In May 2008 he became director of engineering at the company's new Vancouver base. Collison attributes the success of his company to his win in the Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition. Both Collison and his younger brother John were featured on a young Irish persons rich list aired on an RTÉ television show during the 2008 Christmas period. On 18 July 2009, at the age of 20 and following the publication of McCarthy Report, Collison outlined his ideas for the future of Ireland on popular talk-show "Saturday Night with Miriam". In 2010, Patrick co-founded Stripe, which received backing from Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and Sequoia Capital. In November 2016, the Collison brothers became the world's youngest self-made billionaires, worth at least $1.1 billion, after an investment in Stripe from CapitalG and General Catalyst Partners valued the company at $9.2 billion. According to Collison, he reads books and is interested in a broad range of subjects on history, technology, engineering, fiction, philosophy, and art. He publishes the list of books he read on his website. In November 2018, Collison published a piece in "The Atlantic" with Michael Nielsen entitled Science is Getting Less Bang for its Buck, arguing that increased investment in science hasn't produced commensurate output. In 2019, Collison published an opinion piece in the same outlet with Tyler Cowen arguing for a new academic discipline called "Progress Studies", which would study the cultural and institutional conditions which lead to the most progress and higher standards of living. In 2018, Stripe, under the direction of the Collison brothers, contributed $1 million to California YIMBY, a pro-housing development lobbying organization. The Collisons are citizens of Ireland. On June 29th 2020, Collison criticized the Chinese governments treatment of Uighurs tweeting: "As a US business (and tech) community, I think we should be significantly clearer about our horror at, and opposition to, the atrocities being committed by the Chinese government against its own people".