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We Don't Need No Education: Meet the Millionaire Dropouts
Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Sir Richard Branson are self-made entrepreneurs who earned millions (and later billions) without earning college degrees. So who are the next great college dropouts to watch?
Posted 2/ 9 11 at 11:30 PM | Business Trends, Board of Directors, Leadership, Starting a Business, Home-based Business, International Business, Inventions & Innovations
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As a biology major at the University of Texas, Michael Dell began upgrading computers in a dorm, in a bid to make some money. In 1984, he registered his company as "PCs Limited." As for that biology degree? Well, he never got around to it. Dell dropped out in 1984 and became a computer magnate who's now worth an estimated $13.5 billion.And he's not alone. Apple's Steve Jobs, Microsoft's Bill Gates and Virgin's Sir Richard Branson (a member of the AOL Small Business Board of Directors) all have billions of their own to boast of. But there's one thing they don't have: College diplomas. They didn't need syllabi or textbooks to learn business, and like many successful entrepreneurs, they learned that just getting "out there" was the best way to launch their startups, which became some of the best-known companies on the planet.
"I suppose I was born an entrepreneur," Branson says. "I've always loved creating things I could be proud of."
At the tender age of 16, the future knight launched his first successful venture -- a magazine called Student. A few years later, he launched Virgin as a mail-order record retailer, and later opened a record store in London. Today, he oversees an empire of hundreds of companies, in industries ranging from air travel, telecommunications and entertainment, and is worth an estimated $4 billion. He never even made it to college.
Dell, Jobs, Gates and Branson are already household names, but what about the next generation of millionaire dropouts? Meet a few of the diploma-less entrepreneurs who also may be destined to climb the world's richest rankings one day -- even without a degree to their names.
Serial Success
When Cameron Johnson was nine years old, he made invitations for a party his parents were throwing. He put his name and logo on the back of the invitations -- yes, he "branded" himself -- and soon new orders were streaming in from neighbors who wanted his services. But looking back, Johnson says that was just "a small thing" in his career. At 11, he acquired his sister's Beanie Baby collection for $100 and sold it on eBay, raking in $1,000 in four days. He soon became the second-largest Beanie Baby retailer on the Internet, making $50,000 a year before becoming a teenager. He went on to launch myEZmail.com, an e-mail forwarding company (hey, it was a novel concept in the '90s), and Surfing Prizes, a company that provided scrolling advertisements on Web browsers. Johnson, 25, is now unaffiliated with the 15 websites he started in his earlier early years, but he has transitioned into a speaking career, focusing on entrepreneurship, technology and the economy -- and is reportedly worth more than $3 million.
Johnson had always looked up to Dell, Gates and Branson, and he recognized the one thing they had in common: They all dropped out of school. Would he need a degree to be successful? His gut said no -- college would remove him from the business world for four years, and he was already making more than many of his professors. But Johnson's parents disagreed, so he enrolled at Virginia Tech and decided to use his undergraduate years as a way to meet other smart people and potential business partners. But college didn't last long. Johnson dropped out after seeing his own name and photo in an entrepreneurship chapter of a business textbook.
"An education is something that can never be taken away from you -- I believe that," Johnson says. "But the traditional path of education wasn't for me."
Johnson credits his business skills to his parents -- his mom took over her dad's distribution company (what is now U.S. Food), and his dad owns a Ford-Lincoln-Mercury dealership. "They taught me the value of a dollar," he says.
And while Johnson remains lukewarm toward entrepreneurship programs, he thinks entrepreneurship boils down to whether or not somebody is willing to take that first risk.
"I don't think it's necessarily a 'taught or made' thing," Johnson says. "It's about courage."
Networks, Not Homework
Courage is something Portland, Ore.-based chip designer Jeri Ellsworth knows about. Bored of sitting in class repeating the same exercises 50 times and being chided for exploring the backside of her electronics, Ellsworth decided to drop out of high school. She went on to get her GED, then dropped out of Walla Walla College -- she was only there to get access to chipmaking equipment anyway. Once microchips became cheap enough, Ellsworth indulged her curiosity at home with $500 microchip kits and a stack of books. She taught herself how to design chips without any formal computer-science training.
"Schools can only target 80 to 90 percent of average folks," leaving outliers to fend for themselves, says Ellsworth, 36. "I knew if I wanted to get into this field, I had to show people I could do it." Which wasn't easy -- she was rejected by many a Silicon Valley HR department simply for being diploma-less, until she stepped up her game and became a schmoozer.
