London, England (CNN) -- In the tech industry, college dropouts are legendary for eschewing education and founding billion-dollar companies. Not-as-famous but just-as-important are the college graduates that critically support these visionary founders.
Outside of the tech industry, names like Sheryl Sandberg, Tim Cook, Eric Schmidt and Steve Ballmer may be much less known, but all are college graduates who arguably built Facebook, Apple, Google and Microsoft, respectively, into the companies they are today.
A new fellowship started by Peter Thiel rewards an elite group of young people for dropping out of college with a $100,000 fellowship each. One of them, Dale Stephens, wrote a CNN.com column calling college a waste of time for a young entrepreneur.