Computer and Internet Celebrities Who Were High School or College Dropouts

Paul Allen, billionaire co-founder of Microsoft. Dropped out of the University of Washington to work for Honeywell. A year later he convinced Bill Gates to drop out of Harvard and move to Albuquerque, New Mexico to start up Microsoft.

Julian Assange, Wikileaks founder, software programmer. Studied mathematics at the University of Melbourne but dropped out because other students were doing research for the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Steve Ballmer, billionaire chief of Microsoft. Graduated from college, but dropped out of the Stanford MBA program to join Microsoft.
 
Sergey Brin, billionaire co-founder of Google. Dropped out of Stanford Ph.D. program in computer science to start Google in 1998 working out of a friend's garage.
 
John Carmack, founder of Armadillo Aerospace, cofounder of Id Software (sold 10 million copies of Dome and Quake games). Quit college early to become a game programmer.
 
Pete Cashmore, founder of Mashable.com. Founded the blog website when he was 19. Retired from active blogging three years later.
 
Gurbaksh Chahal, multimillionaire founder of online ad networks Click Again and BlueLithium. Dropped out of school at the age of 16 to found Click Again.
 
James H. Clark, billionaire founder of Silicon Graphics and co-founder of Netscape. Dropped out of high school at the age of 17 and entered the Navy. Later took night classes and attended the University of New Orleans, where he earned a Master's degree in physics. He eventually earned a PhD in computer science from the University of Utah.
 
Bram Cohen, software programmer, developer of BitTorrent. He attended the State University of New York at Buffalo for one year and then left.
 
Patrick Collison, software wizard. Dropped out of MIT during his freshman year to help two friends develop and eventually sell Auctomatic for millions of dollars.
 
Michael Dell, founder of Dell Computers, billionaire. Founded his company out of his college dorm room. Dropped out of the University of Texas to run the company.
 
Barry Diller, billionaire, Hollywood mogul, Internet maven, chairman of IAC/InterActive Corp (owner of Ask.com, Ticketmaster, CitySearch, Evite, LendingTree.com, etc.). He attended Beverly Hills High School but dropped out of UCLA to work in the mail room of William Morris.
 
Larry Ellison, billionaire co-founder of Oracle software company. Dropped out of the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois.
 
Philip Emeagwali, supercomputer scientist. High school dropout: left school in native Nigeria due to war but later earned an equivalency degree. Won a scholarship to Oregon College of Education but transferred after one year to Oregon State University.
 
Shawn Fanning, developer of Napster. Dropped out of Northeastern University when 19 to move to Silicon Valley to further develop Napster.
 
Arash Ferdowsi, cofounder, DropBox.com. Dropped out of MIT to start up DropBox.com.
 
David Filo, billionaire co-founder of Yahoo. Dropped out of Stanford University PhD program to create Yahoo.
 
Justin Frankel, multimillionaire software programmer, developer of WinAmp and Gnutella, founder of Cockos Inc. Attended the University of Utah for two quarters, but then dropped out. A few months later, he released the first version of WinAmp.
 
Markus Frind, software programmer, multimillionaire founder of Plenty of Fish dating website. Graduated from technical school with a two-year degree in computer programming. Did not attend any further higher education.
 
Bill Gates, billionaire co-founder of Microsoft. Dropped out of Harvard after his second year to work with Paul Allen on the venture that became Microsoft.
 
Aviv Hadar, CEO of Think Brilliant web-development studio and the tech brains behind SoulPanckage. Dropped out of college.
 
Josh James, multimillionaire co-founder of Omniture. Dropped out of Brigham Young University during his final semester to co-found MyComputer.com, which became Omniture.
 
Steve Jobs, billionaire co-founder of Apple Computers and Pixar Animation. Dropped out of Reed College after six months and went to India before returning to Silicon Valley.
 
Jon Lech Johansen, software programmer, developer of DoubleTwist. At the age of 15, he wrote a program to decrypt commercial DVDs. He dropped out of high school to continue working on additional anti-DRM software programs.
 
Rob Kalin, founder of Esty. Flunked out of high school, briefly enrolled in an art school, and then faked an MIT student ID so he could take classes on the sly. His professors were so impressed that they helped him get into NYU where he learned out to build a website. Founded Esty with two classmates.
 
Jeffrey Kalmikoff, cofounder and chief creative officer of Treadless.com. Never graduated from college.
 
David Karp, founder of Tumblr. Dropped out of Bronx Science at the age of 15 to be homeschooled and work for his Davidville company. Did not attend college. At the age of 17, he moved to Japan and worked remotely for an American Internet company.
 
Ben Kaufman, serial entrepreneur, founder of Kluster. Dropped out of college in his freshman year.
 
Jared Kim, founder of WeGame. Dropped out of the University of California at Berkeley halfway through the spring semester of his freshman year to devote himself full-time to starting the online gaming site WeGame.
 
Chris Morrison, co-founder of PLP Digital Systems. Dropped out of high school.

Dustin Moskovitz, billionaire co-founder of Facebook social network. Dropped out of Harvard.

Jake Nickell, cofounder and CEO of Treadless.com. Never graduated from college.
 
Larry Page, billionaire co-founder of Google. Dropped out of Stanford Ph.D. program in computer science to start Google in 1998 working out of a friend's garage.
 
Sean Parker, billionaire co-creator of Napster, founding president of Facebook.com. He barely finished high school.
 
Ashley Qualls, founder of Whateverlife.com, left high school at the age of 15 to devote full time to her website business where she made more than a million dollars by the age of 17.
 
Kevin Rose, founder of Digg.com. Dropped out of the University of Las Vegas during his sophomore year to code software.
 
Theodore Waitt, billionaire founder of Gateway Computers. Dropped out of the University of Iowa one semester short of a degree to start Gateway with his older brother in 1985.
 
Steve Wozniak, billionaire co-founder of Apple. Dropped out of college.
 
Jerry Yang, billionaire co-founder of Yahoo. Dropped out of Stanford University PhD program to create Yahoo.
 
Mark Zuckerberg, billionaire founder of Facebook. Dropped out of Harvard.