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Class Dismissed: Eight Successful Entrepreneurs Who Didn't Go to College
Getting a college education is always cited as the key to future success, but many successful entrepreneurs managed to make it without a diploma.
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Richard Branson
Branson was a natural entrepreneur, publishing his own magazine and selling records out of the trunk of his car at 16. With a partner, he started a mail-order record company, naming it Virgin because the duo was
Wally Amos
Amos worked odd jobs starting when his family moved to New York City when he was 12. He served four years in the Air Force, worked as a stock clerk at Saks Fifth Avenue, and finally worked his way
Divine Bradley
In high school, Bradley realized that teens in his Brooklyn neighborhood had no safe community space to spend time in after school. On his own initiative, he opened his family’s front po
Steve Jobs
After one semester at Reed College in Oregon, the Apple co-founder dropped out but continued auditing classes, including calligraphy, to which Jobs credits the “multiple typefaces and proportionally spaced fo
Jeffrey Kalmikoff and Jake Nickell
In 2000, Kalmikoff and Nickell, both college dropouts, entered an online T-shirt design contest and won. With the $1,000 prize, they founded Threadless, an online clot
Eric Kaster
Kaster bypassed college and took a job at 16 as an apprentice at his grandfather’s pattern-making business. He eventually moved up to managing the business, and began to delve into other areas of art and des
Doris Lessing
The Nobel Laureate in Literature’s formal education ended when she was all of 14 years old. At the time, the Brit (who was born in what’s now Iran) had been studying at a Roman Cath
David McKinney
McKinney was working as an electrician’s apprentice when he built a prototype for an LED bulb. With two partners, he went on to co-found Clean Light Green Light, a company that produces energy-efficient l
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