My dad was able to pay for me to attend the University of Minnesota.

More importantly though was that my parents fed my childhood fascination with computers, making sure I had the opportunity to learn to code early (a volunteer at my school taught me BASIC at age 8; my parents bought me a PC so I could continue experimenting) and then they gave me a lot of free time to spend building things and learning. After I graduated my mom let me spend a couple more years in her basement just working on open source software projects. These are certainly privileges that wouldn't be possible if my dad didn't have comfortable income.

I got into Google by applying on the web site and showing them my projects.