Founders - #127 Larry Ellison (Oracle)

Episode Date: May 25, 2020

What I learned from reading The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: God Doesn't Think He's Larry Ellison by Mike Wilson----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----[1:06]  You want to know what I think about Larry Ellison? Well, I suppose he had some private sort of greatness but he kept it to himself. He never gave himself away. He never gave anything away. He just left you a tip. He had a generous mind. I don’t suppose anybody ever had so many opinions, but he never believed in anything except Larry Ellison. [1:45] That was the way Ellison’s mind worked. He was like a search engine gone haywire. [3:01] I asked Ellison how he had seen his adult life when he was a kid. What he thought was going to happen to him. “You mean did I anticipate becoming the fifth wealthiest person in the United States? No. This is all kind of surreal. I don’t even believe it. When I look around I say this must be something out of a dream.” [3:57] Ellison is the Charles Foster Kane of the technological age. He is bright, brash, optimistic, and immensely appealing, yet somehow incomplete. [4:31] He worked in the computer industry for several years but never had a job that suited what he saw as his superior intellectual gifts. [6:08] The stockholder who benefited the most from Oracle’s performance was Larry Ellison, exactly what he intended. Ellison started the company because he wanted to be his own boss. And he stayed in control throughout his tenure at Oracle always holding onto enough stock that his power and authority could never be seriously challenged. [7:57] To him there was now power greater than the human mind. [8:23] What Larry reminds me of is a truth that Benjamin Franklin hit on 250 years ago. He says his mind was much improved by all the reading he did. There were very tangible results in Benjamin Franklin’s life when people found his conversations more enjoyable because he was a more interesting person to talk to—that led him being able to raise money for his business. It helped him close sales. Larry Ellison is very much the same way. [8:53] When hiring, Ellison valued intelligence more than experience. He often looked for unruly geniuses instead of solid, steady workers. [10:52] If he hadn’t made me rich, I’d probably hate him because he is obnoxious. He is not nice to people. [12:39] He was capable of chilling selfishness and inspiring generosity. He could dazzle people with his insights and madden them with his lies. He was a fundamentally shy man who could delight audiences with his colorful speeches. He was known for his healthy ego and often seemed deeply insecure. Many people learned to accept Ellison’s contradictory nature. [14:01] In 1970 sales of packaged computer programs amounted to only $70 million for the entire year. [15:55] There is a book called The HP Way. I did a podcast on it (Founders #29) [16:20] The Oracle Way was simply to win. How that goal was achieved was secondary. [17:18] Ellison’s early life left a lot to be desired. He was never very happy with the humdrum facts of his life so he changed them. Beginning when he was a child, and continuing into his days in the Forbes 400, Ellison lived partly in a world of his own invention. [18:15] He wasn’t going to be smothered by the dreary circumstances of his life. He was going to leap over them. [20:13] Larry reads a lot of biographies. One person he admired the most was Winston Churchill. He had a lot in common with Churchill. Both were mediocre students. Both desperately sought the approval of their fathers to no avail. And both were witty, insatiably curious, and charming when it suited them. Reading about Churchill reassured him that even ‘gods have moments of insecurity.’ [22:30] A description of Larry in his mid twenties: Ellison was extremely hard on himself. He had a mental image of where he should be and what he should be and he was not able to attain it. [25:19] He has incredible intelligence and he applies it with incredible intensity. [26:44] The subject he liked best was himself. He was forever telling people how wonderful he was, how smart he was, and how rich he was going to be. [29:50] For Ellison Oracle was a holy mission. [30:33] There was a problem. A sheet rock wall stood between the offices and the computer room. Scott said, “Larry, we need to hook up these terminals. How are we going to hook them up?” “I'll show you how.” Ellison replied. He grabbed a hammer and smashed a hole through the wall. Bruce Scott came to believe that Ellison's entire business philosophy could be summed up in that single act. Find a way or make one. Just do it. [32:41] Ellison could not have dreamed up a more amiable and helpful competitor than IBM. Think of the marketing of relational technology as a race, with Ellison and IBM as two of the main entrants. IBM taught Ellison to walk, bought him a pair of track shoes, trained him as a sprinter, and then gave him a big head start. How could he lose? [35:14] He was practicing. He was working. He knew there was a problem and he fixed it. [35:47] The idea that somebody else might take away Oracle's business was poison to Ellison. He understood the importance of locking up a large share of the market early. “How much does it cost Pepsi to get one half of a percent of the market from Coke once the market has been established?” he once asked rhetorically. “It's very expensive. This market is being established. If we don't run as hard as we can, as fast as we can, and then do it again twice as fast, it’ll be cost prohibitive for us to increase market share.” [36:14] Larry put marketing first and everything else second. Average technology and good marketing beat good technology and average marketing every day. [39:17] My view is that there are only a handful of things that are really important and you should devote all of your time to those things and forget everything else. [40:46] I was not terribly forgiving of mediocrity. I was completely intolerant of a lack of effort. And I was fairly brutal in the way I expressed myself. [41:16] Kobe Bryant: I had issues or problems with the people who don’t demand excellence from themselves. I won’t tolerate that. [42:30] The guy that was in charge of Oracle’s advertising in the early days of the company: My ads attack like a pack of speed crazed wolverines and have the same general effect on your competition that a full moon does on a werewolf. [44:00] Larry fundamentally believed that his company was going to be more important than IBM. You can’t imagine how far fetched those ideas sounded. He would say he was here to become the largest software company in the world. People were taken aback. [45:32] Larry goes against consensus. Every single on of his advisors told him sell equity, sell equity, sell equity. And Larry just had a fundamental belief that that would be a mistake because the equity is going to be worth a lot more in the future. [46:21] There are only two kinds of people in the world to Larry. Those who are on his team and those who are his enemies. There is no middle ground. [48:03] Even when he was feeling his worst Ellison remained an optimist. A man who couldn’t help looking forward. He lived in the future. [49:34] He was terrified he would fail, confirming his father’s dark predictions about him. There was a note in his voice that you didn’t usually hear with him—just scared, worried. [56:30] I am very competitive, and sometimes, when somebody does something really great, I get upset because I just feel like that isn’t me. And my reaction to Steve [Jobs] wasn’t competitive at all. I felt what he had done was so wonderful, and I was so proud of him, and I love him so much, it was almost as if I had done it. I didn’t feel the least bit competitive. The wonderful thing about loving somebody else is that it can expand your ego in the best sense. If they do something great, you feel terrific about it. [57:38] The only things that are important in our lives are love and work. Not necessarily in that order. We work because work is an act of creation. We identify with it. Both love and work conspire to deliver some kind of happiness. If we can get reasonably good at both of them, we are in really great shape. [58:21] He’s got the same problem the rest of us have. He has to engage in an enlightened pursuit of happiness. To figure out what makes him happy. Human beings are builders. He is going to have to find something he really wants to build. He is going to have to have some idea and create something out of that idea. ----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.”— GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book. It's good for you. It's good for Founders. A list of all the books featured on Founders Podcast. ----Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here. ----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

