Business person: Larry Ellison - co-founder of Oracle with a fortune of $ 44 billion

The new column “Business Person” will tell readers of “Megamind” about what stories and facts surround the most striking IT entrepreneurs from around the world, the value of companies under their management exceeds any reasonable limits. We will not be limited only to the “new wave” of businessmen and we will also tell about those who are called the “old school”.

Today, the life and history of Larry Ellison, the permanent co-founder of Oracle, is a close-up.
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Personality formation



He was born on August 17, 1944 in New York, at the 19-year-old unmarried Jewish woman Florence Spellman from the pilot of the US Air Force of Italian descent. Mother in early childhood gave Larry to educate Aunt Lily Spellman Allison and uncle Lewis Allison (Russian immigrant) in Chicago, who adopted him at the age of 9 months. More than 48 years, Larry did not even know the name of his mother and never met her.

After spending his childhood in Chicago, he entered and studied at the University of Illinois at Urbana and Champaign, but he refused to study in the second year after the death of Lily Spelman Ellison. But all this was only a prehistory - after a year, the summer of which he spent in California, Larry entered the University of Chicago, where he first became acquainted with the first models of computers and computing equipment of the time.

Career and other projects



After moving to California in 1966 and since that time he jumped between jobs in companies like Wells Fargo, Amdahl and others. In the latter, he learned how to program and subsequently found work at Ampex.

Getting started at Ampex was a turning point in Larry's life - at that time, the company received a major contract with the CIA to create a database management system (DBMS). This DBMS subsequently received the code name Oracle.

In 1977, Larry, together with partners Bob Miner and Ed Oates, founded a new company, Software Development Laboratories (SDL). The starting capital of the company is only $ 2,000, and among them $ 1,200 from Ellison's personal pocket.



At that time, they were inspired by the IBM scientist Edgard Codd’s theory of a relational database — a special way of storing and retrieving subsequent access to information. At that time, the very idea of ​​such databases was revolutionary - it was this theory that lay down in the Oracle database storage system. In 1979, the founders renamed SDL Relational Software Inc., and in the same year released the second version of Oracle v2. And in 1982, the name changed to Oracle. At the heart of the main product of the company Oracle Database was just the theory of relational databases.



At the time of working with Oracle Database, Ellison and his colleagues faced difficulties in developing an IBM System R compatible version of the database. IBM’s unwillingness to disclose source codes has become a key issue, and as a result, compatibility between the two systems has not been achieved.



The high growth rates allowed Oracle to reach an IPO with a profit of $ 55 million in 1986 and in just three years to multiply its profit to $ 584 million. But it was not without a crisis - in 1990, the company faced serious problems, reporting significant losses. At that time, the company laid off more than 400 employees to reduce costs. Because of the mistakes made in the registration of sales and accounting of transactions that have not yet passed in the accounting documents, Oracle had difficulties with regulators in the local market.



As a result, Oracle was close to bankruptcy, and competitors in the form of Sybase and others began to slowly win a share of the first in the market. It took several years for Ellison to choose the right development path - in 1992, the release of Oracle7 changed the situation for the better.



At that time, competition between major market players reached its climax - the 90s could be remembered by many, like the period of the advertising war between Oracle and Informix. So, I bought the billboard next to the Oracle office and placed the inscription on it, “Caution, dinosaurs cross the road,” hinting at outdated Oracle technologies.



The ability to find benefits in any situation has repeatedly managed to play for the benefit of Allison - even during the departure of his protégé Mark Benioff, who founded his startup Salesforce.com, he did not interrupt the relationship. Oracle co-founder was one of the first to invest about $ 2 million in a new project of his friend.

Subsequently, Mark Benioff learned that Oracle was developing a direct competitor to Salesforce and demanded Ellison to leave the board of directors and sell the shares, but due to the refusal he was forced to fire him. As a result, Allison left the Salesforce stake in himself and was able to get a stake in the company, which is now valued at $ 40 billion. Thus, he actually managed to make a profit even with the growth of his direct competitor.

By analogy with this, Ellison invested $ 125 million in the NetSuite project of former Oracle top manager Evan Goldberg. Now this company is estimated at $ 4 billion. But the most interesting thing is that all these new projects needed database management systems. And it was Oracle that was going to sell such bases to them, receiving direct profits from competitors and an increase in the value of their shares.

Even Steve Jobs, when returning to Apple in 1997, asked Allison to take a seat on the board of directors. But Allison was forced to give up due to lack of time.

Unusual hobbies



Allison always had a special passion for jet planes, yachts and golf - during the leadership of Oracle, this passion only intensified. Subsequently, the head of Oracle even purchased its own golf club.



But some of Ellison’s investments have nothing to do with a reasonable estimate of prospects and subsequent returns - in 2012 he acquired the Hawaiian island of Lanai, where they shot the famous Lost series for $ 300 million.



It is noteworthy that the island’s population is 3,000 people, and Allison himself sent marketers to the island to consider the island’s potential prospects.

Present tense



In 2014, Allison officially resigned as CEO of Oracle and transferred the management of the company to Mark Hurdu and Safre Katz.