"I knew I had to keep networking, shaking hands and sharing my story at trade shows," she says. Eventually one person took a risk on her. The client was happy with her work and referred Ellsworth to a colleague, who referred her to someone else -- and so on. It seemed she didn't need a degree after all, and when Ellsworth's Commodore 64 landed her some press in The New York Times in 2004, no one cared about her B.S., or lack thereof. Now she has the luxury to take on numerous projects at a time, developing intricate and elegant machines out of circuit boards and LEDs. Some freelance projects are more research-based, others are artsy, and the breadth allows her frenetic personality to run wild.
"In tech, it's like the Wild Wild West, where if you're good at something, they don't really care if you have a degree," she says. Plus, fresh graduates might not have the experience to make it in the big leagues. "You gotta get your teeth kicked in a few times and make some really bad mistakes and know what not to do."
While Ellsworth doesn't regret forgoing her degree, she has words of caution for entrepreneurs like herself. "You have to have passion if you want to bypass school," she says, "because you have to work twice as hard to get where you want to be."
Big Blog Off Campus
Matt Mullenweg, 26, knows about passion -- he's passionate about blogging, and he left the University of Houston in 2004 after two years to start Automattic, the site behind the blog platform WordPress and survey site PollDaddy. He's certainly done well for himself -- he's worth an estimated $40 million -- and while he didn't need a college education to be successful, Mullenweg laments the days when his only job was learning about political movements and philosophy, with a few hours of hobby-blogging here and there.
"The idea of having no responsibilities except general edification seems like such a luxury now," he has blogged. "When I had it, all I wanted to do was hack around on the Web. Now the vast majority of my hours are hacking around on the Web."
Waste Not
Even the Ivy League isn't immune to dropouts. Tom Szaky -- a Canadian who didn't know that Princeton was in New Jersey until he got to campus -- left college after two years. Szaky was on fall break during freshman year in Montreal when he saw a bountiful weed (yes, that kind of weed) harvest that owed its success to worm and organic waste. The light bulb went off, and he began packaging worm waste in used soda bottles that later ended up on the shelves of Home Depot and Walmart. Over the next year, he would head home after class and work on his business, the way college basketball players head to the gym to work on their free throws. He didn't solicit help from professors and says the faculty was "hands-off" in that respect. By his sophomore year, TerraCycle was taking off -- he had a logo, a name and a diversified body of products -- and it was now or never.
"I would have loved to stay in school, but TerraCycle was starting to grow and I was putting more time into it," says Szaky, 28, also a member of the AOL Small Business Board of Directors. "I took a semester off, which turned into a permanent leave."
The business has evolved since 2003 -- kites made of Oreo wrappers and picture frames wrapped in bicycle chains, part of the company's "upcycling" line of products, helped catapult revenues to $7.5 million in 2009 -- but he still spends time on campus as a guest lecturer and thinks teaching could be a fun career down the road. For now, he's focused on waste, and he's able to indulge his inner dork with the science of composting. Looks like he didn't need that behavioral economics degree after all, much like other dropouts who felt the need to quit school and carpe diem.
"I have nothing against school," says Szaky, author of Revolution in a Bottle. "TerraCycle was happening, and that was the decision at the moment."
Comments (Page 2 of 2)
yea... me too.
I have built all my prototypes and
I have a new one going on right now.
I have been trying to find funding for some time now.
As you know, the future is very remarkable and I will get there with help or not. Good luck to you. Here in CA.
Good luck Kevin. If anyone has the need to help the planet and make some money, Google- "Aerodynamic Invention" first one. Other search engines, top or very close to top.
Regarding AV JOE's comment above, which states:
" Need a College Degree? Sure, That's what I hired to take care of my Books and Taxes and to run my Computers.. Geeks we called them.. more like NERDS.. that spend their whole day sitting at a desk and accomplishing very little in their own lives."
Perhaps Joe could have sold his company for a lot more than $2 million if he had treated his college educated employees with respect instead of contempt. I'm sure they sensed his defensive and arrogant attitude, a manner borne of feeling inferior, and felt little or no incentive to improve the company's fortunes beyond just doing their jobs.
And Joe? Now that you're retired, you might enroll in some classes at your local community college, especially, in your case, English composition. You might learn something. Only a blockhead thinks he knows everything.
Today, colleges have become a major US undustry which most of the online study program universities/colleges are all public traded companies on the stock exchanges.
The President and others going on about needing education is a misnomer in many ways, as all it does is feed more monies into the largest entitlement society in this country, while adding tremendous debts on people who can hardly pay those off in this day and age.
