Founders - #126: Larry Ellison (The Billionaire and the Mechanic)

Starting point is 00:00:00 I'm talking about greatness. About taking a lever to the world and moving it, Larry said, walking the grounds of his new woodside property with his best friend Steve Jobs. I'm not talking about moral perfection. I'm talking about people who changed the world the most during their lifetime. Jobs, who had returned to Apple three years earlier, enjoyed the conversational volleying and placed Leonardo da Vinci and Gandhi as his top choices, with Gandhi in the lead. Leonardo, a great artist and inventor, lived in violent times and was a designer of tanks, battlements, ramparts, and an assortment of other military tools and castle fortifications. Jobs cited Gandhi's doctrine of non-violent revolution

Starting point is 00:00:46 as an example of how it was possible to remain morally pure while aggressively pursuing change. Larry's choice for history's greatest person could not have been more different than Gandhi, the military leader Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon overthrew kings and tyrants throughout Europe, created a system of free public schools, and wrote one set of laws that applied to everybody. Napoleon invented modern public education, public art museums, and the modern legal system, and ended state-sponsored religious discrimination. And as if that weren't enough, he emptied the ghettos and gave the Jews equality in the eyes of the law, Larry said. Steve had heard it all before and would never be convinced. The Napoleonic wars are named after Napoleon. It's not a good thing to have lots of wars named after you, Steve

Starting point is 00:01:37 countered, taking long pauses between his sentences, as was his way. In contrast, Gandhi's methods were moral and his achievements were material. He led India to independence. Napoleon engaged in a war to overthrow kings and tyrants. He had no choice. They couldn't be talked off their thrones, Larry said. Yes, India got its independence and along with it, a genocidal civil war between Hindus and Muslims.

Starting point is 00:02:07 Countless people were slaughtered on both sides. Jobs noted that Gandhi had gone on a hunger strike to stop it. Yes, and for his selfless efforts, Gandhi was shot and martyred just like Lincoln, Larry said. America's greatest president engaged in a war where over 600,000 people lost their lives. He ignored the Constitution and suspended habeas corpus, and he instilled a draft to fill the ranks of the Union Army. After the Battle of Gettysburg, Lincoln had to send troops to New York City to put down draft riots. Even the sainted Lincoln was willing to resort to violence to purge the nation of slavery and preserve the Union. He couldn't talk the South out of succession or slavery.

Starting point is 00:02:51 The saying violence never solved anything is nonsense. They had had this who is the greatest talk before, with Steve offering up Alexander Gustav Eiffel, who built the tower, Arthur Rimbaud, the 19th century French poet, and Bob Dylan, whom Steve said he would trade all of his technology to have an afternoon with. They had also debated the role of founders of great religions, including Christ and Muhammad. Steve liked to say the Beatles were his management model, four guys who kept each other in check and produced something great. Larry liked Galileo and Winston Churchill.

Starting point is 00:03:31 Winston Churchill saved Western civilization, Larry said, knowing that his friend didn't approve of Churchill's methods. Churchill prevented Hitler from invading England. The English people were not enslaved like so many others. Sure, he did it by shooting down lots of German airplanes and sinking the German fleet. Not every problem can be solved by talking. Larry's favorite history book was Will and Ariel Durant's The Age of Napoleon, which he had read several times. Like his buddy Steve, and like Larry himself, Napoleon was an outsider who was told he would never amount to anything. When he was 10, he was sent from Corsica to military school in France. His teacher's report said he spoke French with a horrible, thick Italian accent

Starting point is 00:04:12 and noted that although the other kids didn't like him, he had an exceptionally high opinion of himself. He was a small-town Italian kid and nothing like the sophisticated Parisians he went to school with, Larry said. In other words, he was a man with something to prove. An obsessive compulsive who, while his marshals feasted and drank the night before battles, would work through the night. Larry marveled to Steve. He'd spread the maps of all the area all over the floor of his tent.

Starting point is 00:04:43 And then he spent all night planning and dictating detailed orders to each one of his commanders. He'd have roast chicken for dinner because he didn't want to have to stop working to eat. What I'm interested in, Larry continued, is how can history's greatest general also be history's ableist administrator, the creator of the laws, the courts, the schools, the museums, all the institutions that shaped France then and now. How can one human being do all that? As he looked at his friend, he thought here was a man who also had that rare combination of talent and will. Only Steve's battles were with Microsoft, not England. All right, that was an excerpt from the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is The Billionaire and the Mechanic, how Larry Ellison and a car mechanic teamed up to

Starting point is 00:05:37 win sailing's greatest race, the America's Cup, twice. And it was written by Julian Guthrie. So this book will serve as a second in a three-part series that I'm doing on Larry Ellison. It was actually recommended to me by a misfit named Richard. He actually sent me a screenshot of one page in the book where Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison are having that discussion on who they admire most in history. Just from that one page, I knew immediately I had to read the book. And it was a fantastic read. I had a hard time putting it down. Now, the book technically is about the race, the American Cup race, but that's not really what it's about. It's about insights. It's going to give you and I insights into the mindset of extreme winners. So that's what we're going to talk about mostly today.

Starting point is 00:06:26 Steve Jobs is featured a lot in this book. So I want to talk about first how their friendship started. They were best friends for 25 years. It says Larry and Steve were friends from the first one-on-one meeting they had in the mid-1980s. Steve had bought a house in Woodside, just up the hill from Larry. His front yard ended where Larry's backyard began. One morning, shortly after Steve moved in, Larry was awakened at dawn by the sound of screaming peacocks. Larry trudged up the

Starting point is 00:06:53 hill, knocked on the door, and Steve answered. Steve, are those your peacocks? Larry asked. Yeah, they woke me up too. They're really loud, aren't they? Steve replied. They were a birthday gift and I don't know what I'm going to do. I hate them. Larry, an animal lover who funds animal rescue centers around the world, plotted with Steve to relocate his birthday birds. The plan was simple. Steve was to place all the blame on Larry, his nocturnal next door neighbor, who was complaining about being wakened at sunrise by screaming peacocks. The sleep-deprived neighbor even threatened to look up peacock recipes. The situation was serious and left Steve with no other choice. He lived in a neighborhood hostile to peacocks and had to get rid of the birds for their own safety.

Starting point is 00:07:39 Steve thought that was a great idea and executed the plan to perfection. So you see an insight into both their mischievous nature. There's a lot of similarities between the two. I would argue that their approach to business is radically different. But on a personal level, their personalities have a lot of overlap. So it says, Steve and Larry found they had much in common. They both had adoptive parents. They both considered their adoptive parents as their real parents.

Starting point is 00:08:05 Both were OCD and both were anti-authoritarian. They shared a disdain for conventional wisdom and felt people too often equated obedience with intelligence. They never graduated from college, and Steve loved to boast that he left Reed College after just two weeks, while it took others, including Larry and their rival Bill Gates, months or even years to drop out. Larry and Steve's companies had taken shape around the same time, and they had risen and fallen and were both rising again. Both men had started companies with an idea that wasn't their own. And both Steve and Larry listened to naysayers insisting that the

Starting point is 00:08:47 technologies were unsuitable for the commercial market. And then they went ahead and figured out ways to make it work. So there's a couple other conversations that happened throughout the book. And in this case, they're in Larry's garden. Larry had a love for nature. He says he felt comfortable in gardens and on the sea, but never in cities. And so they had this quick conversation, which I thought was interesting. And Larry's talking about gardens and how he favors natural art over anything man-made. But then they hit on this idea that, you know, we can also make our own art. We can make our own contributions. And I thought this quick exchange was interesting.

