Patrick Collison created fintech giant Stripe. What advice would he have given himself as a young man?

One of the world's most valuable private companies, Stripe, has increased its valuation to $159 billion in the latest employee stock deal - a 72% increase from a year earlier. The payment service announced the deal on February 24, simultaneously with the publication of the traditional letter about the results of the year.

Stripe was founded in 2010 by brothers Patrick and John Collison, who emigrated to the United States from Ireland. Six years after the company's launch, they were among the youngest self-made billionaires in the world according to Forbes, just short of their 30th birthday. A few years ago, the eldest of the brothers, Patrick Collison, published a message with tips on how to succeed. They are aimed at people under 20 years old, but may be relevant to an older audience as well. Oninvest has translated his message and publishes it without abbreviations.

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Periodically, someone writes to me and asks for very general advice. "How do I change the world?" Adjusting for the fact that I've only lived a small part of my life so far and am still trying to figure things out, here's what I would have advised myself in the past.

If you are between the ages of 10 and 20, this is your prime era!

- Delve deeper into the study of subjects. Become an expert.

- In particular, try to study several subjects in depth. To varying degrees, I tried to study languages, programming, writing, physics, and math in depth. Some subjects were more memorable, some less so. One of the main goals by age 20 is to get some understanding of what you like to do. Most likely, this will not change much throughout your life. Therefore, it is better to try to figure out what you like to do as early as possible.

- You shouldn't think too much about how valuable the items you're working on in depth are... But you shouldn't completely ignore it either. It should be a factor to consider, but it should not be decisive in itself.

- If you enjoy working hard, work hard. There is no evidence that the return on your efforts diminishes when you follow this rule. If you are fortunate enough to enjoy working hard, be grateful and make the most of it!

- Make friends online with people who are great at what you are interested in. The Internet is one of your biggest advantages over previous generations. Use it.

- Try to read a lot.

- If something seems important to you, but older people don't think highly of it, there's a good chance you're right and they're wrong. Status is a generation or more behind.

- Don't make the mistake of judging your success by your current surroundings. Sure, make friends, but being a little weird as a teenager is usually a good thing.

- But good social skills are beneficial throughout life. So don't underestimate them. Learn how to make a good first impression, how to be funny (if possible... the author himself is still working on it...), how to speak in public.

- Create something new. Working in a highly uncertain environment is a very different experience than learning anything.

- In a broader sense, no one can teach you how to think for yourself. Much of what people around you believe is wrong. Accept this and practice forming your own picture of the world. The correlation between it and the views of others should not be too strong, unless you consider yourself exceptionally lucky in your initial circumstances.

- If you live in the US and go to a good school, a lot of factors will push you to follow the rails laid down by others rather than charting your own course. Make sure you are doing unusual things that you enjoy rather than following a standardized path. You can test this heuristically by asking yourself: do your friends at school think your path is a little strange? If not, perhaps it is too normal.

- Find a way to travel to San Francisco and meet other people who have moved there to fulfill their dreams. Why San Francisco? It's a Schelling point (in game theory, a decision that people tend to choose from many options without coordinating with each other. - Oninvest) for open-minded, intelligent, energetic and optimistic people. San Francisco is the world headquarters of the "geeks." And of course, take every opportunity to travel to other places as well.

- Find shining examples of success in the fields you are interested in. If you want to become a great scientist, try to find ways to interact with good (and ideally great) scientists. Watch interviews on YouTube. Subscribe to some on Twitter.

- People who have accomplished great things often did them at a remarkably young age (they were gray when they became famous, but not when they did their work). So hurry up! You too can accomplish great things.

If you are 20-30 years old, I don't know yet. I plan to think about it when I'm 35-40*.

*♪ Collison is now 37 years old ♪

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor