The Most Successful College Dropouts In History

Successful Entrepreneurs Who Were High School or College Dropouts

To celebrate us college dropouts I thought I would compile a list some of the top entrepreneurs who dropped out of college and then went on to make it big in the business world!

Top 30 College Drop Outs Who Made It Big In Business

Rank
Name
Business
Dropped Out At
Age
Networth
1
Henry Ford

Ford Motor Company
16
Dead
$188 Billion (in 2009 dollars)
2
Bill Gates

Microsoft
19
53
$59 Billion
3
Larry Ellison

Oracle
20
64
$27 Billion
4
Sheldon Adelson

Las Vegas Sands Corp.
19
$26 Billion
5
Larry Page

Google
Graduated University of Michigan
35
$18.5 Billion
6
Kirk Kerkorian

Tracinda
12
91
$18 Billion
7
Michael Dell

Dell
19
43
$17.3 Billion
8
Paul Allen

Microsoft
20
56
$16.0 Billion
9
David Geffen

Geffen Records
21
65
$6.5 Billion
10
Steve Jobs

Apple
18
53
$5.4 Billion
11
Richard Branson

Virgin
16
58
$4.4 Billion
12
Takafumi Horie
Livedoor
22
35
$3.6 Billion
13
Ralph Lauren
Ralph Lauren
20
69
$3.6 Billion
14
Subhash Chandra Goel

Zee TV
12
58
$2.3 Billion
15
Jerry Yang
Yahoo
Graduated Stanford
40
$1.9 Billion
16
Mark Zuckerberg
Facebook
19
23
$700 Million
17
Russell Simmons
DefJam
19
52
$340 Million
18
Matt Mullenweg

WordPress
18
25
$200 Million
19
Mahesh Murthy
Pinstorm & SeedFund
19
43
$200 Million
20
Jawed Karim
YouTube
21
30
$64 Million
21
Kevin Rose
Digg
21
31
$60 Million
22
Jared Isaacman

United Bank Card
17
26
$50 Million
23
Kevin Sproles
Volusion
18
26
$17 Million
24
Shawn Fanning
Napster
19
28
$7.5 Million
25
Scott Wainner

ResellerRatings
20
26
$7 Million
26
Rob Benwell

Blogging To The Bank
18
23
$5 Million
27
Graham Langdon
Entrecard
19
21
$3.2 Million
28
Kristopher Tate
Zooomr
17
20
$3 Million
29
Aaron Levie
Box.Net
20
23
$3 Million
30
Reed Caldwell
ServInt
19
32
$2.5 Million

An Inspiring List Of Entrepreneurs

Interesting and inspiring selection I think you will agree. Not all are complete dropouts – some actually have pretty impressive academic achievements to their name but alas the call of their Entrepreneurial Ventures took them to leave those studies and instead go on to create considerable wealth plus businesses that in some case have touched Billions of people.

Take for example Jerry Yang of Yahoo, who created Yahoo as a graduate student at Stanford University to monitor his personal interests in the early days of the Web. Yang’s official biography even contains the standing joke that he is “currently on a leave of absence from Stanford’s electrical engineering Ph.D. program,” ;-)

And there is of course Larry Page of Google – another Stanford doctoral program dropout.

One entrepreneur who in particular impressed me was Michael Dell – who started a computer company called PCs Limited while attending the University of Texas in Austin. It became so successful that Dell dropped out of school to operate it, and the company eventually became Dell, Inc, with revenues of $57.4 billion in 2007. In 2006, Dell and his wife gave a $50 million grant to the University which he attended but never graduated from.

One remarkable fact I noted when compiling this list, was the number of businesses that started of in a garage. Take for example the HP corporation which started life in a tiny 12×18 foot garage. And then there is also Google and Apple who started life in a garage.

And the Most Notable Young Entrepreneurs Of Recent Times?

Well it is Mark Zuckerberg of course.

