It was just recently when we wrote about Melanie Perkins, the founder of the graphic design program Canva. Perkins saw the valuation of her company surge during the coronavirus, making her a billionaire. At 32, she was officially the youngest self-made billionaire in Australia…until now. Another member of Gen Z has officially broken into the billionaires club and at 30, he claims the title of the youngest self-made billionaire in Australia from Melanie Perkins. Nick Molnar and Anthony Eisen, 48, co-founded Afterpay, which has seen its stock surge from less than $8 per share in March to more than $66 last week. As of this writing, Afterpay is trading at just over $47. Molnar and Eisen each own an 8.5% stake in the company. As of the stock price on July 3, both founders were worth $1.35 billion each. Perkins was 31 when she joined the billionaire’s club in 2019. Atlassian’s Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes were 33 and 34 when they became billionaires in 2014.
Molnar founded Afterpay back in 2014 with a little help from the Kardashians. Afterpay is a financial services company that allows online shoppers to buy something and pay it off in four installments. Molnar and Eisen pounded the pavement trying to get Afterpay off the ground. Then, on the day before Thanksgiving 2014, someone from the Kardashian camp made contact with the founders via the Afterpay website. A Kardashian filled out the online contact form. The Kardashians wanted Afterpay live on their site that day – the only problem was – it was Thanksgiving weekend and no one was at the company’s San Francisco office. The Kardashians wanted to be able to take advantage of Black Friday’s shopping frenzy.
Photo via Wikimedia Commons/Martinn1987
Molnar called his team and within two hours, Afterpay was live for the Kardashian beauty brands. That paid off when Kim Kardashian uploaded a post to Instagram (and her then 120 million followers) and Twitter (then 60 million followers) endorsing Afterpay. That was all the fledgling company needed to kick off their growth. By the end of March 2015, just 10 months after its launch, Afterpay had 1 million customers in the U.S. Molnar said that the Kardashians understood what his company offered and how well it would pair with their goals.
Afterpay made its IPO in 2016 at $1 per share. It hit $28 in May 2019 before dropping to less than $8 in March 2020. It didn’t stay low for long and by July 3, had hit $66 per share fueled on investors buying into what Afterpay is selling. Afterpay also recently signed a deal with Chinese e-commerce giant Tencent, giving it the inside track on that country’s enormous retail market.