You want to know what I think about Charlie Kane? Well, I suppose he had some private sort of greatness, but he kept it to himself. He never gave himself away. He never gave anything away. He just left you a tip. He had a generous mind. I don't suppose anybody ever had so many opinions. But he never believed in anything except Charlie Kane. He never had a

conviction except Charlie Kane in his life. That's from the very beginning of the book that I read and I'm going to talk to you about today, which is The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison. And the subtitle is God Doesn't Think He's Larry Ellison. And it was written by Mike Wilson. I'm going to reread that because I think, well, first of all, that's a quote from Orson Welles' 1941 film Citizen Kane. And I'm going to reread that section to you. And instead of saying Charlie Kane, I'm going to put in the name Larry Ellison

because I think that is what the author wants us to think. So let's see how that goes. You want to know what I think about Larry Ellison? Well, I suppose he had some private sort of greatness, but he kept it to himself. He never gave himself away. He never gave anything away. He just left you a tip. He had a generous mind. I don't suppose anybody ever had so many opinions, but he never believed in anything except Larry Ellison. He never had a conviction except Larry Ellison in his life. And I think once you change it from Charlie to Larry, everything still holds true. Okay, so first we're going to talk about, and then I left myself on this section, is life feels like a dream. And it says, that was the way Ellison's mind worked. He was like a search engine gone haywire. If you asked him for information about Chicago in the 1950s, he told you about the Clinton presidency. So I want to stop there. I want to go back to what, I'm going to continue that paragraph in a minute. But when he was quoting Citizen Kane, it says, you know, I suppose he had some private sort of greatness, but he kept it to himself.

He had a generous mind. I don't suppose anybody had so many opinions. The reason I started with this section is the author is trying to get to pin down Larry. He says that Larry is extremely hard to pin down. One of the biggest criticisms of Larry is that, you you know some people call him a pathological liar other people says say that he just exaggerates and it's really hard to verify the authenticity of his stories so what's taking place right now is the author's trying to get larry to talk about his childhood that's what he means about tell me about chicago in the 1950s larry's not interested in talking about that he's he's gonna reveal only what he wants you to know about him um so he keeps things closer to the vest you know um and so he's asked this question then

larry goes off on the difference of like what clinton could be doing because clinton's president at the time they're having this interview what clinton can be doing different in health care and education okay so he says i tried again i asked ellison how he how he had seen his adult life when he was a kid, what he thought was going to happen to him. And so I thought this was very interesting. You mean, did I anticipate becoming the fifth wealthiest person in the United States? No, he said. I mean, this is all kind of surreal. I don't even believe it now. Not only did I not believe it when I was 14, but when I look around, I say, this must be something out of a dream. I think that's how probably anybody feels at that extreme level.

Of course, Larry, you know, has a, what's a way to put this? A very healthy self-confidence. But he might have said, you know, I'm going to be successful. No one can predict like to that degree so um in this section the author is going to tie in the story of larry ellison to that movie citizen kane so he said if every if hollywood ever wants to update the legendary film citizen kane it might consider larry ellison for the lead character ellison is the charles foster kane of the technological age he is bright brash, and immensely appealing, yet somehow

incomplete. Like the movie character, he wants desperately to be loved, that's definitely true, even idolized. But love does not come easily to him or from him. Also, like Kane, Larry Ellison is oversized. He's a myth of his own making. And so at this point, the author flashes back and he says he worked in the computer industry for several years, but never had a job that suited what he saw as his superior intellectual gifts. She's talking about the way Larry views himself. Okay. In 1977, the 32 year old Ellison went into business for himself, writing computer programs on a contract basis. And this is just talking about the early days of what would soon turn into Oracle.

And, you know, very it was a side side business, a side hustle. Larry kept his day job. He had two or three programmers that he was working with. And then once they realized they had a product, they switched from consulting to actually selling software. I covered that on the other podcast, so I'm not going to belabor this point too much. In the mid-1970s, computer databases could do—they're talking about the opportunity that Oracle identified earlier than anybody else. In the mid-1970s, computer databases could do few things extremely well. They could, for example, keep track of thousands of customer accounts, updating them after every new order or payment. What those databases could not do, and they're really talking about what Larry and his partners are trying to fix, or could not do fast enough was answer unanticipated questions, the kind

business people often ask before they make decisions. If a company wanted to know which of its products were selling best in Albuquerque or which regional office did the most business in August or how many of its female employees had more than five years of service, the database of yesteryear could not produce a fast answer. Ellison's database software could. Okay, so skipping ahead a little bit, this gives you an insight into something that is present in all three of these books. Larry is a control freak, like a lot of the people that we study on the podcast. He always wants control.

The stockholders who benefited most from Oracle's performance was Larry Ellison, exactly what he intended. Ellison started the company because he wanted to be his own boss. And he stayed in control throughout his tenure at Oracle, always holding on to enough stock that his power and authority could never be seriously challenged. So this is one of the strategies that Larry employed from the very beginning, not only when they started the company, but as the company was going through financial difficulties, let's say 15 years into the future from where we're at right now, he was adamant about not selling equity. And he wouldn't sell his stock. I think I've highlights that talk about this. For years, he was obsessed. He did not

want to raise venture capital. He's like, I'm not giving up equity. We'll either make money through sales or we'll take on loans through debt. But I'm not giving up the most valuable thing. And to that, I mean, it kind of gives you an insight into you know he's got extreme confidence in himself i don't think at any time there's there's times where oracle could have gone out of business um but even then you see like in his discussions with like his wife at the time you know hey if this fails that's fine i'm on i'm gonna go to the next opportunity. The company might fail, but I'm not going to. OK, so this is we're talking early days of Oracle here. This is on the power of the mind, early hiring practices and Larry as a walking contradiction. How did Ellison create so much prosperity? Certainly he had a generous mind. He could

converse freely about almost anything. The Holocaust, poetry, education, architecture, and the future of high technology. He was well-versed in the world's religions from Judaism to Buddhism. But to him, there was no power greater than the human mind. So I just want to stop there. I always think about, I've watched a bunch of interviews with him as well, reading a lot of his own words. And that's one of the things that's so appealing about him.

He's got this weird charisma. You'll see that even when he does terrible things to people, which he definitely does, they have a hard time staying mad at him. He's almost like this, he's like a cult leader. He's got that kind of charisma. Right. But what I think what Larry reminds me of is, I think, a truth that Benjamin Franklin hit on 250 years ago. He says his mind was much improved by all the reading he did. Right. And so there was very tangible results in Benjamin Franklin's life from that, where people found his conversation more enjoyable because he was a more interesting person to talk to. That led him to raise money for his business earlier, helped him close sales. Larry Ellison is very much the same way.

