Ok shameless name dropping ahead.
Being pretty early in the computer field, and spending much of my career about 4 cubicles from Intel CEO Andy Grove, I meet a ton of technology company founders and/or CEOs. I guess it is relevant to this forum cause all of this guys and gals were worth 100 million+ and many quite a bit more and they could all retire early but didn't!. Not sure if they are all famous but the do have Wikipedia entries
Apple: Steve Wozniac nice guy my buddy use to play a card game with him and his son, Steve Jobs arrogant A*hole, Andy Hertzfeld designer of the Mac software, knew him at college
Adobe: John Warnock, Cofounder. Meet he and his family touring the Kremlin after a Russian Computer conferences
Borland Software: Philippe Kahn, founder hung out with him while he gave away money to kids on the street in Moscow at the same Russian conference
Compaq Computers: Rod Canion founder, CEO
Dell Computers: Micheal Dell founder
Gateway Computers: Ted Waite founder
Google: Eric Schmidt, CEO. He was probably the best teaching assistant I had in college, and meet him later at Intel meeting I was impressed he still remembered me 15 years latter
IBM: Lou Gerstner, CEO
Intel: Andy Grove CEO, Gordon Moore co-founder postulated Moore's law, Bob Noyce co-founder, co-inventor of the integrated circuit, Tedd Hoff, inventor of the microprocessor
Lotus Computer: Mitch Kopor, founder, Jim Manzi CEO and pretty much all of the pioneer of spreadsheet software from my days of writing spreadsheets
Microsoft Corp: Bill Gates, and a number of other execs there
Sun Microsystems: Bill Joy co-founder, another teaching assistant at college
Trilogy Computer, Amdahl Computers: Gene Amdahl founder, knew his wife the curator of the Boston Computer Museum quite well
Venture Capitalists
Arthur Rock: Started venture capital in Silicon Valley: Investor behind Apple, Intel, showed him how to surf the web.
Ben Rosen: investor behind Compaq, Lotus got bumped to 1st class and sat next to him and talked the whole time.
Ann Windbald: dated Bill Gates meet her a couple of times and her husband in Hawaii
Others:
Jodi Ann Paterson: Playmate of the Year 1999: Guess what she really is stunningly gorgeous with clothes on and no airbrushing
Huey Lewis. singer actor, meet him at the fabulous cafeteria at Lucas's Skywalker Ranch
Glenn Seaborg, Nobel laureate: Chemistry teacher
Allan Kellog: Medal of Honor Recipient, worked on Senator McCain campaign with him
Chuck Yeager: First man to fly faster than the speed of sound
Kelly Johnson: famous aircraft designer designed the U2, SR71 and F104
Kevin Pollak: Comedian, Actor (a Few Good Men, Wedding Planner, Avalon) he starred in a video I was the executive producer of, very funny guy.
However, my all time best celebrity week was back in 1989. It started with me going to Penthouse founder Bob Guicionne's apartment building in Central Park for advertisers in his Computer magazine. Unfortunately for us computer nerds, not only were the fabulous pictures of Madonna, clothed paintings of the religious icon, and not the singer like we hoped, but the only Penthouse Pet present was pushing 50... Oh well a spectacular place.
I then flew back to California. A couple of days latter, came back from lunch, and the admins in the office were all excited, because Marlon Brando had called me. I very nonchalantly told them "oh yes I was expecting his call". A few minutes latter his office called and I spent a 1/2 hour talking to the Godfather about using computers to generate extras for epic western he was thinking about producing. I told him that in about 5 years he could do what he wanted. Yes he sounds just like the Godfather on the phone.
Strangely enough 15 years before my sister and her husband met Marlon in bar when they lived in Tahiti, he owned an island there, and my dad who was a pharmaceutical rep calling on Beverly Hills doctors meet him going in a doctors office, so I was third my family to met him.
That Friday night, I went to a rave where I met Dr. Timothy Leary the Harvard professor turned LSD advocate. I am not sure if was high or the drugs had fried his brain, but he was in bad shape. Between the Russian computer conference, making a movie, and a bunch of celebrities sighting 1989 was heck of a lot of fun, I remember thinking Intel didn't even have to pay me.