Patrick Collison

Patrick Collison was born in rural Ireland in 1988 and showed exceptional intellectual ability from an early age, winning Ireland's Young Scientist competition at age 16. He co-founded Stripe with his brother John Collison in 2010 while both were studying at MIT and Harvard respectively. Stripe was born from the insight that accepting online payments was needlessly complex — the company built a simple API that developers could integrate in minutes to accept payments globally. This developer-first approach resonated enormously, and Stripe grew to process hundreds of billions of dollars in transactions annually for millions of businesses worldwide. Stripe became one of the most valuable private companies globally with a peak valuation exceeding $95 billion. Beyond Stripe, Patrick has been an intellectual leader in discussions about scientific progress, economic dynamism, and the future of innovation, co-founding Stripe Press and Stripe Climate.