So that that paragraph there kind of gives you an insight into that. So says when hiring help, Ellison valued intelligence more than experience and maturity. He often looked for unruly geniuses instead of solid steady workers again when you see who somebody admires you get the idea to like what they like most about themselves or what traits they want most of themselves i think larry thinks of himself as an unruly genius he doesn't think of himself as a solid steady solid steady worker he says no that's not me i i sprint i rest i sprint i sprint i rest but i don't have like the dedication that like dedication that he talks about, the relentlessness of a Bill Gates. He's like, I don't have that.

He liked people who argued back. He wanted employees who were as sure as he was that they were right. Ellison's insisted that his recruiters hire only the finest and cockiest new college graduates. When they were recruiting from universities, they'd ask people, are you the smartest person you know? And then if they said yes, they'd hire them. If they said no, they say who is, and they'd go hire that person instead. So an early Oracle engineer is going to give us an insight into what kind of culture this hiring practice is going to build in the company, right? So he says, I don't know if you got the smartest people that way, but you definitely got the most arrogant. Ellison's swaggering combative style became a part of his

company's identity. Again, he gets heavily criticized for this, but you got to, what Charlie Munger tells us, like you got to follow your own drift. If that's who Ellison is, and from my perspective, it definitely is, then you might as well lean into that. You're not going to change it. You're not going to, what are you going to be? Ellison's going to be full of false modesty. So if that's who you are, and he's comfortable being that way, then you might as well build a company

around your true identity. And I think that's what he did. So he says, this arrogant culture had a lot to do with Oracle's success, but it also explained why Oracle's competitors despised the company and distrusted its founder. As Stewart, which is one of the early people working at Oracle, put it, if he hadn't made me rich, I'd probably hate him because he's obnoxious. He's not nice to people.

And so we see this idea of the fact that there's a lot of people that, so later on in his career, Larry makes a habit of dating Oracle employees. And one person he dated winds up suing him later on because she gets fired. And then she hacks into the company database. And Larry winds up putting her in jail, right? And so I've omitted that. That story's been in two of the books I've read on him. But I've omitted that. That story's been in two of the books I've read on him. But I've skipped over it. But I do want to tell you how this relates. Something the prosecutor who's going to prosecute this And Larry's like, no, I'm ready. You know, I got this. And he's like, Larry, you don't understand.

You come off as a prick. That's the prosecutor's quote. He's like, you can't come off as this egotistical, arrogant billionaire when you're in front of 12 normal people in the jury. Right. And so what Stewart's picking up on here and what the author goes, there's probably 100 different examples in this book about this is he's extremely aggressive and extremely confident. And if you don't hide that, which he has no interest in hiding, I mean, you don't buy $250 million yachts, right? If you were trying to hide that, you're going to make enemies. And to Larry's point, he actually uses that as a tool. He likes make enemies. And to Larry's point, he actually uses that as a tool. He likes having

enemies. All right. So it says, as a friend of Charles Foster Kane says in Citizen Kane, it's not that Charlie was ever brutal. He just did brutal things. The people around Ellison knew that he was neither all good nor all bad, just like all of us, right? He was capable of chilling selfishness and inspiring generosity. He could dazzle people with his insights and madden them with his lies. He was a fundamentally shy man who could delight audience with his colorful speeches. Though he was known for his healthy ego, he often seemed deeply insecure. Over time, many people learned to accept Ellison's contradictory nature. There's a lot of things there about the shyness. He builds this giant company. He almost never comes to the office. He loves working from home, likes having complete

control over his environment. And then later on in the book, they talk about like, you know, Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison were best friends for like 25 years. And they both said, they're like, you have to be my best friend because you're my only friend. You know, outside of their family, Jobs case, it's not like he's spending his time building deep friendships. He dedicated all his time to his work. Ellison was the same. So, again, they're well-known. They're charismatic, but they're shy.

They're introverted, which I think a lot of people would be surprised, you know, to discover that. Okay, so this was very interesting because, again, one of Larry's, you have to give him credit. He saw, he had an insight that he built an entire company around and he was the first person. He was extremely early. He starts his company in the 1970s. This blew my mind. This one sentence. This is the size of the software industry in 1970. Think about how large it is in present day.

In 1970, sales of packaged computer programs amounted to only $70 million for the entire year. The entire size of the software industry was $70 million a year. Granted, one thing Larry did differently was that the hardware makers would give away software for free, but people actually buying individual software programs in 1970s, only $70 million a year. Okay. Into this, so it talks about like, it's a wide open, wild, wild West. It's the beginning of an industry.

It's not, Larry got in, it's not too different than, you know, this multiple parts series I just did on the early days of the American automobile industry. These are wild times. So the book goes into detail about like, you know, this kind of cowboy era of software in the 1970s and before that. And I thought the sentence was interesting.

Into this ethical void strode Larry Ellison, a man who misled people about his past, had precious little experience in business, and was prepared to do whatever it took to achieve success. So again, the author thinks Larry's smart, he's obviously successful, but he's very comfortable pointing out that he's got serious personality flaws. Bill Hewitt and David Packard, who grew up during the Great Depression, founded HP with certain basic values in mind. I really enjoy this section because they're going to compare and contrast how Bill and David created their company and how Larry created his. And Bill and David, they influenced people like Bob Noyce, who founded Fairtrials, Semiconductor, and Intel. Steve Jobs had great respect for Bill and David.

There's a huge tree in the technology industry that started with Bill and David. So it says, they believe the company should provide opportunity and security to employees, contribute to the betterment of society, build first-rate products, satisfy customers, and make money. Their way of doing business

eventually became known as the HP way. There's actually a book called the HP way. I think it's written by David Packard. And I did a podcast on it. It's somewhere in those, maybe the 30s in that area, if you haven't listened to it. We thought that if we could get everybody to agree on what our objectives were and to understand that we were trying to do what we were trying to do,

then we could turn them loose and they would move in a common direction, David Packard wrote. Larry Ellison's vision was narrower. The Oracle way, to the extent that such thing existed, was simply to win. How that goal achieved was secondary. As a former Oracle board member put it, Ellison established no magnetic north, no common direction, no sense of how things would or would not be done. and so one of the biggest criticisms steve jobs get is this idea that the reality distortion field that he would bend the truth and the reality to fit like instead of accepting the world as it is he kind of just made it how he wanted so larry grew up um he created his own world or another or put another way he created his own life and the author gives us some insight into that here. He says, Larry Ellison felt that a lot of things were missing from his life. His birth parents were God only where, and God only knew who.