Starting point is 00:09:25 Gardens were Larry's favorite art form, a collaboration between God and man, a sculpture that never stayed the same. Steve, not one to readily give compliments, gestured to the beauty around them and said, why do people buy art when they can make their own? Larry thought for a moment and replied, well, Steve, not everyone can make his own art. You can. It's a gift. And that last comment by Larry gives you an insight into how he felt about Steve.

Starting point is 00:09:53 He says over and over again, I've seen this in multiple books now, he compares, he says, Later on, I'll tell you about the critique that Larry had. Larry's a voracious reader, and he reads a lot of bi biographies and he read Isaacson's book on Steve Jobs. So did I, turned in, I actually did a podcast on it. And he says the biggest critique is that Isaacson didn't let jobs be irreplaceable. And Larry said, there's nobody alive that's like jobs. Okay. So let's get back into this. We see more about their personalities, the difference in their personalities.

Starting point is 00:10:30 And it says part of his job, meaning Larry, as he saw it, was to tempt and corrupt his friend with boats and planes so he'd have more fun and more time. Steve was always concerned about his conspicuous consumption. He liked cars and motorcycles, but never spent a lot of money. What he loved was designing and redesigning things to make them more useful and more beautiful. And so we see the difference there with that last sentence. I would say that their approaches, whatever, their approaches to business are completely different. Larry, like I said on the previous podcast, if Michael Jordan sold enterprise software, he'd be Larry Ellison. Larry is addicted to winning.

Starting point is 00:11:09 Steve's motivations are very, very different. What he loved was designing and redesigning things to make them more useful, more beautiful. You also see how they push their lives. Larry admires somebody like Howard Hughes, who, you know, had he had all kinds of different things. He dated beautiful women. He was a pilot. He started a bunch of different companies. He had a bunch of interests. That is a very similar to how Ellison conducts his life. When you look at Steve Jobs, you know, he lived in a fairly simple house. He wore the same thing every day. It seems to me that he simplified his life so he could focus on designing and redesigning beautiful products where Larry would get bored a lot. And so he needs to create, and I'll talk to you more about this in a minute. What Larry does is very similar

Starting point is 00:11:50 to Michael Jordan. I just finished the Michael Jordan documentary. Um, Larry creates games within games. And I think there's actually good insights to that, but with Steve's is much more simple. It's I'm going to make the best products in the world. They're going to be insanely great. And so I'm going to try to eliminate everything in my life that's not that. So when the book is talking about, you know, Larry's trying to corrupt Steve, one thing Steve did think that you should spend money on, and he winds up doing that. I think Apple spent like $40 million on his plane, something like that. Larry was actually on the board at that time. I think it might have been Larry's idea. But anyways, there's a there's a section in the book that talks about Steve is studying the design of Larry's plane and seeing where he would what changes he would make for his own. Right. And the

Starting point is 00:12:35 reason I bring this up is because this is an idea that I learned from Steve over and over again. And he has this idea that the further you get away from one, the more complexity you're inviting in, right? And I really love that idea. It's one of the most important ideas I've discovered in all these books. And this is just a quick illustration of that. Steve started designing the interior of his new plane, studying Larry's Gulfstream

Starting point is 00:12:58 and making improvements on Larry's design. When he noticed Larry had one button to open a door and another button to close it steve decided on a single toggle switch that would do both on his plane and before i get into a little bit about some insights from larry's early life this is not going to surprise you uh this is just another person on a long list of the people that we've studied who actually make it a priority in their life to study and learn from history. And it says Larry was a voracious reader who spent a great deal of time studying science and technology, but his favorite subject was history.

Starting point is 00:13:34 He learned more about human nature, management and leadership by reading history than by reading books about business. OK, so from here on in, we're going to really talk about, like, why does Larry do the things that he does? Like, he's one of the most extremely competitive people that you'll ever come across. His early life was not a reflection of what he wanted his life to be, and I think that was a hugely motivating factor in how aggressive he was later in life. So there is some interesting stories from his early life about inspirations that Larry drew, and this is one of them. Larry's own interest in sailing had been sparked

Starting point is 00:14:09 when he was a teenager living in the south side of Chicago. He was enthralled by a National Geographic story about a boy named Robin Lee Graham. Graham was the youngest person to solo circumnavigate the globe. The first installment of the story ran with a picture of a lean, tan, shirtless Graham on his 24-foot boat under the title, A Teenager Sails the World Alone. Larry read every word of the teen's adventures in his small boat, his navigating to exotic places, and his keeping two kittens and a shortwave radio for company. He envied how Graham's parents

Starting point is 00:14:46 supported him on his adventure as this was the opposite of his own life. So what they're talking about there is his adopted dad said over and over again to Larry, you're a loser. You're going to amount to nothing in life. And that was his main message to his adopted son. So, you know, wonderful, great guy, right? The story of Graham transported Larry from his, the regimentation of high school to the adventure and freedom of the sea. And I would say now, this is the second book I've read on Larry. I'm halfway through the third. I would say that Larry treats life like an adventure. And that's probably a good idea. if you believe we only get one life. He was a boy alone at sea. Here was a boy alone at sea for weeks at a stretch

Starting point is 00:15:28 dealing with storms, circling sharks, and broken masts, visiting exotic locales. Through it all, this may be the most important takeaway in this section, I think that influenced Larry.

Starting point is 00:15:41 Through it all, he was his own navigator. That's definitely the way Larry approached his life. So I covered, I'm not going to, I'm going to try to avoid repeating myself. So there is some stories in here that were not in the previous book. But this is the difference between Larry and his adopted father. This is me repeating myself a little bit though. So Lou Ellison revered authority figures, but Larry found those in charge mostly uninspiring or wrong.

Starting point is 00:16:09 When the two debated the virtues of President Eisenhower and his policies, Lou advised Larry, he's the president. He knows things that we don't. That information enables the president to make the right decisions, even if we can't understand them. Larry responded, he looks human to me. I'm sure he makes mistakes like everybody else. Larry never believed in the infallibility of authority figures. Okay, so now we're gonna get into this idea. The more I thought about the information in this book,

Starting point is 00:16:36 I really think Larry uses competition as a tool. And so he uses it as a tool in varying varying different ways and so one of the ways he uses this he uses competition as a way to test himself and he talks about like you know you have a pretty demanding day job you're running this gigantic oracle corporation like how do you have time to dedicate to all these extreme sports and in the america's cup so the way to think about america's cup i didn't know anything about it going in. The metaphor they use in the book that might help explain it to you

Starting point is 00:17:09 is that you think about like Formula One racing, right? You have these super advanced cars that are on the edge of technology. They have entire, think of them as like small businesses. You know, could be of a hundred, in America's Cup case, you have a hundred to 150 people

Starting point is 00:17:24 working usually 12 to 14 hour days you know, could be of 100 in America's Cup case, you have 100 to 150 people working, usually 12 to 14 hour days for two years before the race takes place. They have to travel in America's Cup travels less than Formula One. But sometimes the races are in Spain, sometimes in New Zealand, and wherever the race is going to be, the entire company, this 100 to 150 people set up shop there and they're living there for until the race is over. And so not only do they, you have to have like all the logistics and that they have to build schools for the kids of the people that work there. So it's a, it's a heavily intensive operation. So people are like, Larry, how do you have time to do all this? Or why are you doing

Starting point is 00:18:05 this? And this is the best explanation that you'll find. He says he wanted to see just how much better a sailor he had become. It would be an interesting test, he told himself. So this is a race from Sydney, Australia to Hobart. So this is not the America's Cup, but it's another sailing race. And this is where he races through and almost dies in a hurricane. So I'll get there, but this is the most important part. There was a clarity to be found in sports that couldn't be had in business. At Oracle, he still wanted to beat his rivals IBM and Microsoft, but business was a marathon without end. That's a fantastic sentence, right?

