Limerick teen millionaire urges others to ‘go for it’
MILLIONAIRE Patrick Collison, 19, won’t be spending his new found wealth on flash cars, and intends to keep his feet on the ground despite a desire to learn how to fly.
Mr Collison, a former Young Scientist of the Year, will now put his college education on hold as he is taking up the position as director of engineering at Live Current Media. Both he and his brother John, 17, netted over €3m two weeks ago through the sale of an internet company they formed a year ago, and the elder brother is moving to Vancouver next month.
The company, Auctmatic, which manages eBay accounts for high-level users, received backing from a number of private investors in Silicon Valley, having failed to secure funding from either Enterprise Ireland, the State investment body, or any private Irish investors.
Mr Collison was speaking to the Limerick Leader prior to a meeting of Limerick Open Coffee in AbsoluteHotel last week, where young technophiles came to hear their winning success story.
He said his newly-acquired fortune has not gone to his head, and at the moment the overwhelming feeling was one of relief.
“I suppose there was a lot of pressure for a good few months, and now there’s relief that it has actually happened. That’s the overwhelming emotion at the moment, the fact that I can actually talk about this now, as we started negotiations last November and we obviously couldn’t talk about it then,” he said.
He is looking forward to starting work as the director of engineering at the company, and intends to stay there “indefinitely.”
He said his plans to go to college will be put on long finger for the “foreseeable future” as the o pportunities before him were just too good to pass up. He has now deferred his place at Massachusetts Institute of Technology to concentrate on the start-up of the company.
“It’s really very hard to foresee (what’s next in the pipeline). This is going to be a really good option for the next couple of years,” he said.
The Castletroy teenager praised his parents for playing a large part in their success.
“They were delighted. They’ve been behind us the whole way. Before there was any suggestion that this might be in some way successful they were very supportive. They let us take all this time out of school and head away to San Francisco. We couldn’t have asked for more from them, to be honest.” he said.
But the question on everyone’s lips is what the two brothers will purchase with their extra cash, or whether they’ll reinvest the money in more profitable commercial ventures.