His adoptive father was a non-entity, and high school rewarded conformity and punished free thinking. Ellison's material life also left a lot to be desired. He was never very happy with the humdrum facts of his life, so he changed them. Beginning when he was a child and continuing into his days into the Forbes 400, Ellison lived partly in a world of his own invention. Even as a teenager, he was an engaging storyteller and a rocketeer. When reality was not interesting enough for him, he simply made up delightful and often plausible details as he went along. His stories had certain things in common. They were funny,

they glorified Larry Ellison, and unless you had the authority to issue subpoenas, they were damn near impossible to disprove. They were also mostly benign. Ellison was neither cynical nor mean-spirited he was always unflaggingly positive and optimistic that's probably one of his best traits i would say and his fractionally true stories reflected those personality traits he wasn't going to be smothered by the dreary circumstances of his life he was going to leap over them he tended to see the world as he wanted it to be rather than as it was. And so this section on how Larry had some close friends in college,

how they remembered him after they drifted apart, also gives you this insight into this cult-like, cult leader-like charisma that he has. So it says, so Ellison was generally self-centered. He was, Abraham said. He was always inside of his own head, but he was also capable of showing great concern and tenderness for his friends. He wasn't a nurturing person in that he would ask how your day was or whatever. But if you told him that this was a really bad day and you needed to take a walk or talk about something, he'd be right there. So here's another one of his friends. Ellison's

relationship with the two Northwestern men was intense but fleeting. After he left the Chicago area, his friends rarely heard from him again. Still, Ellison did not forget them. When Abraham called Oracle in the early 1990s, he got right through to Ellison. And the two had a nice talk. And in 1996, three decades after this other guy's name is coleman in 1996 three decades after um coleman and ellison had last been close coleman sent an email saying hello and telling ellison he was married and had two children ellison wrote back right away congratulating coleman for getting

and staying married ellison said he would love to get together or short of that chat on the phone coleman wasn't sure it would happen but he he'd hoped Larry Ellison could find the time. This next sentence is the most important part of this entire section. And it really gives you an insight into the effect Larry has on the people around him. You have to understand, Coleman said, I love the guy. You always had a good time with Larry. So something also Larry's addicted to studying history, reads a lot of biographies,

and he takes inspiration from the life stories, you know, people that had, were able to build remarkable lives. And one of those people is Churchill. So it said, Ellison often said that the 20th century figure he admired most was Winston Churchill. He also said Napoleon is the person he admired most.

He had spent, he had a lot in common with Churchill. Both were mediocre students, both desperately sought the approval of their fathers to no avail. And both were witty, insatiably curious, and charming when it suited them. Despite Ellison's constant public posturing, he was also like Churchill, fundamentally shy. Reading about Churchill reassured him that even these gods have moments of insecurity. So that was a direct quote from Ellison.

This is a little bit about his early days in California. Ellison said that he was so poor that he subsisted on dime packages of Kraft macaroni and cheese. After he had earned some money, he would always reappear ready to take Quinn, this is his first wife, on another adventure. The guy, this is how she remembers him too.

The guy was a one man amusement park within a couple of months ellison and quinn decided to marry i hardly knew him again this gives you an insight into his charisma what kind of person is going to marry somebody they barely know i hardly knew him quinn said i agreed to marry him because he was the most fascinating man i've ever left i'd ever met in my life I knew I would never be bored so his I think it's his third wife she's interviewed in the book too and she says you know this is now 10 years after they got divorced they were together for very they had two kids divorced right away and he the author's like why didn't you remarry and she goes I can't she said I've tried every other

man pales in comparison to him. So she's like, I just can't do it. I found everybody else is not as good as him. So I'm just like, she just dedicated her time to taking care of her kids and raising horses and things. But again, we just I'm bringing that up because it's over and over and over again from college friends to ex-wives to employees to people that wind up being his enemies. Say the same thing about him that he's just got this magnetic charm that you just you know you believe everything he says ellison and quinn lived in an unremarkable one-bedroom apartment in oakland they hung tin

foil on the windows so ellison could sleep after his night shifts remember at this time in his life he's only working night shifts and weekends and they often rode the bus because the car was not dependable. The only new piece of furniture they owned was a bed. So that gives you an insight into Larry's life in his early 20s. Ellison was extremely hard on himself, Quinn said. He kind of had a mental image of where he should be and what he should be, and he was not able to attain it. Okay, how many of us have felt the same way, right? Larry's going through that same thing. If Ellison had any future at all, Ada Quinn couldn't see it. During the seven years that they were married,

he bounced from job to job, sometimes taking a cut in pay when he made the change. Even so, Ellison spent money lavishly. She says his wife describes him as he had a champagne taste on a beer budget. At the time, he and Quinn were earning about $1,600 a month combined. In 1974, she decided to leave him. She could no longer stand to watch him flounder. Very interesting words there.

Besides, she thought that marriage was not a good venue for him. Yes, he was energetic and exciting, but also uncompromising. And he had, you know, he was never faithful, constantly cheating on all his wives. His third wife, so this wife is number one. His third wife, the one that actually has his kids, works at Oracle. And his, see, the interesting is

even after Larry gets divorced, his wives like love him. They're like friends. And so his first wife is visiting the office and she's like, oh, you're dating Larry? Just wait. Like you're not, he's going to cheat on you. And his third wife remembers the conversation. She's like, yeah, yeah, you're, you know, you're just older than me.

That's what you think. But, you know, I can satisfy him or whatever the case was. And no, just like we talked about in the podcast uh for the mechanic and the billionaire or the billionaire mechanic uh he's got this this on there's this hole in the middle of him that he could just never fill um you know that drives him he's just never going to be satisfied quinn believes something happened to ellison during the visit to this therapist so they go to uh they try to like save their marriage by talking to a marriage counselor and so that's's what she's referencing. Uh, they gave him a clear vision for his life. One that seemed to come out of nowhere. He said to me, if you stay with me, I will become a

millionaire and you can have anything you want. She did not know where that idea came from. He had never said anything like it before. There was never any clue. Believe me, not a clue. That's what Quinn saying. And Quinn's view Ellison made a commitment to himself that he was not going to be a failure that was the turning point of his life she said still she did not take him seriously at the time and so this is his first wife reflecting back on when they were married he is extremely intense I was married to him for seven years and by the time I left, I was worn out. And I'm a fairly multi-phasic, high energy person with a lot of diverse interests and a type A personality. I'm goal oriented and I was worn out. He's beyond anything I've ever experienced.

