From left: Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Melanie Perkins (Canva) and Sam Altman (OpenAI)
Speaking to comedian Theo Von in 2025, he said the idea that not everyone needs a degree used to be taboo, but that attitudes have shifted over the past decade. Harvard awarded him an honorary degree in 2017. Jack Dorsey, cofounder of Twitter and CEO of Block The Irish brothers built their first company as teenagers, an online auction tool called Auctomatic that they sold for 5 million dollars in 2008. Patrick enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2006 but left to keep building. John started at Harvard in 2009 and dropped out a year later. Together they launched Stripe in 2010. CNBC reported the payments company was valued at 159 billion dollars earlier this year. He cofounded Spotify in 2006 and led it as CEO until 2025, becoming a billionaire when the company listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2018. Melanie Perkins, cofounder and CEO of Canva Altman studied computer science at Stanford University for two years before dropping out at 19 to build the location sharing app Loopt, which sold to Green Dot in 2012. He later ran startup accelerator Y Combinator before cofounding OpenAI in 2015 and taking over as CEO in 2019. At OpenAI’s DevDay conference in 2025, he said he envies today’s 20 year old dropouts, given how much opportunity now exists in the space.
Whether or not he actually said it, the sentiment has powered one of Silicon Valley’s most persistent myths: that the smartest people in tech did not need a degree to prove it. Zuckerberg studied psychology and computer science at Harvard before launching “thefacebook.com” from his dorm room in 2004. Mark Twain is often credited with the line “I never let my schooling interfere with my education. That myth is being tested again. As artificial intelligence (AI) reshapes what it even means to be a white-collar worker, and tuition at top universities climbs past six figures, a growing number of young people are asking whether four years and a mountain of debt are still worth it. Some are choosing not to find out. He left during his sophomore year to move to Palo Alto and build the company full time. Daniel Ek, cofounder of Spotify Ek enrolled at Sweden’s KTH Royal Institute of Technology to study engineering but left after just eight weeks, once he realised his entire first year would be devoted to theoretical mathematics. He started taking on tech jobs instead. Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI
Dharmendra Pradhan resigns as Union education minister amid massive student protests ‘We won’t go’: CJP’s Dipke says protests to continue till all demands met Fresh clashes at Jantar Mantar after Pradhan’s exit; tear gas fired, stones pelted Here are 15 tech executives who never finished college. Bill Gates, cofounder of Microsoft Bill Gates left Harvard University in 1975 to start Microsoft with his childhood friend Paul Allen. Gates ran Microsoft as chief executive officer (CEO) until 2000 and now chairs the Gates Foundation, through which he has given away billions of dollars. Allen stepped back from daily operations in 1983 following a cancer diagnosis but stayed on as a director until his death. He cofounded Apple in 1976 at age 21. He moved to California and eventually cofounded what became Oracle in 1977. He dropped out a semester short of graduating in 1999. Twitter, now called X, launched in 2006, and Dorsey stepped down as CEO in 2021. He dropped out to focus on his growing responsibilities at Yahoo, telling Forbes in 2014 that he had never liked school much anyway. He and Acton left Yahoo in 2007 and started WhatsApp two years later. Facebook bought it for 19 billion dollars in 2014. She dropped out to pursue the concept more broadly and spent years pitching investors in Silicon Valley before launching Canva in 2013. The company was valued at 42 billion dollars in an employee share sale in 2025. In 2010 he cofounded DeepMind, and in 2024 he became CEO of the newly formed Microsoft AI. Alexandr Wang , founder of Scale AI and chief AI officer at Meta Wang studied mathematics and computer science at MIT before dropping out at 19 to start Scale AI. Forbes named him the world’s youngest self-made billionaire in 2021, a title he held until 2025. Meta paid roughly 14.3 billion dollars for a 49 percent stake in Scale AI in 2025, and Wang moved over to become the company’s chief AI officer.
Because the coursework was unavailable to them elsewhere, but because they had already found something more urgent to build, almost every name on this list left a highly selective university, not. The idea is not new. He treated the move as a leave of absence rather than a final decision, telling an interviewer the following year that he wanted the option to return if things did not work out. He never went back. Paul Allen, cofounder of Microsoft Allen dropped out of Washington State University after two years and moved to Boston to work as a programmer, close to where Gates was still enrolled at Harvard. The two founded Microsoft together. Steve Jobs, cofounder of Apple Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Oregon but dropped out after one semester, later saying in a Stanford commencement address that he could not justify the cost. He stuck around campus unofficially, auditing classes that interested him, including a calligraphy course that he later credited with shaping the typography on the original Macintosh. Larry Ellison, cofounder of Oracle Ellison tried college twice and finished neither attempt, first at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and then at the University of Chicago, where he lasted a single semester. He now serves as the company’s chief technology officer (CTO) and remains one of the richest people in the world. Mark Zuckerberg , founder and CEO of Meta Dorsey started at the University of Missouri-Rolla before transferring to New York University (NYU), where he came up with the idea for Twitter. He also cofounded the payments company Square, now Block, where he remains CEO. Evan Williams, cofounder of Twitter Williams grew up in Nebraska and enrolled at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln but left after a year and a half, later calling college a waste of time. He bounced between freelance and tech jobs before eventually cofounding Twitter alongside Dorsey. Like his cofounder, he became a billionaire after the company’s public listing, and he now runs the venture capital firm Obvious Ventures. Jan Koum, cofounder of WhatsApp Koum attended San Jose State University while working as a security tester at Ernst & Young, an assignment that led him to Yahoo, where he met future WhatsApp cofounder Brian Acton. John and Patrick Collison, cofounders of Stripe Perkins was studying at the University of Western Australia when she began developing the idea that would become Canva, starting with a yearbook design tool called Fusion Books. Sam Altman , cofounder and CEO of OpenAI Suleyman studied philosophy and theology at Oxford University but found the degree too abstract for his liking and left before finishing. He went on to set up a telephone counselling service before spending years in politics and consulting. Taken together, these stories can look like proof that talent outruns credentials. But the more accurate read is narrower. The degree was not the obstacle, timing was. That distinction matters for anyone reading this as a blueprint. Dropping out did not make these founders successful. Having a company worth staying up all night for did. Get the latest Education News and Live updates. Download the TOI app.
Long before the current wave of AI founders, a generation of technologists walked away from lecture halls to bet on their own ideas instead, and a surprising number of them ended up running the companies that define the industry today.