Larry Ellison
Larry Ellison
Lawrence Joseph "Larry" Ellisonis an American businessman who is co-founder of Oracle Corporation and was CEO from its founding until September 2014. He currently serves as executive chairman and chief technology officer of Oracle. In 2014, he was listed by Forbes magazine as the third-wealthiest person in America and as the fifth-wealthiest person in the world, with a fortune of US$56.2 billion...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth17 August 1944
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
It's fascinating as we continue to innovate and lead the way in both the application space and the database space. In the very beginning, people said you couldn't make relational databases fast enough to be commercially viable. I thought we could, and we were the first to do it. But we took tremendous abuse until IBM said, "Oh yeah, this stuff is good."
You have to act and act now.
Once the business data have been centralized and integrated, the value of the database is greater than the sum of the preexisting parts.
Those that believe this is merely a downturn are mad. Our industry is going to mature and as something matures, the rate of innovation does slow.
I saw that we needed to grow but our top line wasn't growing, so we had to find other ways to grow the business. We had to reshape our business and acquire share in a non conventional way. But most tech leaders don't come out of a business background. They really have a parochial point of view. All they know are the go-go years of Silicon Valley. That's the environment in which they were raised.
Both my mother and I were determined that we weren't going to stay on welfare. We always worked toward doing better, toward having a better life. We never had any doubts that we would.
You realize that life is short and fragile; and when you are facing walls of water, you understand your own mortality can change and how quickly things could change.
I'd prefer people read about Churchill and how he wasn't overwhelmed by Nazi Germany. Amazing; that the morale of a country rested on one person's shoulders. Extraordinary people carried that country through its darkest hours; truly inspirational. I suppose that's my theme. Whether it's a biography or a movie; whether it's fictional or true, I'm inspired by people doing great things.
When you find errors in conventional wisdom-when everyone says A and A is not true-you gain competitive advantage. Only a few times do you have to find errors in conventional wisdom to make a living.
Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing. Sure, there’s the talent, but there also has to be the will. Give me human will and the intense desire to win and it will trump talent every day of the week.
Really great blogs do not take the place of great microprocessors. Great blogs do not replace great software. Lots and lots of blogs does not replace lots and lots of sales.
All you can do is all you can do.
All you can do is every day, try to solve a problem and make your company better
Building Oracle is like doing math puzzles as a kid.