And I'm sure that what accounts for his enormous success now, he has incredible intelligence and he applies it with incredible intensity. And it's one of my favorite sentences in the book. He has incredible intelligence and he applies it with incredible intensity. And it's one of my favorite sentences in the book. He has incredible intelligence and he applies with incredible intensity. And that intensity does not let up. People say, gee, don't you wish you were still married, Tim? And I say, no, I'm perfectly happy with the relationship I have with him now because I'm not going to ruin my health. So again, there's more examples in the book on this crazy kind of charisma. At this point, Ellison's working at serious jobs now, but he hasn't started Oracle. And it said Ellison, who had experience with IBM mainframes, had signed on to teach Amodal. That's a company they're working at.

Amodal's engineers about the new machine. But mostly he just talked all day long. He was a talking doll, this is how they describe him, with a pull string that never reached its back. He talked to any and everyone, bosses, secretaries, telephone callers, visitors, delivery people, copy machine technicians, maintenance guys, and passerbys. But mostly he talked to Stuart, who was always within talking distance. There was, Stuart said, an aura about him, a powerful sense of possibility. There was also something unsettling about Ellison, something vaguely dangerous, a sense that you didn't know what was going to happen. He was the kind of person you would like to follow. What Stuart was seeing

was the embodiment of charisma, the characteristic that Ellison would soon exploit so that everyone around him would do his will. The subject he liked best was himself. He was forever telling people how wonderful he was, how smart he was, and how rich he was going to be. Ellison's visit to the counselor may not have been the turning point of his life, as Quinn said, but clearly something about him had changed. If Ellison had ever had a weak or uncertain moment in his life, and he definitely did, Stuart would not have known it. Somehow, Ellison had escaped the tight, clammy grip of everyday fear and doubt. Again, that's why it's so important to read these books. He didn't escape it.

He's not sharing it with you, but he just quoted Churchill. He just said these gods have these intense periods of insecurity. He's like, if Churchill is going through rough times and self-doubt, then, of course, I'm going to as well. So there's a point in Larry's life where he's working for this company that's run really poorly. And I think this idea I've seen a few times where you get inspiration by seeing things done the wrong way. And then you're like, well, if these guys can run a company, I'm way smarter than them. Like, I can do it, too. And Larry's going to experience right now. This is the early 70s. I thought it was a fairly good business guy. And then I'd see these guys making decisions that I didn't understand, that I didn't think were rational.

And therefore I lost confidence in them, he said. I thought I was better technically than they were. And I thought I was a better business guy than they were. See how he talks. I know it's not terribly modest to say this, but, yeah, I thought I had better judgment not only about technology, but also about markets than the people who are my bosses. They served as inspirations. If they can run companies, I'll try. I'll give this a shot. So he winds up teaming up his main partner, the founding of Oracle, is this gifted programmer named Bob Minor. And Bob is the complete opposite of Larry.

And some people are like, how do you even have a relationship with them? And so this is a little bit of why their partnership worked. And it's not saying, like, Bob doesn't paper over Larry's imperfections. But he realizes, like, it's also a mistake to realize, hey, somebody has imperfections, therefore I can underestimate them. He's like, it's a mistake if you underestimate this guy. While Miner was amused by Ellison, he also respected him. some people thought ellison was just an egomaniac or just a performer or just an exaggerator minor never made that error minor could see that he was also smart and shrewd and fiercely determined it would have been a mistake to take ellison too seriously uh but you but you couldn't but you could not disregard him. Ellison was sizzle and Minor was steak.

In the coming years, Ellison peddled the product and Minor built it, always in that order. Ellison, the performer, recruited good people into the company, and Minor, the regular guy, got them to stay. Minor could be friends with his employees. Larry Ellison was purposely aloof. He kept distance between his employees, the ones that he wasn't sleeping with, by the way. The two men complimented each other well. Even more than that, they needed each other. Bob Miner could never have created Oracle Corporation by himself. He couldn't have sold software the way Ellison did.

He was too inward, too modest, and too honest. Nor was he willing sold software the way Ellison did. He was too inward, too modest, and too honest. Nor was he willing to make the sacrifices Ellison made. For Ellison, Oracle was a holy mission. For Minor, it was always just a job. Ellison needed Minor too. Few people liked and respected and enjoyed Larry Ellison more than Minor did. And nobody would have put up with him for as long. So I'm fast forwarding. They've already started Oracle or what's soon to be Oracle. And this is fantastic. This paragraph, this is Larry's entire business philosophy as a single in a single act. This is hilarious. Ready?

Bruce Scott's first experience with Larry Ellison was an eye opener on one of his first days at SDL. That's the name of before, it's Oracle, but it's just not called Oracle yet, okay? Scott was trying to connect SDL's computer terminals to the instrument computer. There was a problem. A sheetrock wall stood between the SDL offices and the computer room. Scott said, Larry, we need to hook up these terminals. How are we going to hook them up? I'll show you how, Ellison replied. He grabbed a hammer and smashed a hole through the wall.

Bruce Scott came to believe that Ellison's entire business philosophy could be summed up in that single act. Find a way or make one. Just do it. So last week we talked about the simulators between uh steve jobs and larry ellison they both started a company that without that wasn't based on an idea they came up with right and so this is really on ibm ibm giving the relational database market to larry um so it's the mistakes of ibm but also the the intelligent what i would argue the intelligent strategy and tactics that larry used okay so ibm is the one that comes up with the idea hey we can make a relation database what I would argue, the intelligence strategy and tactics that Larry used. Okay, so IBM's the one that comes up with the idea,

hey, we can make a relational database. Okay, so it says, the system R group had its relational database up and running around 1977. So the question at the beginning of this paragraph is, how slow was IBM? Okay, so it says, but IBM did not introduce a commercial product until February 1982, so five years later.

Larry Ellison's nimble and opportunistic little company So five years later. This is a crazy story. According to one former IBM programmer, the company wants to study on the way things were done. What they found is that it would take at least nine months to ship an empty box, he said. Indeed, Ellison could not have dreamed up a more amiable and helpful competitor than IBM. Think of the marketing of relational technology as a race with Ellison and IBM as

the two main entrants. IBM, this is the greatest metaphor because this is extremely dense part of the book. It's actually really confusing when you read it, but the author does a great job with this metaphor to explain it to us. So it says, think of Ellison and IBM as two of the main entrants in this race. IBM taught Ellison to walk, bought him a pair of track shoes, trained him as a sprinter, and then gave him a big head start. How could he lose?

So one thing I learned from the autobiography of Sam Walton is that you should have a bias for action and then you stay determined, right? And that's something Jeff Bezos definitely borrowed from reading that book as well because it's talked about in Brad Stone's book, The Everything Store. Larry had the same thing. A lot of people summed up Larry Ellison's success

by saying he was at the right place at the right time. One early employee of Oracle said Ellison and his partners, they didn't have a great idea. They found a great idea. That was true. But so what? Lots of people in the computer. I love that the author's response here.

