Inspiring Entrepreneurial Success Story Of Larry Ellison
SUMMARY BIO
Born Lawrence Joseph Ellison, August
17, 1944 (age 72)
Manhattan, New York, U.S.
Alma Mater: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
University of Chicago
Occupation: Executive Chairman and CTO of Oracle
Corporation
Known for Co-founder and former CEO
of Oracle Corporation
Salary US$41.5 million (2017)
Net worth US$55 billion (March 2017)
He Didn't Have Things Smooth From The Beginning
Larry Ellison was born in New York City, to an unwed
Jewish mother. His biological father was an Italian American United States Army
Air Corps pilot. After Ellison contracted pneumonia at the age of nine months,
his mother gave him to her aunt and uncle for adoption. He did not meet his
biological mother again until he was 48.
Ellison moved to Chicago's South Shore, then a
middle-class neighborhood. He remembers his adoptive mother as warm and loving,
in contrast to his austere, unsupportive, and often distant adoptive father,
who adopted the name Ellison to honor his point of entry into the United
States, Ellis Island. Louis Ellison was a government employee who had made a
small fortune in Chicago real estate, only to lose it during the Great
Depression.
He left the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
after his second year without taking his final exams because his adoptive
mother had just died. Later, he attended the University of Chicago for one
term, where he first encountered computer design. In 1966, aged 22, he moved to
northern California.
He Was Inspired
After a brief stint at Amdahl Corporation, Ellison
began working for Ampex Corporation. His projects included a database for the
CIA, which he named "Oracle". Ellison was inspired by a paper written
by Edgar F. Codd on relational database systems called "A Relational Model
of Data for Large Shared Data Banks".
In 1977, he founded Software Development
Laboratories (SDL) with two partners and an investment of $2,000; $1,200 of the
money was his. In 1979 the company renamed itself Relational Software Inc., and
in 1982 officially became Oracle Systems Corporation after its flagship
product, the Oracle Database.
He Made A Costly Mistake
In 1990, Oracle laid off 10% of its workforce (about
400 people) because it was losing money. This crisis, which almost resulted in
the company's bankruptcy, came about because of Oracle's "up-front"
marketing strategy, in which sales people urged potential customers to buy the
largest possible amount of software all at once. The sales people then booked
the value of future license sales in the current quarter, thereby increasing
their bonuses. This became a problem when the future sales subsequently failed
to materialize. Oracle eventually had to restate its earnings twice and had to
settle class-action lawsuits arising from its having overstated its earnings.
Ellison would later say that Oracle had made "an incredible business
mistake"
Ellison
has donated up to 1% of his wealth to charity and has signed The Giving
Pledge. In addition to his work at Oracle, Ellison has had success
in yachting, through Oracle Team
USA. He is a licensed aircraft pilot who owns two military jets
Currently, Ellison owns stakes in Salesforce.com, NetSuite,
Quark Biotechnology Inc. and Astex Pharmaceuticals.
In
September 2011, Ellison was listed on the Forbes List of Billionaires as the
fifth richest man in the world. Ellison is still the third richest American,
with a net worth of about $36.5 billion.
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