Background:

Patrick Collison was born September 9, 1988 in Ireland. He was the eldest of three boys and took his first computer course when he was eight years old at the University of Limerick and began learning computer programming at the age of ten.

Ever since he was young, he was interested in science and technology. In 2005 at the age of 16, Collison was the recipient of the 41^st Young Scientist of the Year for his work with Lisp. His brother and co-founder, John Collison, scored the highest-ever score received by a student for the Irish Leaving Certificate. Before Patrick’s last year of High School he left early to attend MIT.

During his first quarter of freshman year, Patrick founded Auctomatic and joined Y Combinator. Its path would not last long, however, because ten months after incorporating, the company was bought by Live Current Media for $5 million where Patrick became the Director of Product Engineering in 2008.

The Beginning of Stripe:

In early 2010, John and Patrick began working on Stripe together. Stripe came into existence when Patrick was working on several side projects and saw that it was difficult to accept payments on the web. They sought to solve the problem and see if it was possible to make online payments very simple and easy to use. For the next 6-months they played with it, showed it to friends, saw how people interacted with it, and made changes along the way.

Within 2-weeks of building the prototype they had their first transactions with a company called 280 North. Eventually its founder, Ross Boucher, would join Stripe as one of the first employees.

Some Trouble:

In the beginning they weren’t sure how big the market was or if they could provide the user experience that they wanted. They also didn’t have the answers to whether or not they could fully address issues like fraud, foreign payments, or credibility. They needed an investor to help give them the credibility they needed by investing in their company.

So that’s what happened. Their first funding came from Paul Graham who worked with Y Combinator that set them down a path of success.

Stripe’s Success:

After solving the technical issues with an online payment service, Stripe took off. Today they are receiving about $380.1 million a year and the company is valued at $36 billion.

I find it interesting that this company became so successful in the environment of a lot of competition. There were a lot of other online payment options before Stripe (like PayPal) but the Collison brothers found a way to make theirs easier to use and more appealing to the market.

This goes to show that if you are invested in your idea and willing to endure through the hardships, you will be successful.