Starting point is 00:18:41 There was always another quarter. In sports, the buzzer sounds and time runs out. So last week we talked to Charles Kettering Kett, as I called him on the podcast. I think he picks up on something that was really, really smart. He talked about why he didn't worry about duplication of effort when you're researching. In this case, I think they were trying to find a cure for a specific kind of cancer, right? And he said something in that book that I think I always,

Starting point is 00:19:10 or I hope I always remember. And he says, I'm not worried about the duplication of effort in research. Such duplication is sometimes a good thing. It is not what two groups do alike that matters. It's what they do differently that's liable to count. And I would argue Larry's fanatical obsession with seeking out competition, and he also calls it alternative stress, is something that we can learn from and that he's actually, to Kat's point, it's what he's doing differently that is very unique. Most humans run away from stress again larry's going to use this

Starting point is 00:19:45 as a tool to for self-improvement so he says stress focused the billionaire daredevil who did aerobatics for fun surfed in storms in hawaii and once broke his neck uh once broke his neck surfing that nearly left him a paraplegic he had also taken oracle back from the brink of bankruptcy more than once he was the world's fifth wealthiest person just two decades after facing foreclosure on his own home and having his water and electricity turned off because he couldn't pay the bills his hobbies by his own admission were a constant search for alternative stress okay so let me take you to this the second race they're leaving australia and they had this experience where you had really rapid um uh like an increase in wind speed and then immediately dies down so anybody's lived through a hurricane i've lived through several of them if you've ever been in a high the eye of a hurricane or close to them it is kind of spooky

Starting point is 00:20:40 almost beautiful where you you're getting pounded by the storm for hours and hours and then it it stops, and it looks like almost like a new day. And then a few hours later, depending on how fast the hurricane's moving, it goes right back. So this is what's happening while they're doing this race. And this is one of the worst experiences in Larry's life. But this is also the risk he's taking to get that alternative stress, right? So he says, Larry's question is to the people on the boat. He's like, have you ever seen this before? Looking at the swirly, frothly, psychotic cloud, and with a plus center in the sign, that's where the boat is. Larry answered his own question. Well, I have. It was on the weather channel, and it's called a hurricane. We are in the eye of a fucking hurricane. So they wind up surviving this experience, right? I'm going to fast forward

Starting point is 00:21:23 through a lot of it. They won the race, but it was called the worst at the time, the worst maritime disaster in the race five boats boats had sunk and an estimated 55 people had been had to be lifted out by helicopter um larry's team went nearly three days without food or water because of the constant vomiting um so the reason i'm telling you all this part is not is one i think it's it's it's unusual this this constant search for alternative stress but i think this answer that he's asked at the end like why after he's you know he winds up sleeping for like 15 hours straight takes a shower eats something so now you can start to kind of reflect on what just happened and this is the most important part of this whole section okay so it's like why are you risking your life for a race? What are you doing? After the laughter died down, Larry turned serious. Why do we do these things?

Starting point is 00:22:29 George Mallory said the reason he wanted to climb Everest was because it's there. I don't think so. I think Mallory was wrong. It's not because it's there. It's because we're there. And we wonder if we can do it. So he's referencing this person that used to race. And this is quote by this guy named Bertrand.

Starting point is 00:22:50 And it's like, why are you doing these competitive, dangerous races where people lose their life? And Bertrand described his quest as a higher calling, a stirring within something as old as human life. So there's just something inside of us that's constantly pushing us forward to try to improve, to try to test ourselves. It's just some people like Larry take that to an extreme,

Starting point is 00:23:11 just like Jordan. These are extreme winners. This is what this book is about. Their mindset is not normal. And I find it, one, fascinating, and two, full of lessons that we can apply to our lives. So he gets this idea. He's like, you know what?

Starting point is 00:23:23 I'm not going to do Sydney to Hobart, but America's Cup, of lessons that we can apply to our lives um so he gets this idea he's like you know what i'm not gonna do sydney to hobert but america's cup which is uh one of the oldest most prestigious say uh competitive sports and and of any kind in the world and the oldest sailing race he's like well there's a reason he was thinking about buying maybe the san francisco 49ers at this time or the golden state warriors but larry is not content with being on the sidelines. He wants to play. So this is him coming up with the idea. He's like, well, I can buy an American Cup team and then I can race in the team. So this is Larry's reason that he could buy

Starting point is 00:23:52 the San Francisco 49ers football team and still not play quarterback. Here, he could buy the team and hold the wheel. He had every intention of driving. So in the middle of the story, there's this section that gives you an idea of his personality he is an absolute control freak and he admits this he says in the end though he didn't like letting them have control it was the same reason he didn't have a driver and it was why he liked to pilot his own planes and why he'd been married and divorced

Starting point is 00:24:21 three times he didn't like being told what he could and couldn't do. So what's happening is, this is something, so to do the American's Cup, it's not like you could just enter as an individual. You have to do an agreement with these yacht clubs. And these yacht clubs are all over the world. And then the rules regarding the American Cup,

Starting point is 00:24:38 they have very specific specification of what qualifies as a yacht club and what doesn't. So he goes to the oldest, most prestigious yacht club in San Francisco, tries to do a deal with them. They won't give him what he wants, which is control. He's like, I'm going to pay for everything, but I want to call the shots. So like they have a series of committees and they just wouldn't do that. So the reason the book is called the Billionaire and the Mechanic is because he teams up with the opposite of that yacht club. It's called the Golden Gate Yacht Club. And it's like a blue collar version. It was a yacht club that in decades past, you know, had won some races, had some prestige and has kind of fallen on hard times.

Starting point is 00:25:13 The membership is dwindling. The people aren't even being able to afford to pay them. They're deeply in debt. And so the mechanic is this guy named Norbert, who is the person that runs the yacht club. It's called a Commodore. Right. And so he just happens to be serving as Commodore. And he's the one reading about Larry's troubles with the other yacht club in the newspaper. And so he sends an email and saying, hey, you know, we're deeply in debt. You need a yacht club. We'll let you do whatever you want. And it's actually it's actually really smart that he appealed to incentives um so i just want to tell you i'm not going to go into too much detail about

Starting point is 00:25:49 this because i want to focus on what i felt was the more interesting part of the book is larry's insights into winning and competition but just give you some background what's going to take place so it says later that day norbert sheeplessly ran the ideal ran the ideal idea of a deal with ellison by a few of club members i want to point this out because like every any new thing you do in your life, you just have to overcome people telling you that you're an idiot. Oh, sure. Norbert, a guy like Larry Ellison is really going to partner with us. I love you, but this idea is crazy. So Norbert's just being really logical. It's like, well, we have a yacht club and he needs a yacht club.

