OLD UNICORN NEW TRICKS.

Billionaire brothers John and Patrick Collison built Stripe into one of the world's most-hyped, highest valued - and profitable! - startups, worth some $95 billion. Now they must stave off going from disruptor to disrupted.

- ALEX KONRAD

IT’S JUST BEFORE FIVE O’CLOCK, AND STRIPE COFOUNDER JOHN COLLISON IS PREPARING TO ADDRESS HIS HUNDREDS OF IRELAND-BASED EMPLOYEES ON THE TOP FLOOR OF HIS HEADQUARTERS IN DUBLIN’S “SILICON DOCKS” DISTRICT.

Such regular Friday town halls, which are also simulcast to New York, San Francisco, Singapore and anywhere else its 7,000 employees want to tune in from over Zoom, are an almost sacred tradition at Stripe, the payments company that Collison co-founded with big brother Patrick in 2010. With Patrick away getting married, it’s up to John, 31, and with a dusting of gray hair now topping his boyish face, to field questions.

It could get contentious: There’s a social media “kerfuffle” playing out over Twitter this week: Stripe has been accused in a series of (since deleted) tweets by Zachary Perret, the billionaire co-founder of fellow fintech unicorn Plaid, of meeting with his company under false pretenses only to build a competing software tool.