Young Guns

Young and daring entrepreneurs from humble beginnings who are building brands, making millions and changing the world.

STRIPE President John Collison doesn’t have an executive office or even a work area, so he often works at a shared table on the ground floor, when it’s available. His older sibling Patrick, who is CEO, goes by the more conventional route: a little work area packed between a wall and the desk used by the admin he shares with his sibling.

The lack of an executive office stopped the Collisons, Irish migrants and twenty something college dropouts, from building one of the most successful startups in the financial services industry. Seven years after its founding, Stripe is revolutionizing digital payments. Over the past few years, the startup has doubled its size to 400 employees and earned investments that value it at $5 billion. One a U.S.-only service, Stripe has now expanded to over 23 countries and is routinely striking partnerships with the likes of Apple Pay, Visa and Alibaba. In recent years, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter have chosen Stripe to power their e-commerce efforts, and traditional retailers like Saks Fifth Avenue and Best Buy picked Stripe for their foray into mobile.

Stripe is private and won’t disclose income. While the majority of its countless paying clients are moderately small, a modest number of its best-known customers - Lyft, Shopify, Kickstarter, Postmates and Wish, process tens of billions in installments combined, a lot of it through Stripe. According to industry sources, Stripe’s payment volume exceed $20 billion a year. For each transaction it processes, Stripe receives a 2.9% in swipe fee, plus 30 cents, roughly the same as other payment platforms such as Square.