Speaker 1: Oracle, a software company and giant in the tech industry,
Speaker 1: is no stranger to make or break moments. For instance,
Speaker 1: back in they were caught misrepresenting their revenues, a mistake
Speaker 1: that would cost some millions of dollars and cost many
Speaker 1: employees their jobs. And in two thousand one, co founder
Speaker 1: Larry Ellison was faced with a lawsuit for potential insider
Speaker 1: trading after he and his CFO sold off Oracle stock
Speaker 1: just weeks before the company's quarterly earnings were announced. There
Speaker 1: are multiple times Oracle has risen above the brink to
Speaker 1: maintain success, whether due to questionable choices or unforeseeable circumstance.
Speaker 1: But maybe the most fantastic story of how Oracle has
Speaker 1: risen above the brink is the story of its creation
Speaker 1: and how Larry Ellison overcame poverty, hardships, and naysayers to
Speaker 1: found the second most successful software company in the world. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Ariel Casting, and this is
Speaker 1: The Brink, a podcast that's all about the make or
Speaker 1: break moments that have defined success or failure for a company.
Speaker 1: And we're going to talk all about Oracle today, the
Speaker 1: enormous software company, the business to business enterprise and the
Speaker 1: founder Larry Ellison, who has something of a reputation for flamboyance.
Speaker 1: Let's say that's a good way to put it. Jonathan
Speaker 1: will make care attitude. Yeah, yeah, come at me, world,
Speaker 1: I got your brot unapologetic, Yeah, a little a little
Speaker 1: rock star in the form of a software engineer. He's
Speaker 1: a he's a really interesting story. He is. And partially
Speaker 1: because as I was researching this, I found a lot
Speaker 1: of conflicting information, maybe not on the big points, but
Speaker 1: on little details. Yeah, which tells you that perhaps the
Speaker 1: story has changed with the telling. Every now and again,
Speaker 1: you know it's yes, sometimes we see this right, Well,
Speaker 1: we'll go back and we'll start looking. And also depends
Speaker 1: upon who is it that's ronicling the story, right, So
Speaker 1: sometimes you get it from the person themselves. Sometimes that's
Speaker 1: the most reliable sour. Sometimes it can be less reliable.
Speaker 1: Larry Ellison is a guy who's been known to embellish,
Speaker 1: used maybe some extravagant word play. Perhaps we'll say, so
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk really about not just the company, but
Speaker 1: the personality attached to that company, because he really does
Speaker 1: have a remarkable story. It's almost akin to what you
Speaker 1: would see for the origin of a superhero, like the
Speaker 1: Childhood Superhero. Yeah. For instance, he was born to a
Speaker 1: single mom. She was only nineteen at the time in
Speaker 1: New York in nineteen four and he never knew his
Speaker 1: biological dad, right, and he only met his his mother
Speaker 1: much later on. I mean he was he was still
Speaker 1: a baby when he and his mom parted ways. He
Speaker 1: didn't meet her again until he was an adult, so
Speaker 1: for a long time he didn't even realize that his
Speaker 1: biological mother was someone other than the person who raised him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think he knew he was adopted till he
Speaker 1: was twelve years old. Yeah. The reason why she gave
Speaker 1: him up, she she actually gave him to the care
Speaker 1: of her aunt and uncle, was that he got sick.
Speaker 1: He caught pneumonia when he was just nine months old.
Speaker 1: She was nineteen, unmarried, just not not in a position
Speaker 1: to be able to care for him, and so she
Speaker 1: ended up giving him over to the care of Lilian
Speaker 1: and Louie Ellison, her aunt and uncle. Yes, Um and
Speaker 1: Lily was a very good, very loving adoptive mother. Larry
Speaker 1: Ellison says that his adoptive father was less so Yeah,
Speaker 1: Louis essentially, according to Larry, Ellison said that, uh, Larry
Speaker 1: was was no good, that he was never going to
Speaker 1: amount to anything. Yeah, and you know, Louie Ellison was
Speaker 1: in real estate. He made a lot of money and
Speaker 1: then during the Great Depression he lost it all. So
Speaker 1: maybe he was just a really unhappy man, could have
Speaker 1: been very bitter because of losing that fortune, and was
Speaker 1: pretty much all about undermining Larry's confidence, at least according
Speaker 1: again to Larry's tale of his childhood. And so Larry
Speaker 1: goes on. He goes to school. He's smart, but not
Speaker 1: like the kind of student who really applies himself. He
Speaker 1: knows his math and he knows his science. He's pretty
Speaker 1: good at it. But um, he also has trouble with
Speaker 1: authority figures, and that's what school is full of. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it turns out that if you, I guess, you know,
Speaker 1: when you get a home life where you're being undermined
Speaker 1: by the person that you assume is your dad over
Speaker 1: and over again, maybe authority is something you bristle at. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're trying to gain some control over your own fortune.