Starting point is 00:26:24 He has money. we need money there why wouldn't this work and so his like vice commodore they're having this conversation and says uh his name is madeline madeline added to that from what he read ellison was a self-made man which says a lot he should appreciate the underdog so they're positioning themselves we don't have a lot of rules we We're people like people like you. We are people like the ones you grew up around. Right. Then he says they also noted that Ellison was also a very rich man who loved racing and happens to need a yacht club.

Starting point is 00:26:54 This ain't rocket science. He needs a yacht club and we have one. And so I really like the fact that Norbert just said, you know, he had this idea like this makes sense to me. What's the harm in sending out an email? Since an email, they wind up getting a deal done um so what's interesting is so they wind up doing a deal i just want to pause here i would take a tangent here because he's norbert's eventually gonna have to work he's gonna have to work hand in hand because the commodore of the yacht club plays a role and has to has some role to play in the American Cup, even though he's not financing the team and not competing, right?

Starting point is 00:27:28 What I found was interesting was that Norbert's wife wanted to know who the person that her husband had to deal with. So she winds up reading the book that I'm currently reading right now, which will be on next week's podcast. And so her name is Madeline. It says, Madeline had her own approach. She wanted to understand what her husband was up against. So she picked up the biography, The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison. And she peppered Norbert with pillow talk tidbits

Starting point is 00:27:53 that are laying in bed. And she's essentially reading some sections aloud to him. So he has an idea of who he's going to be dealing with. The Oracle way was simply to win, Madeline read aloud. How that goal was achieved was secondary. She went on. While Ellison demanded absolute loyalty, he did not always return it. The people he liked best were the ones who were doing something for him.

Starting point is 00:28:17 The people he hired were all geniuses until the day they resigned, when in Ellison's view, they became idiots or worse. So it says he never graduated from college madeline marveled and he had become a billionaire two decades later after investing 1200 and upstart named software development laboratories that was the the initial name of oracle early in his life and even though much of his 20s everyone around him seemed concerned everything around him seemed concerned he'd have no idea how to make money he's extremely i don't know if you call him lazy. I mean, he only wanted to work weekends and nights. I don't know if lazy is the right word, but he just was not concerned about money at all,

Starting point is 00:28:53 which is surprising given who he is today, right? Larry's first wife, accustomed to Larry bouncing from one programming job to another, got fed up and divorced him. Norbert turned out this pillow talk. He told his wife he would reserve judgment until he met the man in person. In Norbert's eyes, Mr. Ellison, as he called him, was a guy who came from nothing and made his life a success. Norbert believed in looking someone in the eye and forming his own opinion. So the book also goes back in between. It tells the narrative of this race that's happening over several years, but it also goes back and gives you insight into his early life and other struggles that larry had to overcome and one of those was the the the internet bubble burst uh in 2001 and i found it interesting what uh what

Starting point is 00:29:36 larry is reading while this is happening because he draws inspiration from the life stories and books uh just like we do so it says, he continued to read voraciously. The books on his nightstand included Fate is the Hunter, A Pilot's Memoir by Ernest Gann. He was reading The Jordan Rules by Sam Smith. That's hilarious. And William and Manchester's multi-volume biography of Winston Churchill.

Starting point is 00:29:59 And this next part is going to give you an insight into this game within a game. And this comes up several times throughout the book. So right now, Oracle is going through rough financial periods. So there's a time where if there's a problem, Oracle will have his full attention. He'll be dedicated night and day. And then when he feels things are going well, he'll go off and do races, do other things, right? But this is very fascinating. This is going to tell you what drove Larry during times of difficulty. And it's probably one of the things that he does differently than other people whenever larry felt remotely close to being at risk of failure he couldn't stop working and now everything his country his business seemed at risk like most overachievers he was driven not

Starting point is 00:30:37 so much by the pursuit of success as the fear of failure so he's he's fully engaged around the clock but he also picks up on some interesting things of like this mass psychosis um that was taking place uh during the dot-com bubble and this is i'm gonna i'm gonna read you one of the funniest and i mean funniest paragraphs i've ever read because it's this the guy that leah is talking to is. In the dot-com heyday, he got a call from his friend Farzad Nassim, who used to work at Oracle and was now a top executive at Yahoo. Nassim told Larry, Disney wants to merge with us. Why would we ever want to do something like that? What have they got? I love Larry's answer here because he's popping through this psychosis. Larry answered his old friend.

Starting point is 00:31:27 Gee, let me think. They have the most valuable film library in the world, the most valuable TV channels in the world, and the most successful theme parks everywhere. Disney makes tons of money, and they're probably the most beloved brand on the planet. Now, what have you got? A webpage with news on it and free email has everyone gone crazy okay so this next paragraph i think is important because you

Starting point is 00:31:52 can be distracted by all the other pursuits that larry does but oracle is by far the most important thing in his life and i think he puts that above he definitely puts it above maybe not his kids but definitely his wife's sister i think at this point he's been married and divorced four times now. And we'll see examples of that. So this is a great paragraph that kind of illustrates that point. With all of Larry's joking glibness, with all his high adrenaline hobbies and pursuits, Katz, that's an executive at Oracle, knew that Oracle was his baby. He could marry and divorce, befriend presidents and prime ministers,

Starting point is 00:32:30 devour history books and biographies and debate about the greatest minds athletes cars planes poets writers and musicians but oracle was in his marrow and so something to think about that is like how he's you know oracle's been around for 40 years i think his point with um i never finished my point about the the guy um comparing yahoo and disney uh yeah yahoo was like the flavor of the month at that time but you have to respect disney because disney survived and thrived for multiple decades same thing with oracle how many companies can can survive 40 plus years especially in the technology industry and i think one of the most key insights i took away from larry is this idea that I've mentioned a few times around a game within a game and I'm glad I'm reading these books about Larry Ellison the very same time I watched this 10-part documentary on Michael Jordan because I think

Starting point is 00:33:14 both Jordan and Ellison figured out something that is fundamental to our nature and I don't think they did they didn't they were not setting out to try to figure out something fundamental about human nature. They did so in their own process of self-discovery. And what I mean about that is they hack themselves by creating games within games. They understand over a long period of time that your motivations, your dedication, your discipline is going to ebb and flow. And they had to find a way to hack themselves. So let me read this section to you and I'll tell you some examples from the Jordan documentary. Here we are competing at the various high level.

