Larry Ellison

Oracle · b. 1944

Born August 17, 1944

Larry Ellison (born 17 August 1944 in New York) is the co-founder and chairman of Oracle. Raised in Chicago by an aunt and uncle, he dropped out of two universities and drifted through odd programming jobs before, in 1977, he and two partners — after reading a 1970 IBM paper on relational databases — founded Software Development Laboratories with $2,000 of their own money, later renamed Oracle. He rode the relational-database boom to become one of the world's richest men, nearly destroyed Oracle through aggressive sales tactics and a near-death accounting crisis in 1990, and rebuilt it into an enterprise-software giant before turning to the America's Cup and a rival biotech venture.

Covered 4× on Founders ↓

Contents

Career highlights

1944Born 17 August in Manhattan to Florence Spellman, an unwed mother; raised from infancy by his aunt and uncle, Lillian and Louis Ellison, in Chicago.
1962Drops out of the University of Illinois after his adoptive mother dies; later attends the University of Chicago but leaves before graduating.
1966Moves to California and works as a programmer for a series of companies, including a stint at Ampex where he first sees the name 'Oracle.'
1977With Bob Miner and Ed Oates, founds Software Development Laboratories in Santa Clara, investing $2,000 of his own and naming a project 'Oracle' from a CIA codename.
1979The company, renamed Relational Software, ships Oracle, the first commercially available SQL relational database, and pivots to marketing it.
1986Takes Oracle public; by 1990 it is booming on aggressive sales, before the company's high-pressure practices backfire.
1990Oracle's first-ever quarterly loss is revealed; a federal investigation and shareholder lawsuits follow, nearly sinking the company and forcing Ellison to hire outsiders to rebuild it.
1995Declares that 'the PC is a ridiculous device' and that Oracle's network computer will replace it — a famous miscalculation he later made peace with.
2003Wins the America's Cup as skipper after Oracle BMW Racing sponsors the event; he later wins again in 2010.
2014Steps down as Oracle CEO but remains chairman and chief technology officer, continuing to shape the company and its cloud strategy.

Lessons for founders

Question conventional wisdom and expert authority as a core operating habit. Ellison calls questioning conventional wisdom 'the single most important aspect of my personality' — doubting experts because they are experts, which he credits with enabling Oracle's contrarian bets.
Bet on something no one else is even trying. Oracle built the first commercial relational database because 'nobody else was even trying.' Ellison's strategy was to pick risky, lonely, huge opportunities where the bigger the apparent risk, the fewer competitors would follow.
Pick a fight and burn the boats. Ellison's method: 'Once I'm finally certain of the right direction, I pick a fight... it makes it impossible to do an about-face and go back. Once a course has been plotted, I sail a long way off and burn my boats. It's win or die.'
The company almost died from its own culture before it could grow. Oracle's near-collapse in 1990 came from sales-forcing obsessions and a mistaken incentive structure that cost the company enormously — a warning that founder aggression without controls is self-destructive.
Know your own temperament: sprinter, not grinder. Ellison is candid that he is 'a sprinter... I rest, I sprint, I rest, I sprint again,' easily bored by running the business — a self-aware counterpoint to Gates's relentless grinding, and a reminder to design around how you actually work.

On the Founders podcast4×

Read about them3

Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle

Matthew Symonds with Larry Ellison

Subject of episode #124; Symonds was granted extensive access to Ellison over four years, making this one of the most detailed insider portraits of Oracle's founder. Its pages record Ellison's own self-description, quoted in episode #124: 'I am a sprinter. I rest, I sprint, I rest, I sprint again.' source ↗

The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison

Mike Wilson

A 1997 unauthorized biography of Ellison's early life, career and courtship of controversy before and during the 1990 Oracle crisis. source ↗

The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed Up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, the America's Cup, Twice

Julian Guthrie

Subject of Founders episode #126; the inside story of Ellison's two America's Cup wins and his relationship with boat builder Russell Coutts, revealing Ellison's approach to competition and obsession. source ↗