Speaker 1: But he gets through high school and then he goes
Speaker 1: on to college where obviously he just coasts through his
Speaker 1: classes and graduates, right, That is not right. No, he
Speaker 1: went to University of Illinois and he was named Science
Speaker 1: Student of the Year. But then he dropped out. But
Speaker 1: he did so because he suffered a tragedy. Yeah. His
Speaker 1: adoptive mother us away. Uh, two years after he started college.
Speaker 1: So he leaves because the woman he identifies as his mother,
Speaker 1: the woman who raised him, has passed away. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean I can't personally really blame him for that. No.
Speaker 1: I mean that's a truly traumatic event, and he would
Speaker 1: try to make another go at it. It wasn't like
Speaker 1: he just dropped out of college and that was it.
Speaker 1: He did try. He re enrolled, but in a different school. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he went to University of Chicago and then he dropped
Speaker 1: out after one semester. And I don't think it's because
Speaker 1: his adoptive mother died again. No, No, it turns out
Speaker 1: that that's a one time only thing then, unless unless
Speaker 1: she's a zombie. No. As far as I know, even
Speaker 1: in the craziest of Larry Ellison's backstories, I never heard
Speaker 1: of zombie adopted mom. He then moved to California, which
Speaker 1: is the place he gotta be. Yeah, Apparently he started
Speaker 1: looking around for a job, and he kind of was
Speaker 1: doing pretty much any job he could he could find.
Speaker 1: In those early early days. He worked at places Fireman's
Speaker 1: Fund in Wells, Fargo, where he did technical work, and
Speaker 1: then a brief stint as a programmer at DOL. Now
Speaker 1: what's interesting is that he didn't study computer science in college.
Speaker 1: He didn't learn to program in school so much. He had,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe some familiarity with it, but he really
Speaker 1: started looking into that once he had left school, and
Speaker 1: he did it by just sort of grabbing books on
Speaker 1: the subject, reading and studying about them, and then kind
Speaker 1: of learning from their programming for dummies. Yeah, before there
Speaker 1: was such a thing. But essentially, yeah, this is the
Speaker 1: early days of computer programming in a lot of ways, right,
Speaker 1: Like we're talking about an era where you were starting
Speaker 1: to see computers emerge out of high tech companies and
Speaker 1: universities and finally make their way into enterprise into businesses.
Speaker 1: This is really before the era of personal computers, and
Speaker 1: they're still really big. At that time, they were still
Speaker 1: pretty big, and so he was teaching himself how to
Speaker 1: program from various books. So it wasn't like he was
Speaker 1: flying by the seat of his pants. He knew what
Speaker 1: he was doing, but he came at it from a
Speaker 1: very obtuse angle. So then he started at a company
Speaker 1: called Ampex Corporation in nineteen seventy three, which was in
Speaker 1: the business of making generators and electric motors. Now by
Speaker 1: the seventies, by the time he started, there wasn't really
Speaker 1: working on generators and electric motors anymore. They were working
Speaker 1: on making multi track tapes, like you know, eight track tapes,
Speaker 1: largely for data recording, not for not for putting you know,
Speaker 1: John Denver's greatest hits on him instead of that rocky
Speaker 1: Mountain high you can overlap the information, Shanna, Well, this
Speaker 1: is more about looking at you know, like computer data,
Speaker 1: like storing computer information to magnetic tape. In fact, Ampex
Speaker 1: was contracted by the c i A to create a
Speaker 1: large terrior bit mass storage system on tapes. So that's
Speaker 1: kind of what they were doing. Yeah. So, and this
Speaker 1: is also mark the beginning of Ellison's love affair with
Speaker 1: working relationship with the c i A, which would become
Speaker 1: an important component in the formation of Oracle. So Wison
Speaker 1: would start to build databases for Ampex. Now that also
Speaker 1: is very important, So there may be listeners out there
Speaker 1: who said, I've heard the name Oracle. I don't know
Speaker 1: what they do. You know, there's a lot of people
Speaker 1: who say that, Yeah. I mean even for a long time,
Speaker 1: I cover technology for a living and and I didn't
Speaker 1: have a whole lot of crossover with Oracle. It was
Speaker 1: the name that I was always familiar with. So when
Speaker 1: they started off, Oracle was really about making databases. And again,
Speaker 1: this isn't an era before you had spreadsheet programs or
Speaker 1: database programs that are all throughout software suites these days.
