Nick Molnar, co-founder of deferred payment company Afterpay which you’ve no doubt become intimately familiar with ever since we were all forced into isolation, has become Australia’s youngest ever self-made billionaire at just 30 years of age.
According to Business Insider Australia – which is part of the broader Pedestrian Group – Molnar and fellow Afterpay co-founder Anthony Eisen both own 20.5 million shares in the company, which represents an 8.5% stake each.
At the time of writing, the Afterpay stock price on the ASX was sitting at AUD$67.79 per share, on the back of a massive surge in the company’s stock price which has seen it rise 22.3% since Monday morning.
That means both Molnar and Eisen are sitting on a current net worth in excess of AUD$1.39 billion each in stock value alone.
This caps off a meteoric rise up the Australian rich list, following on from a previously less-than-optimistic outlook for the company back in March, which saw the share price dip below the $8 mark.
Notably, this also makes Molnar the youngest self-made (as in, didn’t straight-up inherit it) billionaire in Australian history, reaching the mark at just 30 years of age.
That eclipses the previous marks set by Canva co-founders Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht, who were both 31 when they hit billionaire status for the first time last year. Prior to that, Atlassian co-founders Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar smashed through the 10-figure mark back in 2014 at ages 34 and 33 respectively. That year also happens to have been the year when Molnar and Eisen founded Afterpay, in a weird trivia quirk that may come in handy at a particularly tricky pub quiz night down the road.
The surge Afterpay is currently enjoying is reasonably unprecedented in Australian stock market history, and comes on the back of everyone going batshit nuts for online shopping during various pandemic-related lockdown periods.
The company’s US expansion is also booming, having passed 5 million active users in the country in late May. A deal with Chinese giant Tencent has also contributed to the stunning rise for the company over recent months.
‘Course that’s not to say that Molnar’s bank account currently sports a literal billion dollars in it; like most rich listers, net worth is determined largely by equity.
Still, 30 years old and a billionaire. When I turned 30 I commandeered the pub DJ booth and played Peter Andre’s Mysterious Girl so loudly that it nearly blew out the PA. So, y’know, hat’s off to him.