ALL of the most amazing projects and events that have occurred in this nation were from people who DID NOT go to college or graduate from one, from Ray Croc to Bill Gates to Sam Walton. But they, like myself and many others, were brought up in a time when the public education system had solid quality in teaching and also families existed with strong moral backgrounds and We learned to work harder and ask questions and never take "no" for an answer and certainly DID NOT have political correctness to dumb us all down.
My high school education was so in-depth and expansive where I went to school in the Northeast, that the quality of what I learned from instructors and gained was far more than any 4 year college level program out there today!
And as far as other posts saying without a degree you will not get a job today- BS! I am educated but I am a skileld tradesman with a small busines soepration here. It is my 3rd time in my life I started my own business on my own with no loans or help starting from scratch and taking a chance everytime. My wife, however, well she ahs bene without a job now 15 months after losing her finance related job when CIT Group filed that prepackaged BK over a year ago and she was one of many cut from compnaies who depended on CIT to provide them funding sources for factoring, etc.. My wife has a Bachelors degree in Business, Bachelors degree in Finance, and an Exucutive MBA degree even and boy, do we have school loans to pay out years ahead of us and still, I AM THE ONLY income coming inot our household as the only interview she received was from a staffing agency for a call center job willing to pay ONLY $9.00/hour. Disgustiing!
All of these successful people were educated, brilliant, and driven. The only thing lacking from their resume was the college diploma. Believe me, Bill Gates learned as much or more with his own research than any teacher would have been able to provide. However, all of the teachers that he came in contact with to that early point in his life added something to his education. Today he definitely has to be considered a highly educated man.
Now compare these folks with the Harvard "educated" nitwit ruining the country.
These successful people wouldn't be anything, maybe rich,like Gates, if the right wing nanny state didn't give them patent protection. They complain about government regulations when it comes to the consumer but don't have a problem when it comes to being a monopoly, and using government to put you in jail for patent or copyright infringement. Let the free market work...........
of course....einstein said imagination is "greater than knowledge"....
education is the best form of brain washing...look at medicine,,,,try this book the great fitness fraud by bert seelman then the website
www.resultsareproof.com and www.youtube.com/resultsareproof you'll learn how to beat the doc's into submission
It took me 15 years to become a production manager and now unemployed everyone wants me to have a degree like they do,the logic goes I want people that think like me.Well I`m glad I did not get a degree as most of the people I have worked with were ignorant thinking they were superior in thinking .I politely ran circles around them and it was`nt hard.
a friend of mine was kicked out of the navy, so as a weapons specialists, he just took his knowledge of that, and made a killing on the stock market, then took that, and turned it into other investments, and today, is a very successful businessman. this is with a high school education, and 6 years in the military.
By pilotsfeelfree: "Dear Average Joe ... If for no othere reason, I wish you have completed your degree so that you would have learned to spell. You might have leaned to construct a complete sentance also."
Pilotsfeelfree, people in glass houses etc, "sentance" is actually spelled "sentence" Perhaps you didn't complete your degree either???
BUSINESS DONT WANT TO PAY FOR INTELECTUAL PROPERTY. THEY WANT DUMMY'S WHO BECOME THEIRS TO WORK AS FINANCIAL SLAVES. AMERICAN KIDS COMPETE WITH FENCE HOPPERS WHO CANT READ OR WRITE IN THEIR NATIVE SPEAK.
KIDS WORK FOR THEIR EDUCATION, AMERICANS HAVE MANDATORY SCHOOL FOR AT LEAST 13 YRS (K-12), 15 YRS INCLUDING PRE SCHOOL 1 AND 2... TO COMPETE FOR 7 BUCKS AN HOUR WHILE TAX PAYERS PAY 11,000.00 PER YR PER STUDENT... IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS. THATS 15 X 11,000 OR 165,000.00 DIVIDED BY 7.00(NET MINIMUM WAGE) = 23571 HRS DIVIDED BY 40 HRS PER WEEK = 589 WEEKS DIVIDED BY 52 WKS = 11.3 YRS NOT COUNTING FEES & INTEREST.
11.3 YRS AFTER GRADUATION OF 15 YRS TRAINING... AGE AT GRADUATION IS NEVER 16YRS OLD, TEXAS SAYS THEY CAN MOVE OUT AT 17 LEGALLY! (17 + 11.3 YRS = ABOUT 29 YRS OLD) MIDDLE AGED POVERTY IS THE NEW AMERICAN DREAM IN CORPUS CHRISTI TEXAS! THEY SAY GO TO COLLEGE BY BORROWING FROM SALLY MAE.