Speaker 1: This was before all that happened, and so you needed
Speaker 1: to have essentially proprietary databases created. So these were all
Speaker 1: kind of made from scratch at the like one off,
Speaker 1: I need you to make this for me, can make
Speaker 1: it for me, right. It may be like that organization
Speaker 1: I just worked with, they needed something that was going
Speaker 1: to manage supply chains and sales and shipping. But this
Speaker 1: other one has nothing to do with sales. It's all
Speaker 1: about production. So it's a similar thing, but it's going
Speaker 1: to need a different implementation. There weren't any like one
Speaker 1: stop shops for that stuff. You had to have it
Speaker 1: built for you. So that's kind of what he specialized in,
Speaker 1: and that's really what Oracle specialized in when it first started,
Speaker 1: was in database design and implementation. Now, after that, Oracle
Speaker 1: would expand lots of other enterprise stuff, essentially creating all
Speaker 1: the systems that allow big companies to do all the
Speaker 1: behind the scenes work. The way that you would keep
Speaker 1: track of all the different, various moving parts of a
Speaker 1: big company. That's what Oracle does. They create that these days. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but when they started growing, they started off with this
Speaker 1: one solution they made specifically for the CIA and adjusting
Speaker 1: it instead of creating something completely new for they could
Speaker 1: adapt what they had done for other implementations. We'll talk
Speaker 1: more about that right after this quick break. While he
Speaker 1: was at Ampex and working on these database projects, he
Speaker 1: met two people who would end up being his co
Speaker 1: founders for Oracle. In fact, depending upon the version of
Speaker 1: the story of Oracle you read, they're technically the co founders,
Speaker 1: and then Allison came on shortly thereafter. This is one
Speaker 1: of those places where you get some conflicting information. So
Speaker 1: there was Robert Bob Nimrod Minor and Ed Oates. Those
Speaker 1: were the other Ampex employees who would become co founders
Speaker 1: of Oracle, and they both graduated with degrees in mathematics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they did have the degree right where Larry Ellison
Speaker 1: might have had a little more hootspah. Yeah. Now, el
Speaker 1: Ellison definitely comes across as sort of like if I
Speaker 1: were to compare him to some other iconic businessman, I
Speaker 1: would say that Ellison is in many ways similar to
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs, and in fact that two of them were
Speaker 1: very close friends. When Steve Jobs was still alive, they
Speaker 1: were very close friends. Steve Jobs, uh was the salesman
Speaker 1: for Apple more than anything else. He was the who
Speaker 1: was able to sell this idea of personal computers, whereas
Speaker 1: Steve Wozniak, the co founder of Apple, was largely the
Speaker 1: guy who was actually building the systems. Ellison he got
Speaker 1: his hands dirty. I mean he was coding, but he
Speaker 1: was really more uh more adept at the handshaking and
Speaker 1: salesmanship side of things in many ways. Yeah. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: before Ed and Bob and Larry all created Oracle together,
Speaker 1: Larry did take a brief stint at another company. Um.
Speaker 1: He worked at a place called Precision Elements, which basically
Speaker 1: was another data storage company, right, So he worked there.
