Bros of the same Stripe
Become billionaires from payment startup
The brothers who co-founded online payments service Stripe have become Ireland’s youngest billionaires after a $150 million funding round valued the business at $9 billion.
Patrick and John Collison own about 29 percent of the business, based on an analysis of filings by private stock market Equidate.
The Bloomberg Billionaires Index net worth calculation splits the founder ownership pool equally between the two, giving them each a $1.1 billion stake.
The startup’s surging valuation is based on its latest funding round disclosed Nov. 25, putting Patrick, 28, and his younger brother John, 25, among the likes of Snap co-founder Evan Spiegel and Uber’s founder Travis Kalanick in amassing a 10-figure fortune from a unicorn, the nickname for a closely held startup valued at $1 billion or more.
Ireland’s newest billionaires are decades younger than the country’s established moguls such as telecoms tycoon Denis O’Brien, 58, or financier Dermot Desmond, 66.
Stripe provides software that lets businesses accept payments online, from sources including credit cards and bitcoin as well as mobile services such as Android Pay and Apple Pay.
The service also provides tools to help with data security, fraud prevention, accounting and billing.
Founded in 2010 offering mobile payment tools for developers, Stripe’s first clients were small US technology companies. It’s since become a competitor to digital payments giant PayPal with clients that include Facebook, Target and Macy’s.
The latest funding round represented the sale of about 1.6 percent of the company and has made the business twice as valuable as Square Inc., a mobile payments firm that went public a year ago and trades at almost three times revenue.
The value of the brothers’ stakes is reduced by 15 percent in the analysis to account for the small stake sold and typical discounts that shares in similar startups attract on the secondary market.
Tim Drinan, a Stripe spokesman, declined to comment on the founders’ ownership stakes.