The most successful college dropouts in history

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	77	$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.

How to create a billion dollar company

Characteristics of a Billion Dollar Company

Recently I have been looking at some of the worlds most success billionaires such as Bill Gates, Richard Branson and Steve Jobs. Although only being 21 years old, I often feel like I’m not achieving as much as I really can, I look at other people who at my age are so much further ahead – sure in some respects I had to come further as I didn’t give a thought in the world to my education till a year after I had done my exams.

They Are The Best At What They Do

Look at Google, we use it because it gives us the results we are looking for quicker than any other search engine, the same applies to Facebook, we use it as it’s the most user friendly and has all our friends in one place. These are prime examples of businesses that just do it better than anyone else, and that is what you have got to do. Whether you are selling online toiletries or you are starting your own social network, it doesn’t matter, what does matter is that the business you own or run is working at full capacity with everything done the absolute best it can be done. Just try your hardest.

They Go For Mass Markets

No one has ever become a billionaire by targeting a small market, all the top companies have mass appeal such as Microsoft who’s aim is to have a computer in every house hold. Having said this, I do believe the best way to approach going to a mass market is starting small and being known for doing one thing great, like Zappos did. They sold only shoes when they started and once they became the worlds leader at selling shoes online, they branched out and started selling clothing and then later a whole lot of other things – that company later sold for $1,300,000,000!

They Use Their Time Wisely

Bill Gates wouldn’t go on Twitter and bitch about how his iPhone is broken or how one of his employees is an idiot, that would be a complete waste of time. Doing some quick maths I worked out that while working for Microsoft he would of made around $630,000 a hour so if he was to spend so much time like us just complaining and giving excuses then he would be a lot poorer. Time is money, it’s a phrase thrown around a lot but it is seriously true, think of it this way, how much do you think you are worth? $5 per hour? $10 dollars? How about $100 per hour and more? Are you really doing as much work as you think you are? Or more importantly are you using your time to do those things as best you can?

They Are Not Scared To Work Hard

The internet has made it easy for some us to work only a small amount of time a day and still be able to make more than enough to support ourselves (take me for example) – however if you want to be a billionaire, you need to work really hard, that means late nights, grafting all the time and no submission. You have really got to work at it around the clock whether you are part of a team or you are the team, the only way to become successful is to do things, and take action, how can you become successful if you are not prepared to work hard? Another thing is to believe in yourself because you will get many doubters and that’s okay, they are entitled to their opinion, you just need to work like crazy to become successful and to basically prove the doubters wrong.

High Profit Margins

Profit margins are something of a daunting area to get involved in, but basically the more the margin in profit the more money these billionaires make, which is why it is essential for them to have the best marketing and advertising campaign, the best quality in products and the best branding they can achieve because this all helps the sales. Imagine if Apple had just had a small advertising campaign and they had poor quality control issues, the profits would be non-existent, however because of the sheer volume of sales for Apple products (on most levels) and the high quality of the product, the money made is very substantial, however because they are a big company they can leverage getting the best deal for their raw materials and this means high profits.

They buy low and sell high so the profit Are Large

Sticking with the above example the larger the company is the more weight they can put behind them to get the best deals for their products and services, smaller businesses do use this method too, although it is usually on a lot smaller scale and usually depends on them buying a minimum amount of materials. The more bulk materials you buy the more items can be made for a lot less, the more items that are made for little the higher the profit margin, and the higher the profit margin, the deeper their pockets become. This isn’t to say that you too cannot get in on this technique you just need to build rapport with your supplier and use as much leverage as you can, whether that leverage is the length of time you have been a valued customer, how many people you send to them or whatever else you can think of.

They Take Risks

Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg and Henry Ford all have two things in common, they all dropped out of college, and they all became successful. In fact they become amongst the most successful people in the world and how did they manage it? They took risks, imagine where the world would be now if Bill Gates hadn’t started up his own software business? What would the world be like now if Henry Ford hadn’t built some of the first drivable vehicles in the world? What about if Richard Branson hadn’t started his own record label early in his career? The world would be a much less interesting place to be I think. The point is that they all took risks, and a couple of them still are taking risks. It’s like the SAS motto reads “He who dares, wins.” This saying is very true, do nothing, there will be nothing, no results, no money nothing. Try your hardest, and take some risks and you could see yourself end up successful.

Source: Retire@21