5 college dropouts who became tech billionaires

Here are five of the richest tech billionaires who dropped out of college:

Dustin Moskovitz

Dustin Moskovitz. Photo courtesy of Moskovitz's LinkedIn

Moskovitz, a co-founder of Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg’s former roommate at Harvard, dropped out to help scale Facebook.

A computer science major, Moskovitz quickly mastered a new programming language to expand the platform to other schools. He moved to Palo Alto with Zuckerberg, where he became Facebook’s first chief technology officer, according to Business Insider. After leaving Facebook, Moskovitz co-founded Asana, a workflow software company. In 2011, he became the youngest self-made billionaire.

His net worth stands at US$16.3 billion as of May 9, according to Forbes, with most of it stemming from his 2% stake in Facebook.

Michael Dell

Michael Dell. Photo from X

"I just saw tremendous opportunity," Dell said in his autobiography "Direct from Dell". "At the University of Texas, it was very easy to take a semester off and then come back, if you wanted to. The combination of those two things told me it was time to drop-out."

Dell dropped out of the University of Texas at Austin at 19, during his freshman year, to focus on selling personal computers. In 1984, he founded PC’s Limited, which would later become Dell, Inc.

Dell’s company grew into one of the largest PC manufacturers in the world, and today, his estimated net worth is $101.9 billion.

Bill Gates

Bill Gates. Photo from Gates' Facebook

Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, left Harvard University to build his tech empire. As a 20-year-old undergraduate, he said he had "a great time" at college and struggled with the decision to leave. Even after co-founding Microsoft with his high school friend Paul Allen in 1975, he still hoped to return and complete his degree, according to U.S.'s news channel CNBC.

Today, he is worth $113 billion, having held the title of the world’s richest person for 13 consecutive years, as reported by Yahoo Finance. Despite his success, Gates opposed his youngest daughter Phoebe’s plan to drop out of Stanford University to start her own tech company, Phia, which she launched last month.

A renowned philanthropist, Gates, along with his ex-wife Melinda French Gates, is using his fortune to combat poverty and disease worldwide. Recently, Gates pledged to donate 99% of his wealth over the next 20 years through the Gates Foundation.

Larry Ellison

Larry Ellison, co-founder and CTO of Oracle. Photo from X

Ellison, co-founder and CTO of Oracle, dropped out of both the University of Illinois and the University of Chicago. Despite this, he went on to build Oracle into the world’s second-largest software company, with a market value of $517.43 billion, as reported by financial news site Investopedia.

Ellison is now worth $187.3 billion. Reflecting on his journey, he said in an interview with the Smithsonian National Museum of American History: "I never took a computer science class in my life." "I got a job working as a programmer; I was largely self-taught. I just picked up a book and started programming."

Mark Zuckerberg

Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Photo by AP

Zuckerberg, co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Meta (formerly Facebook), left Harvard after his sophomore year to focus on building Facebook, which he launched from his dorm room with Moskovitz.

Zuckerberg’s net worth is an astounding $206.7 billion. He owns about 13% of Meta’s stock, and in 2015, he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, whom he met at Harvard, pledged to donate 99% of their Meta stake over their lifetimes.

In a recent interview, Zuckerberg questioned whether colleges are preparing students for today’s job market, noting that while college can be a formative "social experience," some may need to weigh the value against the cost. "It's sort of been this taboo thing to say of like, maybe not everyone needs to go to college because there's, like, a lot of jobs that don't require that," Zuckerberg said. "But I think people are probably coming around to that opinion a little more now than maybe like 10 years ago."