Starting point is 00:33:49 Oracle versus IBM. Oracle versus Microsoft, Larry said. The stakes are high, much higher than in the American's Cup. Beating IBM is a lot more important to me than beating Team New Zealand. Katz, he's still talking to her knew that when the company was doing great larry became interested in other things oracle had his full attention now so this is another part of when oracle was struggling and so the idea that he says okay i don't want to be the second best or the second most valuable software company in the

Starting point is 00:34:23 world again this is where you really have to contrast his motivations with Jobs. Jobs wanted to make the best technology products in the world, which I think he did. Larry wants to be the number one. He wants to win. Now, hopefully you can get there by having the best products,

Starting point is 00:34:38 but he also relied heavily on sales and marketing, right? And so he has this game within a game because how do you sustain that level of intensity over multiple decades? He constantly has to pick enemies. Jordan did the same thing. There's an example where he's in it. They're playing the Seattle Supersonics in the finals. George Carl, the head coach at the time of the Supersonics, ignored Jordan at dinner. So Jordan uses that as motivation. He just he would make up things even if they weren't true. There's an example in the documentary where um he's jordan's having an off night and so this guy who wasn't nearly as

Starting point is 00:35:08 good at him as good as him that jordan was guarding scored 37 points right so they're gonna play them the next day and jordan tells his friends oh this guy's disrespectful he scored 37 points on me and then he said oh nice job nice game mike and he's like that's it i'm gonna go and get what he got i'm gonna score as many points as in the first half as he did in the entire game. It turns out that conversation never happened. Jordan made it up. He made a game within a game. He understood that, especially for the levels of intensity he operated on, he can't sustain that all by himself. He's got to have different things um when they played utah in the finals when jordan retired to play baseball he went and uh went to say hi to some utah players

Starting point is 00:35:52 and there was a rookie named byron russell and byron russell's like oh why'd you quit you're lucky you quit because i can guard you you know talked all this trash winds up and then a year and a half two years later byron rusron Russell is guarding Jordan in the finals. And Jordan uses that conversation that happened a year and a half, two years earlier as motivation. It's a way to hack yourself. And I think that's extremely interesting when you're studying the lives of people like Ellison Jordan. Okay. So the setback, there's a bunch of setbacks in the book, right?

Starting point is 00:36:24 They lose a bunch of races. And they lost a bunch of setbacks in the book right uh they lose a bunch of races and they lost a bunch of races because larry was too busy he was focused on oracle so he the team manager is like hey i want to fire the best sailor he's the best sailor but everybody hates him so larry he's like listen i'm not there you have to make that choice right and larry comes winds up dedicating more time to the racing team after he's like this is a bad choice i'm we're bringing this guy back. So they lost a bunch of races. Larry's like, listen, we're going to bring the best sailor that everyone hates.

Starting point is 00:36:50 This winds up being a mistake, but Larry doesn't know it's a mistake then, right? So he says, I think you always learn more from losing than you do from winning. So I've had the opportunity to learn a lot these past few days. I've learned that we need to make a leadership change to our team's afterguard. So in sailing, the afterguard is like the brain trust, the people that are picking the strategy, right? I'm done learning through losing. After a pause, Larry said,

Starting point is 00:37:13 some of you guys are going to be unhappy about this, but I'm bringing Chris Dixon back as tactician and skipper. In the book I read, the last Larry Ellison book I read was published I think 10 years before this book at the time he compares Dixon to Jordan Dixon is not Jordan just remember that loud cries of oh man in no way followed

Starting point is 00:37:34 so the conversation about Dixon continued and this is where Larry makes the Jordan comparison to Dixon you don't have to like him Larry said I'm not asking you to date him I'm asking you to sail for him as some few people feel they cannot remain on the team i understand we will continue with the people who choose to stay on this team after listening to more grumbling and protests larry

Starting point is 00:37:56 talked about another contemptuous athlete remember he had read jordan rules that book by sam smith on michael jordan michael Michael Jordan screamed at his teammates. He was aloof. He didn't hang around or talk much with his teammates, but he had a burning desire to win, a will to win, and he won. So they're going back and forth. And they're like, hey, I thought we're supposed to have fun. There's all this back and forth. There's one sentence that really sums up Larry's personality in one sentence that occurs during this exchange. And it's as follows.

Starting point is 00:38:24 Winning. That's my idea of fun um so they make the change I'm going to fast forward here because I want to get to I think which is more important Dixon is not Jordan extreme winners and there's a lot of extreme winners on Larry's team right and they're they're they're interesting people that's one of the things I like most about the book is they give you insights into like the mindset how they prepare for their sport which again i think is applicable to prepare for whatever it is you do for a living whatever your craft is right but one thing that dixon is not is like extreme winners respect other extreme winners right they don't respect quitters so there's i saw this uh interview one time where uh phil jackson uh introduces he's like hey this, this is after Michael Jordan's

Starting point is 00:39:06 retired and Phil Jackson's coaching a young Kobe Bryant. He's like, hey, come over and meet with Kobe. Kobe's like 21 at the time. So we're having a conversation and they're both hugely competitive people. And so Mike's like, oh, you're lucky I'm not in anymore. And Kobe shoots right back. He's like, you can't guard me. I would win if you were still in the league. And so they were having an argument. It's like, okay, we'll see one day. We'll see one day. Maybe we'll play like, you know, one-on-one or whatever. And so Kobe leaves.

Starting point is 00:39:32 Jordan's walking in with his friend and he turns. He goes, I love that guy about Kobe. He didn't respect people. If he's super aggressive with you and pushing you, the ones that backed down, he didn't respect because he thought those people were quitters. Larry is going to do the same thing because he's realizing dixon isn't jordan dixon's a quitter and so he says what he did uh see all too clearly now that was his skipper wasn't a michael jordan who at the end of the game when the pressure was on said give me the ball dixon said

Starting point is 00:40:00 larry my advice is that we go out there tomorrow to try to win the race. We will probably get beaten and you should be prepared to lose gracefully. It's probably not something you want to say to something like Larry Ellison. Larry was stunned by the suggestion. After a long pause, he said that he could be gracious after losing, but wasn't being capable of being gracious while he was losing. He had come here to win. The next morning, as Dixon got ready for the race of the day, a call came in. It was from the team manager.

Starting point is 00:40:28 Dixon was told he didn't need to show up for work. He was off the boat. He felt Larry's decision was the wrong one for the team, and he was disappointed that Larry hadn't made the call himself, but Dixon knew Larry. He knew that when the chips were down, Larry would always come out swinging. He would never do nothing. He would take a risk and make a change.

Starting point is 00:40:50 So there's a lot of what one of the things I love most about Larry is that he's got this. He's a voracious reader, studies a lot of history. And so he's peppering his conversations with, you know, this is very similar to what Michelangelo dealt with here or whatever the case is. And so Larry is giving a speech on winning desire and talent. And it's about somebody he admires most, which is a football coach, Vince Lombardi. There's a story that I shared on a podcast about the book Creative Selection, which goes inside of the design, how Apple designed products when Steve Jobs was running the company. And it's one of my favorite stories because it talks about Lombardi.

Starting point is 00:41:26 Lombardi won with one play and one play over and over again. He would talk about one play for like eight hours uninterrupted. But he also has a lot of great speeches and insight into competition. And so this is Larry quoting Vince Lombardi. He says, Vince Lombardi's most famous line is, winning isn't the most important thing. It's the only thing. That's not the Lombardi line I love. When Lombardi left the Green Bay Packers, where he'd won all the championships, he went to an also-ran team, Larry said. So he came in and made the following short speech.

Starting point is 00:41:59 This is Lombardi speaking now. Every team in the National Football League has the talent necessary to win the championship. It's simply a matter of what you're willing to give up. Then Lombardi looked at them and said, I expect you to give up everything. And he left the room. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing. Sure, there is talent, but there also has to be will.

