Bill Gates got what he needed to start Microsoft in high school
Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard in 1975 to launch Microsoft MSFT but, in a speech he gave at his high school, he implies he could have skipped college altogether and still become a successful billionaire and philanthropist , thanks to the education he got there. "Lakeside was one of the best things that ever happened to me," Gates says in a 2005 speech at Lakeside School . Gates was first introduced to computers at his Seattle private school.