For most students, early September means back-to-school time.
But that’s not the case for everyone, especially in the tech industry.
Billionaire investor Peter Thiel, for example, is paying $100,000 for kids to drop out of school and start their own companies.
Thiel has a point: Some of the most successful tech entrepreneurs have racked up billions of dollars without ever finishing college.
Whether to skip college or not is totally up to you. But if you’re one of those thinking about it, this will serve as inspiration.
Bill Gates
Company: Microsoft
School: Harvard
Bill Gates started college at Harvard in 1973, but dropped out two years later to found Microsoft. His co-founder, Paul Allen, went to the same high school as Gates.
Gates remained Microsoft’s CEO until 2000, when he stepped down to take on the Chairman role. Now, he serves as a technology advisor to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, while focusing on his charity work at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
In 2007, Gates received an honorary degree from Harvard, when he also delivered the commencement speech.
Michael Dell
Company: Dell Computer
School: University of Texas at Austin
Michael Dell was a freshman at the University of Texas at Austin when he decided drop out. He was a biology major, but computers were what really got him excited at school.
In 1984, Dell founded Dell Computer Corp. and turned it into a multi-billion dollar computer empire over the next 30 years.
Dell became the youngest CEO of a company ever to make the Fortune 500 list in 1992.
He took Dell private in a deal worth $24.9 billion in 2013, and currently serves as the company’s Chairman and CEO.
Mark Zuckerberg
Company: Facebook
School: Harvard
Net worth: $34 billion
Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard in his sophomore year to focus on running Facebook. The 30-year old has remained the company’s CEO/Chairman since its founding in 2004.
Facebook went public in 2012 and is now worth over $200 billion.
It had 1.32 billion monthly active users as of June 2014, and had over $7.8 billion in revenue last year.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider