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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 ↓
Career highlights
  1. 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.
  2. 1962Drops out of the University of Illinois after his adoptive mother dies; later attends the University of Chicago but leaves before graduating.
  3. 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.'
  4. 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.
  5. 1979The company, renamed Relational Software, ships Oracle, the first commercially available SQL relational database, and pivots to marketing it.
  6. 1986Takes Oracle public; by 1990 it is booming on aggressive sales, before the company's high-pressure practices backfire.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. 2003Wins the America's Cup as skipper after Oracle BMW Racing sponsors the event; he later wins again in 2010.
  10. 2014Steps down as Oracle CEO but remains chairman and chief technology officer, continuing to shape the company and its cloud strategy.
Lessons for founders
On the Founders podcast4×
  1. #124Larry Ellison and Oracle
  2. #126Larry Ellison: The Billionaire and the Mechanic
  3. #127Larry Ellison / Oracle
  4. #404How Larry Ellison Thinks
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 ↗
What they recommend17
The Age of Napoleon: A History of European Civilization from 1789 to 1815
Will and Ariel Durant
Named in episode #126 as Ellison's favorite history book, which he had read several times"Ellison's favorite history book, read several times: the Durants' account of Napoleon as the outsider who was told he would never amount to anything." source ↗
High Output Management
Andrew S. Grove
Ellison calls High Output Management his 'bible' for management concepts; he summarized it to an interviewer as 'when you want to improve something, measure it'"Ellison on the book he calls his management bible: 'When you want to improve something, measure it, and make sure you measure the right thing.'" source ↗
The Fountainhead
Ayn Rand
Quoted in Ellison's Smithsonian oral-history interview on the book's influence on his early ambition"Ellison, in a 1995 Smithsonian oral history: 'As a kid, I wanted to be an architect. That's before I read The Fountainhead.'" source ↗
The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Visions of Glory
William Manchester
The Billionaire and the Mechanic (Founders episode #126) documents 'William Manchester's multivolume biography of Winston Churchill' among the books on Ellison's nightstand during the dot-com collapse"One of the books on Larry Ellison's nightstand, as recorded in Julian Guthrie's The Billionaire and the Mechanic." source ↗
Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10
Marcus Luttrell with Patrick Robinson
Guthrie's The Billionaire and the Mechanic documents Ellison reading Lone Survivor and noting the line 'The real battle is won in the mind'"Guthrie on Ellison mid-read: '[Larry Ellison picked up] his Kindle so he could finish reading Lone Survivor. Larry had noted a page: "The real battle is won in the mind."'" source ↗
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
Frederick P. Brooks Jr.
Tim Ferriss's Tribe of Mentors documents Ellison giving The Mythical Man-Month to every software executive he met at Oracle"Ellison gave The Mythical Man-Month to every software executive he met at Oracle." source ↗
Fate Is the Hunter
Ernest K. Gann
The Billionaire and the Mechanic (Founders episode #126) lists Fate Is the Hunter among the books on Ellison's nightstand during the dot-com collapse"One of the books on Larry Ellison's nightstand, as recorded in Julian Guthrie's The Billionaire and the Mechanic." source ↗
The Jordan Rules
Sam Smith
The Billionaire and the Mechanic (Founders episode #126) lists The Jordan Rules among the books on Ellison's nightstand during the dot-com collapse"One of the books on Larry Ellison's nightstand, as recorded in Julian Guthrie's The Billionaire and the Mechanic." source ↗
The Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalists, 1861–1901
Matthew Josephson
Named by Steve Blank as Ellison's favorite book, from Blank's first-hand account of working with him at Oracle"Ellison's favorite book, per Steve Blank's account of Ellison's influences." source ↗
Napoleon: A Biography
Vincent Cronin
Business Insider documents Ellison telling the Academy of Achievement that his favorite book is Vincent Cronin's biography of Napoleon"Ellison, on reading about Napoleon: 'It's interesting to read about him for a couple of reasons... To see what one man of modest birth can do with his life, and to see how history can distort the truth entirely.'" source ↗
A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East
David Fromkin
Guthrie's The Billionaire and the Mechanic documents Ellison quoting a section of Fromkin's A Peace to End All Peace"Ellison had just finished quoting a section from A Peace to End All Peace when it was documented in Julian Guthrie's The Billionaire and the Mechanic." source ↗
On the Origin of Species
Charles Darwin
Ellison references Darwin in his own footnotes to Softwar as an example of challenging orthodoxy and withstanding attacks — a theme central to his worldview"Ellison, in a footnote to Softwar, cites Darwin as an exemplar of someone who challenged widely held beliefs and suffered vicious attacks for it." source ↗
Steve Jobs
Walter Isaacson
Ellison read Isaacson's biography of his close friend and colleague, and critiqued it for failing to convey Jobs's irreplaceability"Ellison on Isaacson's biography of his best friend: 'He didn't let Jobs be irreplaceable.'" source ↗
The HP Way: How Bill Hewlett and I Built Our Company
David Packard
Referenced in contrast to 'The Oracle Way' — Packard's philosophy of management-by-walking-around and respect for people stands as the ethical counterpoint to Oracle's aggressive culture"Packard's account of building HP stands as the counterpoint to Ellison's 'win or die' ethos — a book the Oracle culture was measured against." source ↗
West by West: My Charmed, Tormented Life
Jerry West with Jonathan Coleman
Documented in readby.co's compilation of public statements by Larry EllisonListed on Ellison's readby.co shelf, sourced to his public statements; ISBN verified against Open Library and Kirkus Reviews (Little, Brown 2011 hardcover) source ↗
The Story of My Life
Clarence Darrow
Documented in readby.co's and bookselects.com's compilations of public statements by Larry EllisonISBN verified against Open Library and the Da Capo Press publisher page — the Da Capo 1996 trade paperback reprint, with a new introduction by Alan M. Dershowitz, of Darrow's 1932 Scribner autobiography source ↗
Catch-22
Joseph Heller
Documented in readby.co's compilation of public statements; bookselects.com independently lists Catch-22 on Ellison's shelf, attributing the Milo Minderbinder quote to Matthew Symonds's Softwar, the biography written with Ellison's participation — a second, independent record of Ellison referencing the book"Ellison on Bill Gates, recorded in Softwar: 'I think Bill Gates must be some kind of reincarnation of Milo Minderbinder from Catch-22.'" source ↗
Sources24
An archive of what founders read, and what was written about them.