The Most Famous IT College Dropouts

A college degree definitely helps but it is not the only thing that matters when it comes to success. Here's looking at some dropouts who made it to the top without a degree.    Rate this news:  (1 Votes)

Wednesday, October 09, 2013:  Ever imagined that you could be famous in the tech world without holding a proper college degree? Well, some people surely have made this a reality. Have a look... As cited on cio.com, let’s take a look at them one by one here – 1. Apple: Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak - Steve Jobs dropped out of Reed College in Portland, Ore along with Steve Wozniak who dropped out from the University of California, Berkeley. They jointly formed Apple Computer in 1976. Their friendship begun when Jobs worked for a summer at HP, where Wozniak was operating on a mainframe computer. It’s been 37 years now and Apple is valued at $600 billion. 2. Dell: Michael Dell- Michael Dell, a pre-med student dropped out of the University of Texas at Austin in 1984 and found "PCs Limited" having only $1,000. He operated out of a condo that year and the business brought revenues in the range of $50,000 and $80,000 in upgraded PCs, kits and add-on components. It has been 28 years and the tycoon is worth $15.9 billion as per this year's Forbes billionaires list. 3. Digg: Kevin Rose - Kevin Rose, an entrepreneur got himself enrolled in the University of Nevada Las Vegas majoring in computer science, but he soon dropped out in order to code software. He launched Digg, a social news Website with only $1,200. He along with his remaining startups this year have joined Google. 4. Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg – He dropped out of Harvard University in 2004 along with cofounders Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin and Chris Huges to develop Facebook fulltime. After eight years, Facebook is now the largest social network with over 900 million active users worldwide. 5. Microsoft: Paul Allen & Bill Gates - Paul Allen who dropped out of the Washington State University along with his childhood friend Bill Gates who dropped out of Harvard University, joined forces in 1975 to form Microsoft. As of date, the partners have a total wealth of over $70 billion. 6. Oracle: Larry Ellison – He left the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign post his sophomore year and attended one semester at the University of Chicago before dropping out and moving to Northern California. He later developed a database for the CIA called ‘Oracle’ whilst working for Ampex Corporation. He found Software Development Laboratories in 1977 that was renamed as Relational Software and went on to became Oracle. As per Forbes, Ellison is now estimated to be worth $36 billion. 7. Research in Motion: Mike Lazaridis – He dropped out of the University of Waterloo two months before acquiring a degree in electrical engineering. General Motors had approached him with a contract offer of $600,000 to develop a network computer control display system. This contract made it possible for Lazaridis along with two others to launch RIM. Lazaridis is today reported to be worth $800 million. 8. Spotify: Daniel Ek – A Sweedish entrepreneur, Daniel Ek found his first company at the age of 14 and is well known for starting up music streaming service called Spotify in 2008. Before Spotify, he had enrolled at the Royal Institute of Technology without completing his degree. Among his other ventures are Advertigo, an ad company acquired by TradeDoubler, along with positions as CTO at Jajja Communications and Stardoll. The businessman is now 29 years of age and is worth $306 million.