Starting point is 00:42:23 This is now Larry talking. That was a quote from Larry. Give me human will and the intense desire to win, and it will trump talent every day of the week. Again, that sentence is very, if you want to understand the mindset of Larry Ellison, that's right there. Give me the human will and the intense desire to win,

Starting point is 00:42:40 and it will trump talent every day of the week. Okay, so this is Larry on marriage, love, and a bunch of other things. I don't think I'm good at it, and I don't think I should do things I'm not good at, Larry said. Freud believed that there are two important things in life, love and work, and not necessarily in that order. As Larry saw it, work defines a person. Work is ego. Work is selfish. Love is about others. This part reminds me of what we learned back on the podcast I did about Frank Lloyd Wright. He's definitely have a lot of similarities between the two.

Starting point is 00:43:29 He knew that relationships changed after the tying of the knot. His girlfriend supported his daredevil antics and his around the clock work schedule. His wives told him he was spending too much time at work, that he shouldn't drive so fast, that he shouldn't fly his jet

Starting point is 00:43:42 or race sailboats in the Southern Ocean. The idea of being with one person who was made for you, the soulmate argument, struck Larry as ridiculous. A self-described slave to reason, he scoffed at the odds of meeting that one special person. There are 7 billion people on the planet. The idea that you would meet the one person in the world who's made for you is so statistically unlikely that it would almost never occur.

Starting point is 00:44:07 This was very interesting because it talks about he was, as you can imagine, really affected by the death of Steve Jobs. And I'll go into more on that later. And it has to do with this saying. His favorite Japanese saying was, your garden is not complete until there's nothing else you can take out of it. To Larry, it was a reminder to spend time with the people who mattered and the things that were important. I think that's a really good lesson for all of us. Oh, this is really interesting. He becomes friends with a lot of professional athletes and he has a lot of lessons that he learns from them. He applies

Starting point is 00:44:39 to his own life. This is about determination. While he was playing tennis with his friend, Rafael Nadal, the Spanish tennis champion, Nadal asked Larry how Larry had made his life such a success. Larry launched into a long philosophical musing about how innovation and technology is quite often based on finding errors in conventional wisdom. And when you find an error, you have to have the courage to take a different approach, even when everyone else says they're wrong. Then Larry abruptly stopped himself. forget everything i just said the answer is simple i never give up earlier nadal said something that made a deep impression on larry when asked if he loved winning nadal shook his head and replied no i love the love the fight. If you fight hard, the winning will come.

Starting point is 00:45:26 Larry loved the fight too. Um, Larry's reading was fascinating to me as we get a lot of like his, the stuff he's reading and then the notes he, and insights he gets from reading, which would be fantastic. Imagine if Larry Ellison did a podcast like founders, right? That'd be fascinating. Um, so he's reading this book at the time called lone survivor. Uh, it's about a team of Navy seals and only one person they're on a mission. Only one person survives. Right. So it says, but what I think is most interesting is Larry's own notes on the page. Larry had noted a page. The real battle is one in the mind. It's one by the guys who understand their areas of weakness, who sit around and think about it, plotting and planning to improve, attending to

Starting point is 00:46:05 the detail, work on their weakness and overcome them. Never wave the white flag. He was incapable of waving the white flag. So when I read that section, I thought about this screenshot I saved from something I heard Kobe Bryant say. Let me just read this note from Kobe. He says, a young player should not be worried about his legacy. Wake up, identify your weakness, and work on that. Go to sleep, wake up, and do that all over again. 20 years from now, you'll look back and see your legacy for yourself. That's life.

Starting point is 00:46:40 And I think that's very similar to the note that Larry is leaving himself when he's reading this book. So something I also admired about Larry is that he's constantly willing to put himself in uncomfortable positions so he can improve. At this point, he wants to race pro sailors, right? He's like, I don't want to keep racing amateurs. And this is why. Larry felt that in sports, as in life, you work your way through your weight class and then you move up. I've raced against Hasso, this is another another racer a dozen times and won them all what does that prove

Starting point is 00:47:09 he said i'd rather lose to now he's going to list off a bunch of pro racers right i'd rather lose to to dean or to ben or to jimmy than beat hasso 100 more times that's the only way i'm going to get any better that was the weight class class Larry wanted to fight in. And so this is a person that's running Larry's boat for him. It's this guy named Russell. This is OK. OK. Russell chuckled. You can drive in the professional match races, too. But he warned it meant that Larry would have to practice and practice a lot.

Starting point is 00:47:42 I'm there. I'll put in the time, Larry said. Just tell me when and where and send me the dates. That's another thing I respect. This guy, during races when Larry messes up, this guy gets in Larry's face. He's cursing at him. He's like, you stupid idiot. What are you doing? And just completely berating him.

Starting point is 00:47:58 And Larry takes it. And he does it because he realizes he's getting berated, not because the person wants to attack him. He wants to win. And that's, again, Larry in some, they say he's complex, but if you view him through that lens, he's extremely simple. He's addicted to winning. And if you're going to help him win, then he will even take verbal abuse from you. Which, again, I think most people would be surprised. You know, this guy doesn't have to do that.

Starting point is 00:48:26 He could lounge by the pool and be fed grapes. Like, he just doesn't, he's doing, he doesn't have to do anything that he's doing. I think that's what's probably so fascinating. And why, you know, people, there's so many books written about him. But I did think that was very, very interesting. He was willing to be treated like just another member of the team, even though he's paying for everything and he owns a team. I like this idea too. And it gives you an insight of why he's so addicted to competitive sports. One of Larry's favorite

Starting point is 00:48:54 maxims was the brain's primary purpose is deception. And the primary person to be deceived is the owner. So what does that have to do what is his that maxim like how does that how does his favorite maxim relate to why he likes sports because in sports you can't deceive yourself he just said the brain's primary purpose is to deceive yourself so he needs to hack himself he needs to have his game within a game so he's incapable of doing that larry liked having opponents even enemies i learn a lot about myself when i compete against somebody i measure myself by winning and losing every shot in basketball is clearly judged by by the hoop make it or miss it the hoop makes it difficult to deceive yourself so one advantage uh that oracle had was the fact that they're the first company ever to commercialize a relational database, right?

Starting point is 00:49:46 Which people said you couldn't do. It was largely theoretical. I think they based it on like a bunch of papers at IBM. So anyways, he approaches, there's an insight there. And the insight is if we do something really hard, we won't have any competition. He applies that same exact insight that he did in Oracle in the 1970s this to sailboat race that's happening in the early 2000s right and so they build this like gigantic wing i guess you would call it on this boat and no one has ever attempted it because like it's impossible what are you going to do so this is what larry says about that i'm going to skip over

Starting point is 00:50:19 all that and just give you the main insight i know that most people think trying to build a hard wing of this size is crazy but that's the beauty of the idea the other side isn't trying to build one and savoring his words he added so we'll have a wing and they won't and that gives them a massive advantage and before i get to steve jobs dying because I think there's some insights there, there's a great story about the mindset of extreme winners, and this is Larry talking now to another professional tennis player. Larry had dinner one night with Roger Federer, and he mentioned a conversation he had had earlier

Starting point is 00:50:59 with another tennis great, Jimmy Connors. Larry told Connors that sometimes he went out and just hit without really focusing on anything in particular. tennis great Jimmy Connors. Larry told Connors that sometimes he went out and just hit without really focusing on anything in particular. Connors looked at Larry and said, oh no, you do not want to do that. Larry recounted how Connors had given him a look like I just told my rabbi that I was converted into Catholicism. Larry was intrigued by Connors' reaction. To Connors, the idea of going out and hitting without being focused on improving your game was sacrilege. Larry had come to understand the charmed, tormented life of athletes. I think this is a really interesting description.

