With over 2,000 billionaires around the world, it’s no longer an extremely exclusive club with only a handful of members.
Today, if you work hard enough and have a great idea, all you need is a little luck to become one of the richest people on the planet. This was particularly true of John Collison who is estimated to be worth over $3 billion.
Keep reading to learn more about how he went from humble beginnings to become the youngest self-made billionaire.
Personal History
John Collison was born in Limerick, Ireland, in 1990. His parents ran a lakeside hotel, so it’s safe to say he and his brother Patrick picked up some business experience from them along the way.
When Collison was just 16 years old, he and Patrick founded a company known as Shuppa. The following year, they merged their company with Auctomatic, a software company that primarily creates tools for ebay.
After that, Collison attended Harvard University. While there, he and his brother came up with another idea. This would lead to them dropping out of school to create Stripe, a platform that allows anyone to accept credit card payments online.
In 2010, Stripe was officially founded through investments from the likes of Elon Musk, Max Levchin, and Peter Thiel. When it was valued at $9.1 billion just six years later, it turned John Collison into the youngest self-made billionaire.
Accomplishments
Although being a self-made billionaire is an accomplishment all on its own, let’s dig into three of John Collison’s biggest accomplishments to see what we can learn from them.
Teenage Millionaire
Collison and his brother founded their first business when they were teenagers. When they sold it, they became self-made teenage millionaires. This club is smaller since teens don’t have as many time or resources to acquire wealth, making it more impressive to be a part of this crowd.
This also goes to show you that you can never be too young to find success if you’re willing to put in the work it takes to do so. It also means that if you’re older, you don’t have any excuses as to why you can’t be successful in your industry, too.
15th Richest Entrepreneur Under 40
Although age is just a number, it’s still impressive when someone is able to gain so much wealth before the age of 40. After all, they can’t gain much through investments and often have no capital to start with.
Collison earned the 15th position on Forbes’s list of Richest Entrepreneurs Under 40. This list looks only at self-made millionaires and billionaires, and even being on it is a huge accomplishment.
Co-founder of Multiple Successful Businesses
It’s important to remember that Collison didn’t start with Stripe. He started with a smaller company that he and his brother ended up selling. It was only then that they moved on and eventually came up with the idea to make Stripe.
This is a great encouragement to anyone that has already started one business, whether or not it was successful. You simply never know what you could stumble onto next, so it’s important to keep going even if you fail.
If you succeed in one business, that might be even more encouragement to keep going since your next one could be even more successful plus you have money to fall back on if it doesn’t work out. Sometimes you shouldn’t quit while you’re ahead.
How John Collison Became a Billionaire
You may be wondering how you can follow in Collison’s footsteps to make a million or a billion dollars. The good news is there are three things he did that allowed him to get to the place he’s in today.
Let’s take a closer look at those three things so you can learn from him.
Skills
The first thing that Collison had was skills. He didn’t have them by pure chance, either. He had them because he worked hard to develop them. John and Patrick were known to compete with each other to hone their coding skills. This helped both of them learn more and become more skilled.
You’ll need different skills depending on how you plan on earning your wealth. Carefully consider what you need whether they’re hard skills, soft skills, or a combination of both. Then, figure out how you can best develop them.
Hard Work
It doesn’t matter how talented you are if you’re not willing to put those skills into action. Collison knew that which is why he worked so hard to create the things that he and his brother imagined.
Turning your dreams into realities takes hard work and dedication. You’ll have to do some sweating and you have to pull some long hours. You need to stay focused on what’s most important and see that it’s going to be worth it in the end.
Sacrifice
We’re not encouraging anyone to drop out of college for no reason, but it was clear that in Collison’s case, leaving Harvard University was the right choice. He recognized that abandoning his formal education to pursue his career option would pay off in huge ways.
Often, we’re afraid to let certain things go, even if those things are holding us back. In some cases, these things are distractions like social media. We spend so much time on them and draw so much of our identity from them that it’s hard to give them up.
However, if you’re willing to remove the things from your life that are holding you back, there’s no telling how far you can go. Take a moment to think about what you might need to sacrifice for the good of your future.
Ready to Get Your Productivity Score Up?
Now you know how John Collison became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire. As you can see, it took having talent but also a lot of hard work. If you have a great idea, then your next step is to put in the work needed to turn it into reality.
Download our app today. We’ll start by giving you your productivity score so you can see where you stand, as compared to others as well. From there, we’ll give you personalized insight to help you keep improving your score.