Because a lot of people just be dismissive. And it's usually an excuse of why other people succeed and they haven't. Right? I think it's a terror. Like, you should be studying these people and see what you can learn from them. Not like, oh, it's not a crab in the bucket mentality. You know? So the guy's like, oh, they didn't have a great idea.

They found a great idea. Okay, so that's the end of that quote. Here's to the author. That was true. But so what? Lots of people in the computer industry read the system or paper, but only Ellison seized on the opportunity to build an actual database product. Only Ellison took an idea and used it as a foundation for a huge corporation.

Yes, he was in the right place at the right time, but as he told me, I don't know of any place or any time where there aren't great possibilities. That's accurate. Yes, IBM gave him the idea, but it did not give him $6 billion. He made himself rich through ceaseless work, brilliant strategy, unrelenting optimism, and ruthless determination. Larry Ellison achieved the first success of his life by doing what no one else could or probably would do. He did it by being himself. I thought this was humorous. The note left myself is Larry would be competing with you and you wouldn't even know it. To Ellison, life was a never-ending contest. Every day, a new opportunity to prove himself. He would compete

with anyone, anytime, over anything. Sometimes people got in a contest with Ellison without knowing it. Once, when the company was just getting started, Stuart joined Larry and his wife Nancy for a weekend bike ride. Eventually, the three came to a steep incline. When Stewart and Nancy reached the top, Larry was far behind, laboring to catch up. The next time Stewart asked Ellison to go riding with him, Larry begged off. Larry didn't ride with me for a while, Stewart said. And the next time we rode, he left me in the dust.

He was practicing. He was working. He knew there was a problem and he fixed it. This is on the idea that you need to go fast when the industry is in its infancy. The idea that somebody else might take away Oracle's business was poison to Ellison. He understood the importance of locking up a large share of the market early. How much does it cost Pepsi to get one half of a percent of the market from coke once the market has been established he wants to ask rhetorically it's very expensive this market is being established if we can't if we don't run as hard as we can as fast as we can and then do it again twice as fast It'll be cost prohibitive for us to increase market share. This is essentially disproving the idea that if you build it, they will come.

Larry put marketing first and everything else second. And it says, there's a quote in the book, average technology and good marketing beat good technology and average marketing every day. Something also about the early days of Oracle is Larry, like Michael Jordan, we've used this comparison a lot in the last two Larry Ellison podcasts, he wanted to implement high standards. Very similar to Steve Jobs too, right? Ellison often erupted when someone did something he did not like

or said something he considered stupid. There was a lot of intimidation and a lot of uncomfortable intimidation. I didn't like that as an early employee. But she didn't believe that Ellison meant to hurt anyone. He only wanted to create an atmosphere of the very highest expectations, a place where the limits on what you can do are your own. One of Ellison's favorite quotes by Vince Lombardi is that everybody in the National Football League has talent, the talent to win a championship. It's not on what talent you have,

it's what you're willing to sacrifice to do that. And Lombardi says, I expect you to sacrifice everything. Larry had that same attitude, and he also applied it to his own life. This is his soon-to-be third wife discovering his dedication to Oracle. She learned quickly that Ellison's work came first in his life he was building a company and nothing could get in the way of that once ellison scheduled a two-week trip to japan he planned to go to work for a week and then have her meet him for a week's vacation i got over there and he said sorry business she

ended up taking tours every day and meeting him only for dinner. Allison would make any sacrifice for the company. Um, and so this is the third, the third wife is the mother of his children, right? And this shows you how extreme he is. Um, he's, he, she's pregnant and Oracle's going through like a shaky time and might, men might fail. And so he says, this is his third wife quoting him. He once turned to me, I was like five or six months pregnant, and he said, if this thing doesn't work out, don't expect me to stick around. She knew what he meant. If the company collapsed, he was not going to wallow in failure.

He was going to leave and start over again someplace else. I mean, just get out of here clear out and clearing out meant leaving everything including me and so that's what i mean like you you you read this book and you see ellison's warts he's telling it to a pregnant wife that's just insane um something also interesting about how about the life of the life story of elliot ellison is that oracle was a surprise to him he did not set out once he got going i think his ambitions grew right but at the very beginning he's like i just want you know i never want to have more than 50 employees and so he says when ellison walked into the room and saw 50 people there he was wide-eyed for the first time he realized his little company was becoming big.

His baby was growing up, and that's exactly what he calls it. He was really shocked. He said, you know, Bob and I never figured we would ever need more than 50 people to do everything we wanted to do. Okay, so this paragraph, this might be one of the best ideas that I learned from Larry. So this is his response to being late or not showing which he's known for doing right he's obviously not it's not very thoughtful to the people around you but why he's doing this is a this idea that he has it's probably very very smart says allison made no apologies for his quirks if anything he seemed amused at over this is a person working for with him her last name's overstreet. And Overstreet's concerned about time management. Her name's Jenny.

Jenny and I approach things very differently, he said. Jenny feels that she has to be exactly on time all the time. Jenny feels if there are 100 things you have to know, that you have to know all 100 of them. If there are 1,000 things you're doing, you have to do all 1,000 of them. My view is different. My view is that there are only a handful of things that are really important, and you devote all of your time to those things and forget everything

else. If you try to do all 1,000 things, answer all 1,000 phone calls, you will dilute your efforts in those areas that are really essential. So again, just to summarize that section, my view is that there are only a handful of things that are really important and you should devote all your time to those and forget everything else. So this is Larry talking about how terrible manager he was at the very beginning. This was in the days when Larry Ellison was still practicing what he later regretfully called management by ridicule. Because I personalize a lot of Oracle and personalize a lot of oracle and personalize a lot of the things we do i was not terribly forgiving of mediocrity ellison said i was

completely intolerant of a lack of effort and it was fairly brutal in the way i expressed myself so a lot of the like strategies that larry i don't even know if it was he meant to do it maybe it's just his personality they echo echo a lot of professional athletes. So I'm going to play you a clip. This is one of the last interviews Kobe Bryant gave before he died. And this is Kobe sounding a lot like Larry in the early days of Oracle. Issues or problems with other people that don't demand excellence for themselves. I won't tolerate that. Except that when the career is said and done they're not going to be looking at you

a player on his team and saying you didn't win a championship no they won't be looking here right so it's my responsibility to make sure everybody's holding themselves accountable i'm holding you accountable if we just played a back-to-back and we have practice the next day, your ass better be there taped, ready to go. Because I'm there and I'm ready. And I just got finished lifting weights for two hours. So I hold guys to a higher standard. And I don't sugarcoat stuff.

