Having a paper in your pocket offers many advantages for your career. However, some billionaires prove that you can go pretty far without it... MASTERS lists some (school) examples of successful entrepreneurs who decided to drop out early and quit their education.
As a result of his father working as a railroad worker, Ortega dropped out of school at the age of 14 and moved to A Coruña, Spain. Here he went to work as a runner for local clothing stores in the city. In 1963, the entrepreneur started his own business manufacturing and selling bathrobes called Confecciones Goa. Years later, the Spaniard founded the retail chain Zara; the affordable fashion caught on right away and the company grew into a popular retail chain. Today, brands such as Zara, Stradivarius, Massimo Dutti and Bershka, among others, fall under Inditex. Today he owns 59% of its shares and his wealth is estimated at €65 billion.
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Richard Branson did not finish high school because his dyslexia prevented him from keeping up with his studies. In an interview, the entrepreneur indicated that generally an education is seen as a gateway to more money and opportunity. But according to him, this is not the only path to success. He finds it unfortunate that people stop pursuing their good ideas because they are afraid of being undercut by people who are better educated than they are. In his opinion, entrepreneurial spirit always wins out over a fancy education. At least for Branson, this credo certainly applies; at age 20, he was doing business under the company name Virgin entered the music industry. Today, Virgin Group consists of 200 very diverse companies and Branson's assets are estimated at €3.3 billion.
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The entrepreneur was born in San Francisco and grew up in an adoptive family. During a summer job at a computer company, he met the young hacker Steve Wozniak. After graduating from high school, Jobs went on to study at a university in Oregon, but after a scant semester, he quit. In 1976, together with Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, he founded the company Apple Computers Inc. . The rest is history...
Here is an interesting insight into the life of the late Steve Jobs.
The son of a lawyer and teacher, Gates began studying law at Harvard University in 1973. After two years, however, he dropped out to work out a program with his friend Paul Allen for the Altair 8800, the forerunner of the personal computer. The program was so well liked by manufacturer MITS that a partnership was initiated; MITS produced and Gates and Allen supplied the software. In 1975, the founding of Microsoft - a contraction of the words microcomputer and software - was a fact.
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With estimated assets of about €49 billion, Dell ranks 23 among the world's wealthiest people. The son of an orthodontist, he grew up in Houston, Texas. Despite his interest in computers, the entrepreneur went on to study medicine at the University of Texas. In his dorm room, he started his own company called PCs Limited. At the age of 19, when he already had his first ton in the bank, he decided to drop out of college. With a loan from his grandparents, he was able to start developing and manufacturing computers on a larger scale. And with success; in 1988 the company underwent a name change. Michael's PCs Limited became Dell Computer Corporation. From then on, the company grew into one of the largest PC manufacturers in the world.
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