Speaker 1: He was contracted out to work with this, or maybe
Speaker 1: Minor and Oates were, but they were all working on
Speaker 1: similar projects right again, as this database technology that was
Speaker 1: still coming into fruition in the mid seventies. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: about that time, some accounts say that Bob and Ed
Speaker 1: decided to are their own company and they invited Larry
Speaker 1: to join. Yeah, this would be Software Development Laboratories or
Speaker 1: s d L and other accounts. Larry says that the
Speaker 1: company he was working for, Precision Elements, had more work
Speaker 1: than they could handle, and so he encouraged Bob and
Speaker 1: D to bid on some of their work. So that
Speaker 1: Bob and D formed this company as contractors for the
Speaker 1: company that Ellison was. But whose idea it was to
Speaker 1: form this company is a little up in there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it gets a little hard to determine based upon the
Speaker 1: multiple histories out there. But no matter what, they do
Speaker 1: end up forming this company, the SDL company, the Software
Speaker 1: Development Laboratories, and one of, if not their very first
Speaker 1: clients was the c I A. Yes, they needed a
Speaker 1: database for a secret project they were working on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this secret project had a code name, and that
Speaker 1: code name was Oracle. Yeah. So it turns out the
Speaker 1: name of the company actually comes out of I kid you,
Speaker 1: not actual spy stuff, yes, which is kind of cool
Speaker 1: now and scary. We don't know what spy stuff exactly. Well,
Speaker 1: it's a database. I would imagine it's some form of
Speaker 1: way of keeping track of people what the c I
Speaker 1: A think are batties, yes, or at least people you
Speaker 1: should keep an eye on. Yes. I mean, granted, it
Speaker 1: could have easily just as been a database that the
Speaker 1: CIA used to keep track of their assets. I mean,
Speaker 1: I had nothing to do with keeping tabs on various
Speaker 1: individuals that they thought might be somewhat suspect. Yeah. Larry
Speaker 1: is a big advocate for having a massive database of
Speaker 1: all the law enforcement databases in the United States. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Ellison has often advocated for what some people might call
Speaker 1: more of a surveillance state. Yes, and that gets a
Speaker 1: little hairy. Whatever the case, we don't know what the
Speaker 1: Oracle project really was ultimately, apart from the fact that
Speaker 1: needed this database and Ellison thought the name was pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Around the same time, ed Oats is reading up on
Speaker 1: some research that had been done previously, and it was
Speaker 1: about IBM and a language they had developed called sequel
Speaker 1: or s q L. Now sequel was useful, but it
Speaker 1: hadn't really been rolled out for commercial practice yet, and
Speaker 1: it was allowing for a type of database called a
Speaker 1: relational database, which was a new way of thinking about
Speaker 1: organizing information. So you would say, you have different points
Speaker 1: of data, and then these different points have relations to
Speaker 1: one another, and a relational database would allow you to
Speaker 1: search based upon those relationships. You're no longer looking at
Speaker 1: just a cell. Now you're able to pull up a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of different information that all relates to whatever
Speaker 1: your query happens to be. It's a pretty basic idea
Speaker 1: that is implemented widely these days, so it seems obvious
Speaker 1: on the face of it, but in the mid seventies
Speaker 1: this was a brand new concept. I'd imagine that this
Speaker 1: process would normal take a lot of time, but since
Speaker 1: these gentlemen were well versed with databases, they were given
Speaker 1: two years to make this solution for the CIA, and
Speaker 1: it only took them one. But you know, like you
Speaker 1: mentioned before, Bob Minor did a lot of the architecture.
Speaker 1: He was kind of the Wazniac of this first project. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think one of my favorite things about the official
Speaker 1: product Oracle would come out with Now that they've done
Speaker 1: this project for the CIA, they were ready to take
Speaker 1: this database model and sell it as a product to companies.
Speaker 1: They go out to sell it to companies, but Ellison
Speaker 1: makes a suggestion that is a little weird, which is
Speaker 1: that let's call our software version two instead of version one.
Speaker 1: The logic behind that was any company that looks out
Speaker 1: there and sees a product and they see that it's
Speaker 1: labeled version one, that company is going to think, well,
Speaker 1: this is a brand new thing. It's totally untested, it's unproven.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to invest thousands of dollars in that.
Speaker 1: I don't want to pay to beta test. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: want something that has a proven track record. So Alison said,
Speaker 1: let's just hall version one version two and fool everyone
Speaker 1: into thinking, oh, this is the refined product. And they
Speaker 1: bring on another person to help them with development, Bruce Scott,
Speaker 1: who a lot of times is referred to as the
Speaker 1: fourth co founder of Oracle. Yeah. By the time that
Speaker 1: they get up to nineteen eighty, they started looking at
Speaker 1: many computing as in like the sort of the desktop computers.