Facebook Founder, Mark Zuckerberg has an estimated net worth of $1.5 billion and believed by some to be the wealthiest man younger than 25 in the USA. Mark Zuckerberg, like Bill Gates, is a Harvard dropout.

After launching Facebook school-wide from his dorm room at Harvard in February 2004, Zuckerberg began devoting more and more time to his program, gradually spreading it to other schools. By that summer, Zuckerberg and his roommate Dustin Moskovitz had released Facebook to nearly 30 schools, and the website was growing too popular to be run part-time.

Where to go from here

Retireat21 is packed with helpful information and advice from some of the leading entrepreneurs in the world. For inspiration I would suggest you read some of our high profile interviews and check out our young entrepreneur rich list!

If you're really considering making a living through blogging, then you absolutely have to check out Blogging To The Bank by Rob Benwell. In his book, the UK millionaire blogger reveals step by step how he makes as much as $90,480 a month from just a few hours work.

Just starting your blog? Check out Become a Blogger where you can find all the information you will ever need so that you can create your first website, drive traffic to it and then make your first few dollars. To make this a no-brainer for you, I have contacted the creator of Become a Blogger and persuaded them to give you a $1 trial so you can test it out basically for FREE.

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53 Responses to “The Most Successful College Dropouts In History”

  1. Very interesting post Michael, love your site!

  2. Thanks Rachna! Means a lot coming from you.

  3. It’s important to note that most of these people didn’t quit school until they were already successful. The truth is that the vast majority of college students (i.e. 99.999%) will never reach this level of success. Finishing college gives you something to fall back on later in life if things don’t go your way.

    It’s also worth noting that many of these people are Harvard or Stanford dropouts… and their families were worth considerable amounts of money before they ever went into business.

    It almost sounds like this post is encouraging college students to drop out by showing all the successful entrepreneurs who have “made it,” when the vast majority of new businesses fail.

  4. Great post, by the way Graham is 23, not 21!

  5. Wow. Bill Gates is a dropout?!

  6. @Brandon,

    Well said. And if I may add, you sometimes hear of remarkable stories of people who quit whatever they were doing to pursue something like music, acting or sports careers. And entrepreneurship is the same but different. Yes, you should fully pursue your passion, but I think Seth Godin says it best when he says that ‘You don’t know what people will take to.’ So just because Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook doesn’t mean if you decide to go out and build a better, cooler version that people will jump to that. You just never know what will excite people.

    Also, most people who tend to want to support you in your endeavors (financial or otherwise) focus more on what you have done vs. what you will do. So it helps to have some track record of your success. What you think is cool is relative. People basically will take you more seriously if they see that you have produced something and are showing slow and steady sales growth.

    And lastly, the people who are most successful also realize that everything around them is a tool to their success, not an obstacle. Your school is a resource. Your community is a resource. Your parents and your friends parents are resources. Remember how Facebook got started—within the university with the primary target audience being college students. So in some respects Mark Zueckerberg was still managing the resources that he had alloted to him at that time. So folks, bottom line, choose to run to something not from something in your entrepreneurial pursuit.

    And best wishes to all of you emerging entrepreneurs regardless of your personal or professional endeavors.

    @teenbizcoach

  7. What a powerful list, Michael! You’ve set the bar higher for Retire@21.

    It’s definitely worthy of Digg or Stumble.

    Yan
    PS: Coincidentally, I dropped out of college too so hopefully I could get into the list soon.

  8. Shonika, great point! A lot of people do dropout and work really hard and never make it! You have to have a plan b… just in case.

    Yan, Thanks very much mate! Hopefully we will see both of us on the list soon.

  9. Good post, $59 billion for Bill Gates :O

  10. I like the fact that all these people have been so successful and did not complete college. I like that the majority still make money online today with their big venture or side shifted slightly to another area. It shows that it is possible for anyone to make money and progress to something exceptional

  11. Do you think that Larry Page and Jerry Yang where drop outs when they found their company ? I don’t think so, They must be Graduates then.