Never have, never will. Okay, so moving ahead. The book spends a lot of time going into detail about Oracle's near-death experience. I think I covered that two podcasts to give you a good idea two podcasts ago, so I'm going to skip over that part. But there's something happening during this period of rapid growth that I think gives us insight into the kind of people that Larry kept around him at this time. And the person I want to talk to you about is the guy that's in charge of at Oracle's advertising when they're experiencing rapid growth. And he's going to start talking here. His name is Bennett. And he's going to talk about that he learned the art of advertising from his mentor, a guy named Tony. Tony and I became friends and he taught me how

to kill for a living. Bennett once wrote, Bennett eventually formed a one man advertising agency that catered to Silicon Valley companies. He worked in exchange for a small creative fee and a ton of stock options. Bennett, who after all made his living on hyperbole, once described his work this way, my ads attack like a pack of speed-crazed wolverines and have the same general effect on your competition as a full moon does on a werewolf. I'm looking for clients with killer technology and a taste for blood. Bennett came up with a catchy slogan for his ad agency, because God hates cowards. Yes, this was just the man Larry Ellison needed to publicize his company. So after Oracle has been around for about 10 years, this is where we start to see the first examples of Larry saying, hey, you know what? My goal now is I'm going to make Oracle the

largest software company in the world. And we also start to see, you know, at the time people thought he was crazy. And we see this, you know, reality distortion field that Larry and Steve have. Oracle may have had $131 million in sales in 1987, but it was still a minor player. For Oracle to suggest that it could overtake such legendary companies was almost laughable. It was as if a mom-and-pop burger joint said they were going to outsell McDonald's.

Larry fundamentally believed, even at that point, that his company was going to be more important than IBM. You can't imagine how far-fetched those ideas sounded he would say he would say he was here to become the largest software company in the world people were taken aback so in this part we're gonna um his his one of his childhood friends gives us a a way to understand larry using gambling metaphors and this is happening happening when Oracle's having another rough, they have to restate earnings and their stock price gets hit because they thought they were booking revenue that was not real revenue.

And so that caused them to say, oh, you know, we're going to actually have a loss here this quarter. And then they wind up restating like two or three years worth of financials. But this understanding Larry's reaction, I think, is really important. His childhood friend, Dennis Coleman, once said of him, Larry was always the kind of guy who would take it to the limit and then some. Bet the house and then bet the house again. That was just what Larry Ellison did in March 1990. Having underachieved in the third fiscal quarter, he told the financial community,

we expect to make it up in the fourth quarter and get back to our annual plan. The vice president of corporate finance also used the gambling analogy to describe Ellison's behavior. It was kind of like he lost a hand in a poker game, so he doubled up on his bet for the next hand. So eventually they worked their way through it.

They still need some kind, they need like a bridge loan to cover the next hand. So eventually they work their way through it. They still need some kind, they need like a bridge loan to cover the gap though. And so this is where, this is an example of what I referenced earlier. Larry goes against consensus. Every single one of his advisors told him sell equity, sell equity, sell equity. And Larry just had a fundamental belief that there would be a mistake because the equity is going to be worth a lot more in the future. While all this was happening, Oracle was also trying to cope with its cash flow problem just about everyone who advised ellison on matters of finance had been recommending for months that oracle raised money by selling equity in the company ellison wouldn't do it he preferred to

borrow money instead so they go through all like they have all these failures and eventually find like they get the syndicate and they wind up getting the money they need. Finally, Larry and his treasurer put together a syndicate of 13 American and international banks through which they arranged a $250 million line of credit. That would be enough to sustain the company until the next crisis. This is Oracle's former head of sales describing Larry. There are only two kinds of people in the world to Larry. Those who are on his team and those who are his enemies. There isn't any other. There is no middle ground. Now, this next section is a little longer, and I want to tell you what's happening. Larry just announced Oracle's largest loss ever. The stock is down 75%,

and the remarkable thing is he is still optimistic. He's struggling, but he's still optimistic. That's why I said earlier, I think his relentless optimism is one of his best traits. After the announcement, the marketing man, Ken Cohen, went to the airport to catch a plane back to Oakland, where he lived. He was sitting in the terminal reading a newspaper when he saw Larry Ellison walking by. Ellison, who had changed out of his business suit and into jeans and a work shirt, was soon to board a flight back to San Francisco. He appeared to be in a daze, as if he had just awakened from a heavy sleep. Cohen was surprised to see him alone.

Cohen approached him and said, Rough day, huh? Ellison responded with a faint shake of his head as if he barely heard the question. Cohen saw that he had tears in his eyes. It was one of the few times he'd ever seen Ellison in emotional pain. So, Cohen said, are you headed back to the Bay Area? Yeah, I have a lot of work to take care of, Ellison said. Maybe you need a day or two on the beach. No, Ellison said, shaking his head. You know, Ken, we should be able to fix this. Soon Ellison began to talk about how. The more he talked, the more animated, the more like himself he became. Ellison was a man with an inexhaustible supply of words, and now he was tapping into his supply with his usual joy and abandon. Even when he was feeling his worst, Ellison remained an optimist,

a man who couldn't help looking forward. He lived in the future. Part of him believed that Oracle was already fixed, but the part of him that Cohen could see didn't look so good. Man, you look terrible, Cohen said. I don't suppose you'd believe if I told you I have a cold. I think it's time for some straight shooting on this one, Larry, Cohen said. I don't think the analysts would have believed it either. I think some of them

wish you had worse. Yeah, Ellison said. But they'll see. They'll see. Ellison asked Cohen how he thought the announcement had gone. Had it gone as badly as he thought it went? Were people really as angry at Ellison as they thought they were? Yes, Cohen said. It had gone terribly and people were furious. I was afraid of that, Ellison sighed. To Cohen, Ellison seemed like a little boy who regretted that he had made his parents so angry. At one point, Ellison asked him, did I say anything really wrong? Cohen did not think so, but Ellison was not comforted. He was just a crumbled mess, Cohen later said. Still, as Ellison made his way to the gate, Cohen did not doubt that he would build And then we see a little bit more insight into what's happening in Larry's life at this time through his wife. after the crash. Barbara said he was terrified that he would fail, confirming his father's darkest predictions about him. Black days. It was awful. The kids and I never saw him. We couldn't

see him. He couldn't take the time to see us, she said. It wasn't that he didn't want to, but everybody had said that he was going to fail. And there were people waiting for him to fail, people who didn't like him. I remember talking to him and he'd people waiting for him to fail people who didn't like him i remember talking to him and he'd be real worried and scared and wanting to turn it around there was a note in his voice that you didn't usually hear with him just scared just worried so this is another example of how like his larry's personal enthusiasm is. And this comes from a fellow board member. And then it also it's going to give you insight into what's important to Larry. So if you're if you're right and you want to win, you have a lot of leeway with Larry.