Speaker 1: Now they're looking at desktop because that's after Apple had
Speaker 1: gotten into the game. Commodore was creating I still have
Speaker 1: my Commodore sixty four. Oh my gosh. Wow. And then
Speaker 1: you started seeing IBM was about to launch the personal
Speaker 1: computer around this time. So this was a shot across
Speaker 1: the battle saying there's gonna be a big change in
Speaker 1: computing coming up. That meant that companies that previously would
Speaker 1: not have been able to afford investing in computer systems
Speaker 1: because they were these huge, you know, twenty thou dollar
Speaker 1: machines per machine, they would now be to go into
Speaker 1: these smaller versions, these Apple computers or the IBM PC,
Speaker 1: and for a fraction of that cost they could buy
Speaker 1: ten machines, you know. So suddenly started seeing a lot
Speaker 1: of companies say, maybe we can finally digitize our business.
Speaker 1: We can bring computers into this and so Oracle, Larry
Speaker 1: Ellison in particular, says, these are markets we should target.
Speaker 1: We should make sure we create products that can run
Speaker 1: on those computers, because how we're never really going to
Speaker 1: be hitting the home user. We'll be able to hit
Speaker 1: all those small to medium sized businesses that are going
Speaker 1: to want to operate the same way as these bigger companies.
Speaker 1: So this was a kind of a ce change. This
Speaker 1: was Larry Ellison saying we have to go after this group.
Speaker 1: And more than just a C change in that sense,
Speaker 1: they also started programming in the C program language. But
Speaker 1: that's you know, that's that's me being being silly with puns.
Speaker 1: Now it's very clever, and they finally officially changed the
Speaker 1: name of their company to Oracle. By then there unn
Speaker 1: version two point three. They start building their business and
Speaker 1: it ends up being a pretty dramatic rise. They're they're
Speaker 1: doing really well in those first few years. For example,
Speaker 1: Oracle split their stock ten times. Now here's how a
Speaker 1: stock split works, in case you aren't aware, Yes, please
Speaker 1: explain it to me, okay. In the stock split, company's
Speaker 1: board director says, all right, well, we're gonna do so.
Speaker 1: We're gonna take the number of outstanding stocks that are
Speaker 1: out there, and we're going to increase that number. So
Speaker 1: I started off with a hundred shears, are I'm gonna
Speaker 1: double that Now it's two hundred shares. So ariel, if
Speaker 1: you had two shares of stock in my company, now
Speaker 1: you would suddenly have four shares. But the value of
Speaker 1: each of those shares will be cut in half because
Speaker 1: you can't change the value of the company this way. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: you would just be magically making a company more valuable
Speaker 1: every time you split the stock. However, by reducing the
Speaker 1: price point per share, you create more up tunities for
Speaker 1: small or midsized investors to buy shares in your in
Speaker 1: your company, which can stimulate even more growth. Yes, so
Speaker 1: by splitting ten times, that meant Oracle was getting to
Speaker 1: a point where they were seeing their stock price grow
Speaker 1: where they felt, we need to split the stock so
Speaker 1: that we can reduce the price on a per share
Speaker 1: basis and improve liquidity. We have more to cover, but first,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. Now. You say, you say
Speaker 1: that you cannot just magically decide how much your company
Speaker 1: is worth. But yeah, Oracle kind of tried that a
Speaker 1: couple of times a couple of times, and it got
Speaker 1: them into a little bit of trouble. So they misrepresented
Speaker 1: their revenues for three quarters in a row to bump
Speaker 1: up their stock prices. Right, that was the accusation. So
Speaker 1: Oracle says, all right, well, we've got a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of handshake agreements out there with companies. These companies said
Speaker 1: we're going to buy your software. The actual deal hasn't
Speaker 1: happened yet. What was happening was that Oracle was posting
Speaker 1: these revenue figures that were not actually, you know, real,
Speaker 1: because those sales had not all happened yet. They were
Speaker 1: possibly real. They were imaginative. They were imaginative. But this
Speaker 1: isn't the only time that they kind of played a
Speaker 1: little fast and loose with numbers. Uh. In two thousand one,
Speaker 1: they actually kind of, uh another accusation, got accused of
Speaker 1: insider trading. Yeah. The accusation is they knew that their
Speaker 1: company was not going to be worth as much once
Speaker 1: the quarterly earnings were announced, and so they went ahead
Speaker 1: and sold off a bunch of stock before it dropped. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not great, it is uh, yeah, that's illegal. As
Speaker 1: it turns out, that whole mess would take years to reconcile.