NOW, IF YOU DO GO TO SALLY AND SIGN FOR YOUR KIDS... BE ADVISED THAT YOU WILL PAY EVERY PENNY PLUS INTEREST, THE GOV WON'T LET YOU OFF EVEN IN BANKRUPTCY. BUT THERE ARE MORE AND MORE SLAVES THAT ARE COLLEGE GRADS BECAUSE MANY BUSINESS'S HAVE TAKEN OVER THE GOP AND FIGHT AGAINST KIDS AND LABOR.
THEY CALL IT FREE ENTERPRISE CAPITALISM! CAPITALISM IS A ECONOMIC SYSTEM BY WHICH OWNERSHIP CLAIMS CAN BE MADE LEGALLY. NOTE! CORPORATIONS ARE LEGAL ENTITIES IN CAPITALIST SOCIETIES, THAT CAN BE GOOD OR BAD. LATELY AS CAPITALISM RUNS ITS COURSE IN AMERICA WE'VE LEARNED THAT MONOPOLY LAWS HAVE FAILED TO CONTROL THEM, THEY GET TOO BIG TO FAIL...
CORPORATE ENTITIES HAVE UNLIMITED LIVES, UNLIKE US HUMANS. GOOD OR EVIL TECHNOLOGY JUST HASN'T HELPED MUCH WITH THE STANDARDS OF LIVING. COMPUTERS, TV, PHONE EVEN RADIO W/SAT COM ALL ARE NOT FREE ANYMORE.
WHILE CORPORATIONS BUILD THEIR OWN POWER PLANTS, WATER AND WASTE TREATMENT, TRANSPORTATION, AND GET TO BE SELF INSURED WHILE HUMANES CAN'T.
MY POINT IS, BIG BUSINESS DON'T PAY FOR HARDLY ANYTHING AND AGAIN GET BIG TAX BREAKS MAKING HUMAN ENTITIES PAY THEIR WHOLE LIVES. TEA PARTY AND GOP PARTIES ARE BOUGHT AND PAID FOR ANTI LABOR LOBBIES. TO BIG TO FAIL IS TO BIG PERIOD, PLUS REGULATIONS DON'T REGULATE WORLD TRADE THEY REGULATE NATIONAL TRADES WHILE CORPORATE LOOPHOLES ARE GUARDED. THE RICH GET THEIR TAX BREAKS, LEAVE THE USA TO IMPOSE POWER ON THE 3RD WORLD WITH OUR KIDS JOBS & DEBT
EDUCATION OR NOT... CAPITALISM HAS TURNED US ALL INTO SLAVES. SMALL BUSINESS IS NOT SMALL! I WISH MINIMUM WAGES HAVE INCREASED JUST AS MUCH AS WHAT THEY CALL SMALL... 250,000.00 A YR? COME ON!!!
THE GOVERNMENT IS TOO LITTLE! NOT TOO BIG, BUT THE GOP AND TEA PARTY OPENLY WANT THE GOVERNMENT DOWNSIZED AND WEAKENED WHILE THEY SIT ON PILES OF CASH... ISN'T IT REALLY CLEAR YET? LONNIE MCVAIGH1-27-11
Everybody forgets the role of Mom and Dad, ask all these "Boys" what
made them Think and Feel about themselves and Viola !
Mom and/or Dad, or both ! Great Socieites have great Parents !
The discussion should be about "HOW" you receive an education vs "WHERE" and whether or not you need to go to a traditional college. The only reason you need to get a degree is to have a credential to put on your resume. It has very little to do with ability.
Another NEA greed monger speaks!
BA's are becomming obsolete due to their cost and the amout of time you are out of the market. In the case of those featured in this article, they all needed education, but educated themselves in the interest of moving into thier work of preference. College could not possibly have met their "educational" needs.
Al. I cant believe I am wasting time out of my life to even reply to your comments. Look, materialistic items can't determine how deep someone's pockets are. For an example, the lincoln that you can't afford. I know plenty of wealthy southern gentleman that have enough money to buy a car lot full of maserati's but instead, they drive an everyday average american's car, because they are modest. You live in your grandma's basement, just from the comments you have left above, I and all of the other people reading the comments have realized that you know nothing about making, spending, investing, or saving money. You want to hear something funny Al? An elderly friend of mine use to always say, "if you cant impress them with intelligence, baffle them with bullshit." You have baffled us all Al.