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JOHN COLLISON, ONE of two Irish brothers behind multibillion-dollar payments company Stripe, says he is still “scratching the surface” of the problem he set out to solve.
Speaking at the Web Summit in Dublin today, Collison, 25, said he took issue with the suggestion he and his brother Patrick, 27, had “made it” since their company hit a $5 billion valuation on its latest fundraising effort.
“It’s one of these things that as you start scratching away at the problem you just keep realising it’s bigger and there’s more to it,” he said.
The Silicon Valley-based company, which essentially makes it easier for companies to take payments online, was launched in 2011.
It now employs over 300 staff, operates in 22 countries and counts Twitter and Kickstarter as its customers, while investors include Visa and tech luminary Elon Musk.
Teen Millionaires
The brothers first became millionaires while still in their teens when their previous company, Auctomatic, which made software for heavy eBay users, was sold for a reported $5 million in 2008.
Collison said to start a company you needed to have a “really strong familiarity with the problem at hand” and it helped that he had first-hand experience of the frustration of trying to process payments from overseas.
Stripe recently launched services in Brazil and Portugal, and the company will now be turning its attention to Latin America and Southeast Asia.
However, despite the rollout into new territories, Collison said it was important not to underestimate how difficult it would be to grow internationally.
Serving the 95% of the world’s population who lived outside the US was never as easy as catering to the first 5% in Stripe’s home market, he said.
If you are going to go international as a company you have to take it extremely seriously, make it part of your DNA and most of all acknowledge it’s going to be a long process.”
Collison said the companies he most admired were those without peers, like French long-distance carpooling outfit BlaBlaCar, rather than startups that focussed on improving an existing service.
“I think the biggest thing is probably to not be afraid to start a business that feels like it has no precedent,” he said.
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In addition to Broderick’s confession, he accepted his age and lack of previous convictions as mitigating factors and suspended eight years to “give him some prospect of emerging back into the light of day for some short period”…………….Personally I’d leave him rot in jail!
It’s quite astonishing to hear terms such as ‘mitigating factors’. That ‘man’ is no father. I hope this lady gets the help and support she needs.
Good for her speaking about it. Sexually abusing your own innocent daughter is a most horrific crime. I don’t think 7 years is enough to be honest.
I see no reason to take age into account when in fact he took no account of hers. She’s satisfied with the sentence however. That’s important.
Good God almighty she was a 4 year old child when he started sexually using her for his own gratification! How can there be any ‘mitigating’ factors for that???? I don’t care how sorry he is or he should be behind bars for the rest of his natural life.
It would make you wonder how many people are hiding their abusive pasts through fear. Hopefully when people like this go public it gives strength to others to come forward and get these subhuman monsters dealt with and jailed.
It would also make you wonder how many children are going through the exact same thing right now. This guy did the worst thing you could ever do to his child. He was supposed to make her feel safe and loved. He filled her life with fear and he deserves to spend every day in a prison cell, contemplating his choices in life, what could have been if he had taken a different path and to die in that prison cell knowing that his daughter came out of his horrific abuse as much a survivor as she could be.
He is a monster of the worst kind, he should Die in prison and dump his body in a hole, he deserves no mercy, and NO leniency.
Should b no jail term just throw the off the cliffs of moher
More than half the sentence suspended! Why would someone put themselves through this for that effort? It seems like the judges are nearly apologizing to the offender for jailing them meanwhile the victim can never get out of jail.
WTF is the matter with these “men”???
It’s literally like rape is legal in this country. The sentencing for these kinds of crimes is a joke!
And the judge who remitted more than half his sentence because he confessed and cooperated is an insult to the concept of justice, he may know the price of everything but he knows the value of nothing
have your say