement.

Having implemented several Stripe sites, I found I preferred more of an automated recurring subscription management service, and then Stripe is just a gateway at that point.

That being said, I use Stripe extensively and love it.

dclaysmith• 14 years ago

They were also the first (or one of the first) to (nearly) eliminate the approval process. You could go from registration form to accepting payments in hours rather than the old process of getting merchant service account and then payment gateway.

Braintree, which was the "pro-developer" option has only recently followed suit and begun offering this "instant underwriting".

http://pandodaily.com/2012/10/01/a-new-twist-in-the-three-wa...

jorde• 14 years ago

They also eliminated the need for merchant accounts which is a pretty big benefit compared to Braintree. One could also use Paypal but...

webbruce• 14 years ago

The easy of implementing it into any app is incredible. The dashboard is also very simple and easy to use. It eliminates needs for Gateways, scammy Paypal and other merchants.

antihero• 14 years ago

For the hiring/visa issue, would a solution, say if two of their hires were from the EU, start a company in an EU country, employ them with said company, and then have the US company "contract" the EU company for their part of the work?

jacquesm17• 14 years ago

I've done the opposite: Launch a Canadian subsidiary from Europe, then employ myself at the subsidiary. That worked but it is a pretty roundabout way.

If you can qualify under some program that is less difficult then I would definitely not advise this route.

Stripe's 22-Year-Old Irish-Born Founder Is Just Getting Started

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