Starting point is 00:51:38 Charmed and tormented. Larry came to understand this by reading an autobiography. Jerry West, actually, it's the subtitle of that's the subtitle of the book that that that Larry read, which is the autobiography. Jerry West says charm tormented life. Right. So Larry loves this book and he counts Jerry West among his heroes. But he says, whereas Larry found a brutal but welcome clarity in sports, he had seen how professional athletes, including his dinner mate Federer, were defined by minutes and even seconds of competition. West wrote about it in his book. This is now West writing. Can you imagine what it's like to feel like you have a game won and then you don't? One shot, one play, one call. What I do know is that it hurts. It really hurts.

Starting point is 00:52:25 The athletes Larry knew, this is so important, were obsessed with the game they played. They were like his friend Steve Jobs, who worried about the color of the screws inside a computer, who wanted one switch and not two to control the doors in his plane. They reminded Larry, so now he's saying they meaning jerry west connors federer steve jobs they reminded larry a line from tombstone and to some degree larry himself right uh so it says they reminded larry a line from the movie tombstone wyatt erp asked doc holiday if you've ever seen the movie i would argue doc holiday the role played by val kilmer one of the greatest characters in movie history. One of my favorite characters ever. Wyatt Earp asked Doc Holliday,

Starting point is 00:53:09 what makes a man like Ringo, Doc? What makes him do the things he does? Doc replies, a man like Ringo has got a great big hole right in the middle of him. He can never kill enough, or steal enough, or inflict enough pain to ever fill it. For better and worse, Larry had the same hole, and he tried to fill it by winning. But as soon as he closed in on one of his goals, he immediately set another difficult and distant goal. In that way, he kept moving the finish line just out of reach. never ending never filling hole okay so this this book is different from the other two books that i'm reading that i've read and currently reading hilarious and because those books were

Starting point is 00:54:11 published let's say late 90s early 2000s this was published after steve jobs died um and i think you know it's got to be devastating to have a best friend of quarter of a century die early, like, like Steve did. So this is, uh, right after the,

Starting point is 00:54:33 um, the funeral back home, standing by the lake where he and Steve had debated things great and small. Larry was certain that decades now there'd be two guys walking somewhere talking about their icons and There would be two guys walking somewhere. Talking about their icons. And Steve would be mentioned. He would be one of those misfits.

Starting point is 00:54:53 Rebels. Troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. So he's quoting from. Apple's think different ad campaign. It's also where I got the idea. Instead of just saying. You're a, no, you're a misfit. That came directly from that Apple ad, one of the best ads I've ever seen. Steve would be remembered as one of those with no respect for the status

Starting point is 00:55:17 quo. Another quote from that ad campaign. And he said, the people who think, this is another quote from the ad campaign, the people who think they're crazy enough to change the world are the ones who do. Larry looked across the lake where he and Melanie had been married. They had divorced a year earlier. The fights had begun and he wasn't a fighter, not at home. He reserved his combat for work or sports. Now Steve was gone. So he's going through a divorce. Steve dies and then his father figure dies. Now Steve was gone. And Tom Lantos, his father figure, was also gone.

Starting point is 00:55:54 Larry lived by the Japanese saying, your garden is not complete until there's nothing more you can take out of it. But now things were being taken that he wished were still there. And that just, anybody, you know, I've lost loved ones to death and anybody that's gone through that experience knows exactly what Larry's feeling right there. But now things were being taken that he wished were still there. He gives two stories when he's eulogizing Steve, and I'm going to quote heavily from both of them.

Starting point is 00:56:26 My 25-year friendship with Steve was made up of a thousand walks. If there's something he wanted to talk about, and there always was, we'd go for a walk. Over the years, one particular walk stands out. We had a lot to talk about that day, so we jumped in the car, put the top down, and headed out to Castle Rock State Park in the Santa Cruz Mountains. It was 1995. Steve was finishing up Toy Story at Pixar and running next. Apple was in severe distress. It had gone steadily downhill during the 10 years of Steve's absence. The problems were now so serious, people were wondering if Apple would survive.

Starting point is 00:57:06 It was too painful to watch and stand by and do nothing. So the purpose of that particular hike through the Santa Cruz mountains was to discuss taking control of Apple. This is really fascinating, almost, you know, alternative history if you think about it. If Steve would have said yes to what Larry's about to propose. My idea was buy apple and immediately make steve ceo i knew we could borrow the money apple wasn't worth much back then i think they said they could have bought it for like five billion dollars at the time all steve had to do was say yes steve favored a different approach persuade apple to buy next computer he joined the Apple board and over time, the board would recognize that Steve was the right guy to lead the company. I said, but Steve, if we don't buy Apple, how are we going to make any money? Steve suddenly stopped walking and turned toward me until we were facing each other. He put his hand on my shoulder and stared unblinkingly into his eyes, into my eyes. Excuse me.

Starting point is 00:58:07 Larry, he said, this is why it's so important that I'm your friend. You don't need any more money. Steve shook his head and said, I'm not doing this for money. This is the second story from Steve's eulogy. One last story. Steve had this peculiar, delightful sense of humor and a trademark muffled laugh to go along with it. After work, we'd often go out to our favorite local Japanese or Indian restaurant. And sometimes we'd go away together on a holiday to Kona Village on the big island of Hawaii.

Starting point is 00:58:41 All four of us would be there. Steve, his wife Lorene, me, and whomever I was married or dating at the time. We'd be in the middle of a dinner conversation, and suddenly there'd be a quiet laughter coming from Steve. The three of us would stop talking, turn, and look at him. Eventually, one of us would ask him, what is so funny, Steve? He would try to tell us, but each time he tried to speak, he could only get out a couple of words before he'd look slowly down at the table and start laughing again. This would happen over and over again until we all started to laugh and laugh,

Starting point is 00:59:16 never having the slightest idea what Steve found so funny in the first place. Believe it or not, this happened a lot. those moments are my most cherished and enduring memories of my time with steve the four of us sitting together at kona eating papayas and laughing for no reason at all i'll miss those times goodbye steve okay so it's around this time that Larry reads Isaacson's book. I just want to tell you his reaction. Larry wondered why Isaacson wouldn't let Steve be a hero. Why he wouldn't let him be the Edison of our time as Larry saw him.