So it says, but Ellison was just more than just a funny character. He was an electric figure and his presence on the board was mostly positive, Costello said. It's that native curiosity, energy, intensity, enthusiasm. He gets enthusiastic. He's wildly enthusiastic. I mean, it's infectious. He's just like, whoa. When he's into something, man, there's energy around it, and he drags people along in his wake. That's super positive. He'll get into a sport or a hobby or a woman it doesn't matter what it is he's wildly enthusiastic in all of the above so costello uh

costello and other members of the board are saying hey we need somebody that's actually good we need a cfo that has experience so they're trying to hire this guy named henley and larry doesn't want to um and this is the example like if you're right and you want to win, you'll have a lot of leeway with Larry. So I think that's a good trait of his. So it says, according to Costello, Larry said, he's just a goddamn finance guy. He's not that smart. He's a fucking plotting finance guy. And he just knows how to plunk numbers and all this shit. And I said, this is Costello saying, yeah, right. We just need a fucking finance guy. So we're not $250 million in the hole

how about that you fucking idiot these were the kind of conversations we had so again Larry is extremely hard on people we saw this last week with the billionaire and the mechanic but if you're dedicated to win as much as he is so the guy running his team was this guy

named Russell and Russell would be yelling at Larry when he's making mistakes driving the boat just cursing at him, ganging his face, calling him is so the guy running his team was this guy named russell and russell would be yelling at larry when he's making mistakes driving the boat just cursing at him ganging his face calling him an idiot and larry would sit and take it and he wouldn't do that with other people but he knew that you're dedicated to win in this case costello and him wind up having a falling out later but at this point costello wants oracle to succeed he wants to win he's like we have to have somebody who knows what they're doing in that role and so much to the point where he could call larry an idiot to his face and larry larry went to agreeing and was saying okay that's fine let's go ahead and and and hire this guy and uh henley does

a lot now there's the early days of oracle they lacked common sense um henley restored that and henley was the guy that larry didn't want to hire and larry reflects on he's like yeah i was wrong that was the right guy for the job so i'm going to read this section to you about the changes henley makes just to realize like again every company is held together with duct tape they all have weird things that they're doing poorly inside that we just can't see and this is remarkable most of the changes henley made were common sense ones they only seem revolutionary because oracle had been lacking common sense no longer would the company sell a maintenance contract and re and recognize all the revenue up front instead it would book the revenue a month

at a time as the payments came in no longer would oracle have a tiny bad debt reserve meaning they had no buffer from now on it would always keep enough cash to cover any deals that fell through and no longer would customers be given a year to pay for their software what the hell is that that's crazy right um i said i don't care if the accounting rules this is henley talking i don't care if the accounting rules say you can recognize the revenue or not we're not going to do that henley said so let's start doing 30-day terms and if people aren't willing to aren't willing to buy it it means they don't really need the products anyway and that's the big issue is there's a lot of salesmen or salespeople at Oracle that were getting paid commissions by making fake deals. It's like, okay, don't worry. I'll give you 85% off and you don't have to pay for a year.

And then they get the commission right then because the company books their revenue right then, even though they didn't get any money. And then a year goes by and that company goes bust or they disappear. So this is why they had to restate a lot of their finances. Like I said, I think it was like three years or something like that in total. Okay. This is a section on charisma, best friends, and competition. And I would say Larry is extremely selfish. He reminds me a lot of Frank Lloyd Wright,

who's completely like just, hey, this is what's best for me, and this is what I'm going to do now, whether my kids be damned or my wives be damned. In Frank Lloyd Wright's case. I think Larry's probably a better father. He definitely is a better father. He has a better relationship with his two kids than Frank had with his. But one person that Larry genuinely, I think, cared about was Steve Jobs.

And I really do think he admired and respected Steve. And maybe, he calls Steve the Edison of our time. And I think my guess is Larry would have loved to have Steve Jobs career because, yeah, he makes way more money than Steve. But Oracle's products are mainly hidden from view. It's very different than the adulation steve jobs get because you know we're all walking around with the product that he created and we're working on computer the computers he made and the phones and everything else as opposed to like even if you do use oracle to stream something you know you don't even know you're using an oracle product so anyways this is about

he's competitive with everybody else but steve jobs the people who work for jobs who were caught in his gravitational pull quickly found out he cared much more about his own standards than he did about their feelings uh when i wasn't sure what the word charisma meant i met steve jobs and then i knew this is apple that's a quote from apple's chief scientist a guy named larry tesler uh he wanted you to be great and he wanted to create something that was great and he was going to make you do that so there's kind of the similarities between steve and larry so it says we both joke around i say steve's my best friend and steve says i'm his best friend ellison said and he says well you're my only friend so you have to be my best friend that was steve's joke and i could make the same joke remember steve's

still alive when at the time of this writing ellison tended to describe the things in his life in grandiose terms this is hilarious it's definitely true he owned the fastest boat in the world the best surgeon in north america had operated on his elbow and so on he talked about his relationship with steve jobs the same way this doesn't this wasn't just a friendship it was a pairing for the ages a meeting of the minds the greatest love of all uh but he's telling he talks about a story uh where pixar just released toy story and he's at the premiere right so he says i'm very competitive and sometimes when somebody does something really great i get upset because i feel like that isn't me allison said and my reaction towards steve wasn't competitive at all i felt what he had done

was so wonderful and I was so proud of him and I love him so much it was almost as if I had done it. I didn't feel the least bit competitive. I was very, very happy for him, which was a bit of a revelation for me. The wonderful thing about loving somebody else is that it can expand your ego in the best sense. If they do something great, you feel terrific about it. And so here we were at this premiere, and I'm giving Steve a big hug and telling him all of this. He's verbalizing what he just said to us, to Steve. It was a pretty emotional moment for both of us.

It was a great intimate moment. Just two more things. This is Ellison on love and work. Ellison then went on one of his rhetorical adventures. Life is the enlightened pursuit of happiness, not the unenlightened pursuit of as much money as you can accumulate. And the only things that are as important in our lives are love and work, not necessarily in that order. We work because work is an act of creation. We identify with it. I look at the company and I think, this is me. But that's not my whole life. People I care about, people I love, are essential for my sanity to make it through every day. So both of those things,

work and love, conspire to deliver some kind of happiness. And if we can get reasonably good at both of them, we're in really great shape. And I love that piece of advice. Get really good at work and love, and you're going to be 90% of the way there. And finally, he's talking about his son, but I really think this is advice for all of us. He's got the same problem all the rest of us have. He has to engage in an enlightened pursuit of happiness to figure out what makes him happy. That's all about how you feel about yourself, how you relate to other people, what your work is, what you create, and what you make. We are builders. Human beings are builders.

He's going to have to find something he really wants to build. He's going to have to have some idea and create something out of that idea. So much more in this book, just like every other book I cover. So if you're interested, definitely pick it up. It goes into great detail about the first 20 years of Oracle. That is 127 books down, 1,000 to go. If you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. And I'll talk to you again soon.