Patrick (left) and John Collison pictured three years ago after selling Auctomatic for US$5m. They were just 19 and 17 years old at the time
Limerick brothers Patrick and John Collison’s Silicon Valley-headquartered start-up Stripe has just raised US$20m in Series B funding led by General Catalyst, along with existing investors Peter Thiel, Sequoia Capital and Elad Gil.
The B round has been joined by Redpoint along with angel investors Chris Dixon and Aaron Levie, TechCrunch has reported.
Stripe, an online payments engine that simplifies the purchase of content and goods on websites, raised its first round of funding of US$2m in March 2011 from investment veterans Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Sequoia Capital and Andreesen Horowitz.
This was followed by a further funding round of US$18m in February 2012 by Sequoia Capital that at the time valued their company at US$100m.
A report in May by SecondMarket.com listed Stripe as ranking alongside Pinterest as one of Silicon Valley’s rising stars, giving it an informal valuation of US$1bn.
The digital odyssey of John (20) and Patrick (22) began when they formed a start-up called Shuppa in 2007, which later became known as Auctomatic, attracted funding from Silicon Valley venture capital firm Y Combinator, and was acquired just a year later by Canadian firm Live Current Media for $5m (€3.2m) when the brothers were just 17 and 19, respectively.
