“Irish” Company Stripe Raises Cash At $100 Million Valuation

I remember talking to Patrick Collison about three years ago when Stripe was just an idea brewing in his head. He simply said he thought they could create a billion dollar company in the online payments industry and disrupt a broken business model while making life easier for people.

Well today, it looks like his company Stripe - which he founded with brother John – has taken a huge step in that direction with a round of funding that values the company at a whopping $100 million. Backers are said to include Sequoia Capital and along with early investor Peter Thiel (of Facebook and Paypal fame), the investors just don’t come more serious than that.

For those of you not familiar with the Collison brothers (there is a third younger brother Tommy who often writes here on the blog), they first came to fame a few years ago when they sold their first company for $5 million as teenagers, and it now seems as if that was just the warm up act. I’ve left the inverted commas in the title around Irish because with the company based in Silicon Valley, with staff from all over the world and American investors, it clearly has an international feel, but there is no doubt that the DNA of the company is Irish at heart.

The only shame is that the very best talent like this has to leave Ireland to achieve success. Building a company like Stripe is nearly impossible in Ireland and it’s such a shame that while we have all the biggest internet companies in the world here for tax reasons, the brightest smartest entrepreneurs are overseas creating the next big things. I’d love to see the day where Irish VCs could take a punt on talent like this and breed a whole eco system of talent that stays here in Ireland. Those days are a long, long way off though.

Online payments have always been a pain especially for developers (who Stripe target) to integrate into their sites so I fully expect the lads to go on and deliver an exit in the long run, both for themselves and their investors. Couldn’t happen to two nicer or more talented guys.