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!