Speaker 1: It got real ugly, but ultimately Ellison kind of got
Speaker 1: out of that. The Ellison has been involved in a
Speaker 1: few kind of notable strange lawsuits. So there was a
Speaker 1: case where Ellison agreed to donate a large amount of
Speaker 1: money to a nonprofit charity as part of a settlement
Speaker 1: to get out of an accusation, and then he didn't.
Speaker 1: I was about to say, that's really great to build
Speaker 1: some goodwill up with your rectifying the issue. But I
Speaker 1: guess if there's no follow through. He said in two
Speaker 1: thousand five he was going to make a one hundred
Speaker 1: fifteen million dollar donation to Harvard University had for a
Speaker 1: special medical center, and that made headlines. I mean, that
Speaker 1: was a huge announcement. But in two thousand and six
Speaker 1: he said, you know what, never mind, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to make that hundred fifteen million dollar donation I said
Speaker 1: I was going to make. And the reason he changed
Speaker 1: his mind is that the president of Harvard University had
Speaker 1: stepped down owned and he was friends with Harvard University's
Speaker 1: president at the time, so this was sort of I
Speaker 1: made that agreement when my buddy was running things, but
Speaker 1: now my buddy's not there, so I don't really want
Speaker 1: to do that anymore. Meanwhile, the medical center had already
Speaker 1: started kind of doing what O Oracle had done a
Speaker 1: decade earlier. They had started spending money they didn't have yet.
Speaker 1: They started making hires and allocating where that money was
Speaker 1: going to go because they thought it was coming in,
Speaker 1: which is a valuable lesson for everybody. Don't make plans
Speaker 1: to spend money you don't have yet. This is why
Speaker 1: so many people get in trouble with credit cards. It
Speaker 1: is I mean this was just on dollar scale. And
Speaker 1: not to say that he hasn't been philanthropic. He has.
Speaker 1: But Ellison has this reputation of being very outspoken, very opinionated,
Speaker 1: very declarative in his statements, and then not his behavior
Speaker 1: has not always followed through with that. He was notorious
Speaker 1: about taking a very close approach to holding onto Oracle
Speaker 1: and determining what the company did, like almost on micromanaging approach. Yes,
Speaker 1: he resigned from being the CEO in two thousand and fourteen,
Speaker 1: but he is still very active in Oracle's future. Yes,
Speaker 1: he's the chairman of the company, and reportedly he still
Speaker 1: takes a very very close approach to handling Oracle's business,
Speaker 1: so he can't quite let go. Yeah, he ended up
Speaker 1: kind of handing the reins over to two people to
Speaker 1: be CEO, not co CEO, that they aren't called COCO.
Speaker 1: Oracle is two CEOs. There's Mark Hurd and there's Software
Speaker 1: Cats and not very many people had known very much
Speaker 1: about her before she became CEO. She was already executive
Speaker 1: with the Oracle. She came out of nowhere, but she
Speaker 1: was sort of thought of as kind of like Ellison's
Speaker 1: right hand woman, who was there to really make sure
Speaker 1: the stuff that Ellison wanted to happen would happen. Now,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that she kind of wasn't super well known,
Speaker 1: she is a unfortune's most powerful winning list. That position
Speaker 1: is a very powerful one. So Oracle incredibly successful even
Speaker 1: with the various problems legal problems that is having. Right
Speaker 1: has had a couple of big, major ones that threatened
Speaker 1: the company. I mean that scandal about the revenue, the
Speaker 1: misrepresentation of revenue. A lot of people said, oh, this
Speaker 1: might be the downfall of this company. And Ellison had
Speaker 1: famously wanted his company to overtake Microsoft as the most
Speaker 1: powerful software company in the world. If you had bought
Speaker 1: a single share of Oracle stock, it would have cost
Speaker 1: you fifteen bucks. Then to the stock would split multiple times.