  12. Actualy Ben they had to drop out of College to work on their business, when they became a success they completed their courses.

    Thanks Katie and Charlie!

  13. @Yan: Just give it time, it’ll come. Keep up the good work as you’ve been doing and it’s bound to happen.
    Best of luck to everyone. Nice post.

  14. always looking for something interesting subject
    and always think.
    thanks and great job

    acompanhantes

  15. Wow, impressive list.

    Although dropouts, they certainly didn’t lack in the brainpower category. Or, the work ethic….

  16. i like it keep it up but where is the info the black entrepreneurs like myself i need more info on like how and where to get funding.

  17. Outstanding posting, keep your great work Michael.

  18. great post mic.

  19. Great post! Really interesting and inspiring selection.

  20. Yea, to reiterate what Brandon said, don’t take this has motivation TO drop out of school. I believe a statistic said that 90% of small business owner creators had a college degree. If you’re able to find success, then run with it, but don’t believe the road to success is dropping out.

  21. It’s a nice list but how do people who graduated qualify for a college dropout list?

  22. Nice post. But how could you miss out the legendary Dhirubhai Ambani?

  23. James, I was thinking that they probably got their degrees AFTER their business became hugely successful from dropping out.

    This list just reinforces the power of the technology industry. So many big tech companies were created by people who just had a dream and a desire to pursue it.

  24. The thing is with some of these guys is that they had money in the background of their life already, so none of this success really mattered to them.

    -Mike

  25. It’s worth noting that Hotmail.com co-founder Jack Smith didn’t just drop out of college, he flunked out. 12 years later he sold Hotmail to Microsoft for $400,000,000.

  26. There is hope for non-conformists, it seems! My favourites amongst these are Matt Mullenweg (I really love WordPress and its success is only but a taste of things to come!) and Jawed Karim.

  27. With a bit of luck, some of these guys will become professors at a University of Real Life.

  28. This is very much impressive! It’s very surprising that those people behind the most successful names in I.T. are college dropouts back then.

  29. For Brandon Eley above: Brandon…as Scott Wainner’s Father, I can promise you, that Scott did not come from a WEALTHY FAMILY…Scott
    is a total self-made man. Got his 1st computer at the young age of 6 and he was hooked! He developed 2 successful websites while he was in High School. You might also be interested to learn that Scott earned his pilot’s license in a Cessna aircraft at the age of 15…he’s just a very bright young man. But, I think the thing that makes my Son so successful is that he is very “grounded” and keeps his success in “perspective”. He is now 31 and has 4 very successful websites…along with a very successful book he
    co-authored about “over-clocking computers”…can you tell his Father is very proud of his Son?! *smile*

  30. How about the women?

  31. Very good post. I hope to see my face up there someday.

  32. I am looking for exactly the information on this post for my winners bible… the bit with the heroes and mentors in it… I did not steal the photo’s, I am just looking for inspiration.

  33. It made me laugh knowing that the hottest site of today (Facebook) was created by a college dropout.

  34. Going to college does not determine anything except that the student will spend countless hours in a classroom following someone else’s lesson plan (for better or for worse) and either spending a lot of money or securing plenty of scholarship for it.
    Now comes the time of the autodidact. At the end of the day, who’s going to get commissioned for work? Who will have the knowledge and motivation? The “renaissance men” or the “formally educated” people? Whichever ones learn and apply out of a sense of wonder. The money and jobs are a byproduct of a deep curiosity in pure research that drives us on. Every dropout on this page, no matter his trade or business, is a scientist with a vision. Of course, life’s comforts can be obtained from other viewpoints, but the emptiness is felt despite any material aquisition.

  35. And, yes, Mindie, how about the women? ;)

  36. Hey Michael,

    Great looking redesign. Love your content and this article.

    This article and this topic has been baffling me the last few months because I work heavily in the school industry.

