Which completely bypasses the point that their parents had to be wealthy enough to provide for his education at a school that had computing labs at a time that they were very rare. Bill Gates and Paul Allen certainly had to work their tails off, but negating that having a wealthy parent puts you in a far higher likelihood to be successful is just silly. The average child of poor parents is not likely to have the same opportunity as those of a child of wealthy parents. It's exactly what perpetuates the cycle of wealth.

Lots of people started microcomputer companies at about the same time as Gates. Evidently, not attending Lakeside was not a barrier.

Gary Kildall wrote CP/M in 1974, a year before Gates formed Microsoft.