It wasn’t all that long ago, 1975, that computer whiz Bill Gates (1955-) founded what is now the dominant manufacturer of computer software (so dominant that the company has faced antitrust allegations from the federal government). Gates was only 19 years old when he founded the business with his friend Paul Gardner Allen, and he had dropped out of Harvard to do so. It paid off: Gates was a billionaire by age 30. Though he’s undoubtedly a math ace (he scored a perfect 800 in math on his SATs and began writing computer programs when he was all of 13), Gates has more than once credited the success of Microsoft to not his own programming skills—but to hiring the best programming talent for the Redmond, Washington-based company.