Most of us are familiar with Mark Zuckerberg’s story — brilliant Harvard student who dropped out sophomore year to create Facebook, a move that changed the face of social media entirely. What a mouthful, right?
However, the dropout entrepreneur archetype didn’t start with Zuckerberg. In fact, many entrepreneurs carry surprisingly limited higher education credentials. Their accomplishments go beyond degrees, and can instead be measured by the global impacts they have made. The visionaries shown in the slideshow are recognized for their million dollar ideas, and had the nerve, talent, and skill, to bring them to life.
All of the entrepreneurs in our list have taken the gutsy and lesser-taken path, forsaking degrees and choosing to bank on their own ideas. However, what was once a risky move has come to be seen as a formula, and some are trying to reproduce similar results by attempting to test out the formula.
In 2012, billionaire and venture capitalist Peter Thiel funded 20 promising young talents, paying them each $100,000 to drop out of college for at least two years to become a “Thiel Fellow.” So is success really as easy as giving bright minds the money to fuel their ambition? The verdict is still out on that one.
In the meantime, check out the wildly successful entrepreneur dropouts that struck gold.
Rob Kalin, Founder of Etsy
At the age of 25, Rob Kalin was a high-school dropout-turned-furniture designer just hoping to make a living selling his goods online. After hours of surfing the net, Kalin had an epiphany. He envisioned a community marketplace in which artisans could sell their wares and people could purchase handcrafted items online directly. With the help of two techies and $50,000 investor, Etsy went live in 2005, and become a hit immediately.
As of 2010 Etsy was valued at $300 million. Though Kalin stepped down as CEO in 2011, he is still seen today as the visionary of Etsy. Kalin had dabbled in half a dozen colleges before finally graduating from New York University with a major in the classics.
Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter
Jack Dorsey, the creator of Twitter and founder and CEO of Square, a mobile payments company, dropped out of New York University and hopped between jobs before landing at Odeo,the forerunner of Twitter.
In 2008 he was named as one of the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35 by MIT Technology Review.
Last year he was given the "Innovator of the Year Award" for technology by The Wall Street Journal.
Dean Kamen, Inventor of the Segway
Inventor of the Segway, Dean Kamen attended Worcester Polytechnic Institute for two years before dropping out.
He now holds more than 80 U.S. patents, and has become famous for his Segway PT, an electric, self-balancing human transporter complete with a computer-controlled gyroscopic stabilization and control system.
He is also an illustrator for many EC Comics publications, including Mad and Weird Science.
In a morbidly ironic twist, 62-year-old millionaire and Segway Inc. owner, Jimi Heselden, died in a Segway-related accident in 2010 when he accidentally drove the electric scooter off a cliff and into a river.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider