Inspirational Dropouts

The other day I was reading a very interesting article about success, there was a particular line that caught my attention in that moment, “Success is not always found at school. School isn’t for everyone, as simple as that.” But don’t get confused, success is not for everyone either. There are a lot of stories that tell us that sometimes we have to follow our dreams and take some risks to achieve success.

But what makes a dropout a successful one? well, some of the factors that matter in these cases are:

• Creativity
• Imagination
• Vision
• Innovation
• Will
• and… Faith

As Einstein said: “Imagination is more important than knowledge, For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” Now let’s take a look to some inspirational dropout stories.

William H. Gates III (Microsoft)

Dropped out of: Harvard University in 1975 at age 20.

He represents maybe the most famous dropout of all, why?, simple because he’s also the richest man of the World, at least for now. There are some who can’t understand why a 20 year old student from Harvard University left school in pursuit of a dream that was unachievable for them. With his partner and friend Paul Allen (Also dropped out) founded one of the most successful companies in history, you already know the rest.

Michael Dell (Dell Computer Corporation)

Dropped out of: The University of Texas, Austin, at age 19.

He was planning to study medicine when he decided to found “PC’s Limited computer company” in 1984 with just $1,000. In the first years of operations, the company made the amazing amount of $6 million! He is a great example of what innovation and courage can make together with few money.

Ty Warner (Ty Inc.)

Dropped out of: Kalamazoo College, Michigan after attending for one year.

Warner dropped out and moved to Hollywood to become an actor, without much success (Yes! billionaires also fail). Ty Inc. is privately owned and profit amounts can only be estimated. Nonetheless, some believe that during one year at the height of the hysteria, Beanies earned Ty Inc. more than $700 million.

Quentin Tarantino

Dropped out of: Narbonne High School, Harbor City California, at age 16.

Actually he dropped out to become an actor, At about the time he would have graduated university, Tarantino began working at the now-legendary Video Archives in Manhattan Beach. He was the guy many of us encounter while renting videos.

Azim Premji (Wipro Technologies)

Dropped out of: Stanford University, at age 21.

Founder of one of the largest software companies in India, Wipro Technologies (headquarters located at Bangalore). He was rated the richest person in the country from 1999 to 2005 by Forbes and is worth $17.1 billion. He earned his Stanford degree 30 years after dropping out.

Succes is not always where everyone is looking! 😉

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