Biography|Patrick Collison — The Irish-Language School on St Conlan's Road

Patrick Collison's first school was not in Silicon Valley and not even in Limerick city.

It was Gaelscoil Aonach Urmhumhan, an Irish-medium primary school on St Conlan's Road in Nenagh, County Tipperary.

He was born in Limerick on 9 September 1988 to Lily, a microbiologist, and Denis, an electronic engineer.

The family raised him and his two younger brothers in Dromineer, a small harbour village on Lough Derg a few miles west of this school.

A gaelscoil teaches through Irish. The building on St Conlan's Road is a public school, not a private house, and it is still there.

By the time he was eight he was taking a computer course at the University of Limerick. By ten he was teaching himself to program.

The Nenagh years are the part of the story later profiles flatten into a single word, Tipperary.

This road is where that flattening starts: a bilingual classroom in a market town, a harbour village a short drive away, and a first machine that was not yet a company.

The later prizes and the payments company sit on top of this ordinary Irish primary-school address.

Photo: school location documented from public school directories; portrait of Collison by randy stewart, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons