UIUC has bred some of the most remarkable tech visionaries in history. Flickr/VSmithUK The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) is in a small college town located about 150 miles south of Chicago.

Surrounded by corn and soybean fields, Urbana-Champaign doesn’t strike you at first as a place where future tech leaders would emerge from.

It's why many people fail to realize that UIUC has bred some of the most remarkable tech visionaries in history. They built companies that essentially changed tech history as we know it.