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"(CNN) -- Lars and Jens Rasmussen were broke and jobless -- with only $16 between them -- when they made it big in the Web world by selling their idea for Google Maps."

SOURCE: http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/10/27/rasmussen.brothers.google...

I'm pretty sure these guys got somewhere even without a cushion of money under their bums.

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I'm not sure just how poor and underprivileged they were; it sounds like not getting a job and doing a startup instead was a choice, and that initially at least there was a cushion of money. Lars Rasmussen got a PhD from Berkeley in 1998, and then by 2003 somehow ended up in Australia, where he founded a tech startup and sold to Google within the year. Most actual poor people can't buy a plane ticket to Australia!

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