Whenever someone talks about the youngest billionaires, the first name that pops up in the mind is of the Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. Being a self-made billionaire at the age of 23, he set a mark of being the youngest self-made billionaire in the history. But not many of us know that there are a few more in the list of ‘Youngest Self-made Billionaires’, who also hit the mark when they were just in their ‘20s. A deadly idea, executed effectively, when surrounded by right set of geniuses, and with complete dedication, can do wonders. Few such stories of the people who created these wonders will be told time and again, and be an inspiration for many.
John Collison (Age-27) and Patrick Collison (Age-29)
The Co-founders of Stripe, John Collison and Patrick Collison, came up with the idea of Stripe when they were in the college in Boston. Stripe is a payment-centric company that allows easy transactions between individuals and businesses over the internet. Led by the Harvard drop-out, Irish brothers, the company was valued at $9.2 billion in November 2016. Patrick quotes “What interests us in Stripe is the idea that there could be much more commerce happening on the internet.”
Both the brothers took up coding when they were kids and constantly kept competing against each other. They were already millionaires when they entered into the college, as they had sold their company, Auctomatic, for $5 million in 2008. John and Patrick Collison first started a software firm to make transactions on eBay easier. They, then, made Stripe public in 2011 and since then have walked the company towards its success.
John, also the President of Stripe, became a self-made billionaire just at the age of 26 in the year 2016. Along with being a brilliant student and a successful entrepreneur, John is a licensed pilot and loves hiking and adventures. Humble and well-rounded are the two qualities that define him very well.
Patrick Collison is now the Content Strategist of Stripe. He studied math at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is skilled in many fields like software engineering, AI, APIs, programming languages, distributed systems, and flying.
Evan Spiegel (Age-28) and Bobby Murphy (Age-29)
Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy are the Co-founders of the American multi-national social media company, Snap. They found Snapchat in 2011, when both of them were studying together in Stanford where Evan studied product-designing and Bobby studied mathematics and computational science. Snapchat allows one to send disappearing snapshots and messages to the friends connected to them on the same platform. Introducing features like filters, masks and captions, along with disappearing snaps, both the founders have led Snapchat to success and there’s no stopping them.
Evan, now the CEO of Snap, became one of the youngest self-made billionaires just at the age of 25 in the year 2015, owing to the widespread popularity of Snap, especially among the teens. Evan has always believed that life is never about making money or winning, it is about leaving an impact on the world.
Bobby completed his degree as Bachelor of Arts/Science along with working on snap. Snap was initially called Picaboo, and Murphy worked eighteen hours a day to develop its working prototype and still remains its core code’s author. He now is the CTO of Snapchat, Bobby Murphy, and is usually defined as smart, quiet, and friendly. Bobby joined the community of youngest self-made billionaires in 2015, when he was 26
Duskin Moskovitz (Age-34)
Not many people know that Duskin, then Mark’s roommate and his fellow computer-science student, helped Mark Zuckerberg launch Facebook in 2004 as a lead programmer in the team. Both of them dropped out of Harvard to work full-time on Facebook, then being clueless about the fortune of the company. In 2008, Duskin left Facebook and went ahead to co-found a software company, named Asana. He has also invested in a mobile photo sharing website, Path, and an AI company, Vicarious. He then co-founded Good Ventures, a philanthropic company, with his wife which donates millions for programs supporting malaria eradication, Deworm the world initiative and so on. Owing to the three per cent of stakes in Facebook that he still owns, he became a billionaire in 2012.
As Bobby Murphy said, “We weren’t cool, so we tried to build something that was cool.” Every great story started with an idea, which nobody imagined would turn into a huge success. There are so many new stories that are featured every day, talking about the journeys of the successful people or the people who are working hard to climb the ladder of success. Starting from the scratch and tackling all the difficulties and failures on the way, these inspirations have come so far. Maybe the right mantra is “Not to give-up”.
-Aishwarya Nawandhar