    As an Academic Success Strategies who delivers speeches and develop resources for students to succeed in school (and a recipient of many college degrees myself) many students need to understand both the concepts of Education and HUSTLE!

    Working smart, staying focused, and sticking to a plan is something that needs to be re-emphasized in our school systems over and over. The perception that having a college degree or getting and education is the Key to success is so NOT true. But its the application of the things you learn in school plus smart hustle with diligence is the key to amazing success.

    Great article and thanks for all you do Michael.

    ** And yes where are the women?

  37. nice list, but I do have a question… the list is about college drop outs, not people who graduated college (i.e. Larry Page, and Jerry Yang) they shouldn’t be in the list if you are talking about college drop outs… why put them in the list?

  38. Wew, Matt Mullenweg and Kevin Rose I never though about them leaving college, btw great post michael

  39. Awesome list man. I was too thinking of dropping out of my college but i didn’t. What are the chances of success for non dropouts. LOL
    Thanks!

  40. wow. i cant believe they’re all drop outs..inspirational! well, as they say, you only get to use 10% of your learning in the classroom in real life. i like your posts..really interesting. keep it up!

  41. that Jared guy is my new business hero !

  42. List was good, but if you see lot of those business are having a shaky ground, they will wipe out in next few years and even there wealth, there is lot of competition in the market to be success. You don’t need to drop out from any school to be success, what you need is a out of the box thinking brain.

  43. Hi

    Really great post …they are really heroes of the internet world ….

  44. WOW, So many people didnt know these guys quit uni. So inspiring to know that you too can be one of these mega successes.

    Always remember this, whats possible for one is possible for all

  45. Michael,

    Thanks a billion for this site and these articles. I had to quit school due to financial reasons and plan on finishing but success doesn’t come from following someones curriculum, it comes from following your heart and being driven to succeed. I will be on this list sooner than later.

  46. Another college dropout/entrepreneur/billionaire/genius is Rush Limbaugh. He’s estimated to be worth at or just over a billion dollars.

  47. you should mention Gurbaksh Chahal too

    He left school at 16 and sold his first company at 18 for 40 millions and his second company for 300 millions (bluelithium) to yahoo

  48. very nice post, good to a lot of the high tech guys are drop out’s, but in my case nothing happen so far :)

  49. Its hard to believe but I know some of the college dropouts who is very successful in their career now. Thanks for sharing this, I really like your blog and i really appreciate the excellent quality content you are posting here.

  50. A very inspiring an informative post Michael :)

    They rock the internet :)

  51. Hey – for strong fantastic black entrepreneurs, I think Farrah Gray is a super person to model – read his books – adopt his winning ‘can do’, positively focused attitude – this is a common theme for every single person on this list as well. The amount or type of education is somewhat coincidental. It’s the attitude, drive, and positive focus that ends up creating the success.

    No one ever accused Ford of having a ‘proper education’ – in fact many people who Did have the ‘proper education’ accused him of not ‘being smart enough’ to be so successful!

    I tool I love that has really helped me ‘retrain my brain for success’ is regularly playing Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad “Cashflow 101″- lots of fun and totally worth the time put in.

    I am female and I have gone from a lifetime of negative cashflow and debt to just now (in this economy) starting to see positive cashflow and my pathway to spiral up to success. The key is not the external education, but how you push to learn for yourself and get into action, make your mistakes faster and learn to build and maintain feeling good and having a positive attitude regardless of what is externally “happening.” My world started shifting in a success direction once I accomplished these foundations inside myself.
    I am training my 3 teenage daughters in this path also.

    Michael, THANK YOU for your inspiring information and attitude. It really helps!

  52. You’re missing Mike Lazaridis. Net worth $1.7 Billion. Dropped out of the University of Waterloo to start Research in Motion, the developer of the Blackberry

  53. So dropping out means success doesn’t it? No, passion, hard work, research and originality means success.