Starting point is 00:59:53 So he's going to say something here. And he's talking about Steve, but really I think this gives you an insight into... After reading now two books, two and a half books on Ellison, I think this might be Ellison's nightmare. So he's talking about Steve, but he's really talking about his nightmare as I interpret it. So this is Larry Wonder where Isaacson wouldn't let Steve be a hero. Why he wouldn't let him be the Edison of our time as Larry saw him. The author made Steve replaceable and in Larry's mind fed into a culture based on a homogenized egalitarian ethos where everyone was the same

Starting point is 01:00:26 where there are no winners and no losers and where there are no more heroes i think that sentence right there might be one of the most important um sentences in this entire book about when you want to understand larry uh he says something that's really interesting. Again, I think Larry is responding to his crazy life the same way that most people would respond. And it reminds me of that old quote, that life is but a dream. Sometimes Larry would look around his woodside home. As beautiful and serene and spectacularly landscaped as any place on the planet. Or he'd go down to his garage and look at his cars and think, how did this happen? There were times he'd walk into Oracle's headquarters and look up at the huge glass buildings and say to himself,

Starting point is 01:01:13 how do we pay all these people? Of course he knew, but the size of his life sometimes stunned him. He was a kid, he liked to say, born with all the disadvantages needed to succeed. That's interesting, that thought there, because Kett said the same thing last week, that you get stronger by overcoming struggles. And then he talks about the people that overcame the struggles and got stronger, yet they are also the same people

Starting point is 01:01:37 that deprive their children of that necessary experience. This idea that you need to experience disadvantage to actually succeed to get stronger to to to create whatever it is that you're you're looking for in life i think that's very fascinating so um you notice i've barely talked about the sailboat race right so they have this fantastic um they have a comeback right they? They should lose this race. There's a series of races. They're down eight to one.

Starting point is 01:02:10 The first person to nine wins. They're down eight to one. They come back and run this, but I'm going to get there in a minute. One thing they do, because it takes place over several days, so you have time to make adjustments, right? And he says something to the guy running his team, Russell.

Starting point is 01:02:24 And again, it echoes what Ket said last week, that it's not what two people do the same that matters. It's what they do different. So it says, Larry said, you already have a job, Russell. You've got to figure out why we're so damn slow. Or said another way, why is New Zealand so fast? What are they doing that we're not? So they figure it out.

Starting point is 01:02:41 They actually have helicopters above, uh, photographing or filming the race and they're watching the game tape and they realize that they have their, their sails are set at different angles. So they make a bunch of adjustments. That's just one of them. They're going to come back. They call it the greatest comeback in sports, right? Um, of course Larry would say that, but, uh, I, that's really beside the point. I want to talk to you about what I found so much so interesting is Larry's response to being down eight to one is a really important lesson from the book. Larry was not happy when he heard that speeches were being written and plans being made for the handover of the cup. Remember, it's not over. They're down eight to one. They should lose. But his team's like, yeah, who's going to write the concession speech? Now, you can imagine by now what Larry's response would be to this.

Starting point is 01:03:27 But he ignored it all until he's asked to settle an argument over who was going to give the concession speech during the handover. Let me get this straight. People are fighting over who gets to give the concession speech? I don't give a fuck who gives the concession speech. If we lose, everyone who wants to give a concession speech can give a concession speech. But we haven't lost yet. Why don't we focus on winning the next fucking race rather than concession speeches?

Starting point is 01:03:52 Larry, a licensed commercial pilot with thousands of hours flying jets, likened the situation to a plane in distress. When pilots have a serious emergency, they immediately go into problem-solving mode. And they stay in that mode until the problem is solved or just before impact. In that final moment, the aircraft's cockpit voice recorder captures the pilot's brief concession speech. There are two versions of this speech, one secular, one not. Oh God, and oh shit. Larry, who survived so many storms and crisis over the years had not reached his oh god or oh shit moment down eight points to one he remained in problem solving mode i love that idea so there's a there's a bunch of people in the book that have to omit they're fascinating in their own right and

Starting point is 01:04:39 one of them is this the captain of larry's team, Larry's racing team, this guy named Jimmy. And Jimmy's really interesting because he winds up dedicating his life early. He had to choose between dedicating his life to be a professional boxer because he was a boxer or to be a sailor. He was being one of the best sailors in the world. And he's got interesting insights, including how hard he pushes himself. He gets up first thing in the morning before his crew. He does an intense workout. Then he does an intense boxing workout.

Starting point is 01:05:05 Then he shows up to work. So by the time everybody else is getting in, he's already had a bunch of accomplishments for the day. Right. So he does an intense workout. Then he does an intense boxing workout. Then he shows up to work. So by the time everybody else is getting in, he's already had a bunch of accomplishments for the day, right? So he's an extreme person. So this is a captain of Larry's team reacting to being down 8-1. Jimmy, for his part, kept thinking about something

Starting point is 01:05:16 his friends in the Navy SEALs told him. That the guys who failed to make it through the brutal SEAL training course were the ones who looked ahead and realized there's no way they could take three more days of torture. So they're playing mind games with themselves, right? But they're psyching themselves out. So this is the alternative. The ones who made it through thought only about their present task and told themselves, I just got to finish this run,

Starting point is 01:05:39 or I've just got to get to this rubber boat through the waves one more time. Jimmy told himself, I've just got to go out and win one more race that's all i've got to do what i found interesting about that part too is the jordan documentary said the same thing about jordan he was perpetually focused on the present on what he could control now i can't control we lost the game last night i can't think about that i can't do anything i can but i can win i can focus my efforts on what i can do and that's winning this game i'm not worried about the next series. I'm worried about right now. This is contests are the best teachers, so they wind up coming back and winning.

Starting point is 01:06:09 Larry knew that in the end, the America's Cup was just a boat race. Wimbledon was just a tennis match, and the Super Bowl was just another football game. As Muhammad Ali once said, it's just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand.

Starting point is 01:06:24 I beat people up. No one is going to live or die on the basis of these things, but contests were his best teachers. At some point, one person gets measured against another. They find out who wins and who doesn't, and along the way they learn something about themselves. Larry had learned that he loved the striving, the facing of setbacks, and the trying again. It was what his friend Rafael Nadal said about saving the fight and the winning would come. Everest, it turned out, was never more beautiful than looking up from below. And finally, I don't think there's a better way to close this podcast out on Larry. And he's answering the question, why is he doing this?

Starting point is 01:07:11 Each cup campaign had cost Larry between $100 million and $200 million. When asked about the exact cost, Larry said, Sponsors paid a lot of the overall cost. How much did I spend? The truth is, I don't know and I don't want to know. There are days when all the work and expenses feel worth it. And there are days when he wishes he had picked another goal. I have asked myself, why am I doing this?

Starting point is 01:07:39 Larry said with a laugh. What started as a hobby gradually became an obsession. It took a while for me to understand how and why I made such a large emotional and financial commitment to winning a boat race. My life has been all about testing my limits and learning from failure. It's been a journey of discovery, of seeing how far I can go. I'm trapped in a never-ending cycle of competing and learning. Once I was successful with Sayonara, that's another one of his boats that he raced, it was time to raise the bar. So I tried the America's Cup. I was unsuccessful at first, but then I learned from it and I eventually won. Now we're defending the America's Cup.

Starting point is 01:08:25 So how do I get off this merry-go-round? How do I stop when I'm winning? Larry paused. Finally, he said, It's hard for me to quit when I'm losing and it's hard for me to quit when I'm winning. It's just hard for me to quit. I'm addicted to competing.

Starting point is 01:08:46 That's 126 books down, 1,000 to go. If you buy the book using the link that's in your show notes, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. And I'll talk to you again soon.

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Founders - #126: Larry Ellison (The Billionaire and the Mechanic)

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