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- Cisco's UK and Ireland CEO David Meads dropped out of school at 16 after a motorbike accident.
- The CEO decided he wanted to "get out there" and start making money and gaining experience.
- Meads still encouraged his kids to go to college because he was worried his success was a one-off.
Cisco's top executive in the UK has something in common with Bill Gates: he doesn't have a college degree and doesn't think you need one either.
David Meads, Cisco's UK and Ireland CEO, recalled to Fortune that he got into a motorbike accident after signing up to do his A-Levels — equivalent to a high-school diploma in the US — at 16 years old and becoming bed-ridden in the hospital for two months.
The incident made him decide to "get out there" and start making money instead of returning to school. Meads joined a small tech company at the time where he spent his lunch breaks observing the sales team's work and later went on to join the German tech giant Siemens.
"I never did anything academically beyond my GCSEs [exams taken at 16 in the UK] and never went to university," Meads told Fortune. "But you can fast forward 40 years and here I am."
He explained: "For me, attitude and aptitude are more important than whatever letters you have after your name, or whatever qualifications you've got on a sheet — and I'm an example of that, right?"
But Meads still pushed his children to go to university because he was worried that his success might be a one-off.
"Some of that was me believing that just because I managed to make a success of my career doesn't mean that's the right path to take," he said. "It just worked out for me that way."
Still, he believes that that "on-the-job experience" is the most valuable because you're "living the reality and not just the theory," he said.
Meads is amongst several successful tech leaders who didn't complete their higher education.
Bill Gates, for example, dropped out of Harvard University in the US after three years to start Microsoft with cofounder Paul Allen because he was worried about missing out on the computing revolution.
The billionaire is still a strong advocate for higher education and believes it's best if students stick out college.
Meta's CEO and cofounder Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter's former CEO and cofounder Jack Dorsey are also college dropouts who became wildly successful.