Patrick Collison is an Irish entrepreneur who co-founded Stripe in 2010 with his younger brother, John Collison, and serves as its chief executive officer. Stripe builds payments and financial infrastructure that businesses use to accept money, run online stores, and manage billing over the internet, and Collison has led the company from a small startup into a piece of infrastructure relied on by companies of every size.
Before Stripe, Collison was already a known figure in technology. As a teenager in Ireland he won a national science prize, briefly attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and co-founded and sold an early software company. Outside of Stripe he has helped start scientific and philanthropic efforts, including the Arc Institute and the Fast Grants program, and he is associated with the idea of "Progress Studies," a proposed field for studying what drives scientific and economic progress.
Who Patrick Collison is
Patrick Collison was born on 9 September 1988 in Limerick, Ireland, the eldest of three boys. He and his brothers were raised in the village of Dromineer in County Tipperary, and he took his first computer course at the age of eight at the University of Limerick before beginning to program a couple of years later. That early start shaped a career that moved quickly from school science competitions to running one of the most closely watched private companies in technology.
He is best known as the public face and chief executive of Stripe, where his younger brother John serves as president. The two brothers built the company together and hold a controlling interest in it. Collison is based in San Francisco, California, where Stripe has long had a major presence, and he has become a widely cited voice on entrepreneurship, scientific funding, and the conditions that allow companies and economies to grow.
Early life, science prizes, and Auctomatic
Collison was educated at Gaelscoil Aonach Urmhumhan in Nenagh and then at Castletroy College in County Limerick. He entered the Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition, one of Ireland''s best known competitions for secondary school students, and after finishing as an individual runner-up in 2004 he won first place in 2005 at the age of sixteen with a project that involved creating a programming language. He went on to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but left after starting businesses rather than completing his degree.
In 2007 he set up a software company called Shuppa in Limerick with his brother John. After Enterprise Ireland declined to fund the venture, interest from the startup accelerator Y Combinator drew the brothers to California, where they merged with a project run by two Oxford graduates, Harjeet and Kulveer Taggar, and the combined company became Auctomatic. In March 2008, when Patrick was nineteen and John seventeen, they sold Auctomatic to the Canadian company Live Current Media, an outcome that made both brothers wealthy while still in their teens. Collison has credited his early science competition win as an important step on the path to that success.
Founding Stripe with John Collison
In 2010, Patrick and John Collison co-founded Stripe to make it easier for software developers to accept payments online. At the time, integrating online payments was a slow and complicated process, and the brothers focused on a simple developer experience that let businesses start accepting card payments with a small amount of code. The company drew early backing in 2011 that included PayPal co-founders Elon Musk and Peter Thiel along with venture firms such as Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and SV Angel.
Stripe grew steadily over the following years, expanding from a payments tool into a broader set of financial and commerce products and raising successive rounds of funding at rising valuations. In November 2016 the Collison brothers were described as among the world''s youngest self-made billionaires after a funding round valued the company in the billions, and Stripe''s valuation continued to climb in later rounds. As chief executive, Patrick Collison sets the company''s overall direction, while John Collison serves as president; together they retain a controlling stake. For businesses choosing how to handle money online, Stripe sits alongside decisions such as choosing a business bank account as part of setting up financial operations.
Beyond Stripe: Arc Institute and Progress Studies
Collison''s interests extend well beyond payments. In 2020 he co-founded Fast Grants with the economist Tyler Cowen, a program created to fund COVID-19 related scientific research quickly during the early stages of the pandemic. In 2021 he co-founded the Arc Institute, a nonprofit biomedical research organization, with the bioscientists Silvana Konermann and Patrick Hsu. He has written about the funding and productivity of science, including a 2018 piece in The Atlantic with Michael Nielsen questioning whether rising investment in science was producing proportional results.
He is also closely associated with the idea of "Progress Studies." In a 2019 essay in The Atlantic written with Tyler Cowen, Collison argued for a new field that would study the cultural and institutional conditions that lead to scientific, technological, and economic progress. He keeps a personal website where he publishes writing and a running list of books he has read, and his interests span history, technology, philosophy, and the arts. In April 2025 he joined the board of directors of Meta Platforms.
Photo of Patrick Collison by JD Lasica, licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
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Frequently asked questions
Who is Patrick Collison?
Patrick Collison is an Irish entrepreneur who co-founded Stripe in 2010 with his brother John and serves as its chief executive officer. Stripe provides payments and financial infrastructure used by businesses to accept money online.
When did Patrick Collison start Stripe and with whom?
He started Stripe in 2010 together with his younger brother, John Collison. Patrick is the chief executive officer and John is the president, and the two brothers hold a controlling interest in the company.
What did Patrick Collison do before Stripe?
As a teenager he won the Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition in Ireland in 2005, briefly attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and co-founded a software company that became Auctomatic, which he and John sold to Live Current Media in 2008.
What else is Patrick Collison involved in besides Stripe?
He co-founded the Fast Grants science funding program and the Arc Institute, a nonprofit biomedical research organization, and he helped popularize the idea of "Progress Studies." His Wikipedia biography collects much of this work.
Where is Patrick Collison based?
He is based in San Francisco, California, where Stripe has a major presence. He was born and raised in Ireland before moving to the United States.