The youngest self-made billionaire at age 27. John Collison has many other achievements that are attributed to his name. When he founder Stripe with his brother to change the way that payments were being made on the internet, he was just 19 years old. Their mission statement is stated very clearly. “Stripe aims to give developers the tools they need to create the most secure and novel buying experiences.” 

One of the most important things to note about this entrepreneurial story is the fact that a large part of Stripe’s growth was through word of mouth. The CEO of the company commented on the power of word of mouth when he says, “Initially it very much spread through a word of mouth process. That was surprising to us because it’s a payment system not a social network so it’s not something you’d think would have any virality whatsoever. But it became clear that everything else was so bad and so painful to work with that people actually were selling this to their friends.” It is important to see that the growth of the this company came largely through word of mouth. This goes to show that growth can come from many different platforms.

The website was initially named /Dev/Payments. The team quickly worked to change the name to Stripe.com, which received with some hesitation. This is an extreme example of how as an entrepreneur must make sure that their company has a good name. If you do not have a company name that is appropriate for the product or service you are selling, then it will not be successful

I think that Collison knows the value of an invested leader. He enjoys hiking with the members from his company to create friendships that foster a positive environment. Collison understands that even when you have become successful, you still need to innovate in the workplace. I believe that we can learn a lot from Collison as an entrepreneur and his innovations as cofounder.

https://www.startupgrind.com/blog/the-collison-brothers-and-story-behind-the-founding-of-stripe/

https://www.inc.com/business-insider/john-collison-co-founder-president-stripe-youngest-billionaire-world.html