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.

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Which books are linked to Larry Ellison?

These are examples from the documented shelf. Each label describes the connection; a book on the shelf is not always a recommendation.

High Output Management by Andrew S. Grove — Recommendation, reported by Disprz. Source
The Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalists, 1861–1901 by Matthew Josephson — Reported favorite. Source
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson — Critical reading reported by Senra. Source

See the full shelf and source notes

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 podcast

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Read about them

Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle

Matthew Symonds with Larry Ellison

Ellison is the subject of Symonds’s book and supplies his own commentaries. Simon & Schuster identifies him separately as commentator for this paperback edition. source ↗

The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison

Mike Wilson

Ellison is the subject of Wilson’s biography. The publisher states that Wilson interviewed Ellison as well as more than a hundred friends and enemies; this is not evidence of Ellison endorsing the book. source ↗

The Oracle of Oracle: The Story of Volatile CEO Larry Ellison and the Strategies Behind His Company’s Phenomenal Success

Florence M. Stone

Stone studies Ellison and Oracle’s growth strategies. The 2002 AMACOM edition is identified by ISBN; it is an outside account, not Ellison’s own book. source ↗