Speaker 1: By the time the stock was done with all those splits,
Speaker 1: that one share would have been multiplied into three four shares,
Speaker 1: and then Oracle I don't know what's trading at at
Speaker 1: the time we're recording this, but when we were researching,
Speaker 1: at one point it was trading at forty six dollars
Speaker 1: per share, So you moll to play that six dollars
Speaker 1: your fifteen dollars we've turned into fifteen thousand dollars. This
Speaker 1: is why, while there have been some Shenanigans, investors overall
Speaker 1: tend to be fairly happy with how Oracle has done
Speaker 1: things Now. Oracle has, you know, gone down the list
Speaker 1: of Forbes Top companies a little bit in the past
Speaker 1: few years, but they do have really big plans to
Speaker 1: get to rise back up in the ranks. For instance,
Speaker 1: they're delving into AI, and AI sort of autonomous database
Speaker 1: approach could end up doing things like monitoring all this stuff,
Speaker 1: detecting trends that might indicate a problem before the problem
Speaker 1: is evident. It may automatically send messages to various managers
Speaker 1: saying we've detected a problem in this section. That means
Speaker 1: we project that an X number of weeks that problem
Speaker 1: is going to impact you. It's good to a plan
Speaker 1: for that now before it happens. I wouldn't mind having
Speaker 1: some AI to help me minimize my say, and I
Speaker 1: certainly don't have as nearly a complicated life as the
Speaker 1: various components of an enormous like global corporation. So it's
Speaker 1: a very sophisticated approach. I have some fun facts and
Speaker 1: things about Larry Els and I wanted to tell you
Speaker 1: because I want to get your honest, first time reaction
Speaker 1: on record on microphone. Well, I hope I don't disappoint.
Speaker 1: Not all of these are like super jaw dropping things.
Speaker 1: I just kind of want to see what you think
Speaker 1: about them. So we both know that he's famous for
Speaker 1: being blunt and sometimes outrageous, but he wants skipped a
Speaker 1: keynote at his company's own conference as CEO. He skipped
Speaker 1: the keynote so that he could sail on Oracle Team
Speaker 1: USA's yacht in the America's Cup Race. You know, I
Speaker 1: cannot fully blame him. I would much rather sail an
Speaker 1: American Cup race than heavy keynote. Okay, well, how about this.
Speaker 1: Did you come across information about trash Gate? Probably? Trash
Speaker 1: Gate was another controversy in the history of Oracle, and
Speaker 1: so this was when Oracle and Microsoft really budding heads.
Speaker 1: I mean, Bellison has always wanted Oracle to overtake Microsoft.
Speaker 1: So they hired a company to go through Microsoft's garbage
Speaker 1: and look for any evidence of Microsoft executives up to
Speaker 1: some sort of shenanigans. Particularly when it came to the
Speaker 1: antitrust lawsuits that Microsoft was the subject of around the
Speaker 1: late nineties. And so Larry Ellison when he was confronted
Speaker 1: with this, saying, you hired a private detective agency to
Speaker 1: essentially go through a company's garbage. I mean that seems
Speaker 1: a little unethical in and of itself. He said, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's unethical, but it's not illegal. It's not. But then
Speaker 1: to me that says a lot about a person, like
Speaker 1: somehow it being legal makes it okay. Like I tend
Speaker 1: to go for the ethical unethical as being the guide
Speaker 1: of whether something's okay or not. Uh. You know that
Speaker 1: Larry Ellison owned one of the Hawaiian islands. I did not. Yep,
Speaker 1: he bought Lania. It's one of the small ones. Technically,
Speaker 1: he owns like nineties something per cent of it, like
Speaker 1: almost all of the island. He once sued an entire city.
Speaker 1: He sued San Jose in two thousand. Do you know
Speaker 1: why he sued San Jose in two thousand? For giggles? Nope,
Speaker 1: it was well, I don't know, I guess, I guess
Speaker 1: ultimately kind of. So Ellison is also a pilot, and
Speaker 1: he also has several private planes, including two military jets.
Speaker 1: He owns two military jets. He likes to go where
Speaker 1: he wants to go when he wants to go there.
Speaker 1: But San Jose has a noise ordinance, and that noise
Speaker 1: ordinance says that aircraft above a certain size should not
Speaker 1: be allowed to fly in or out of San Jose
Speaker 1: after a certain time. Seems reasonable. Ellison didn't think, so
Speaker 1: he took the city to court and said that he
Speaker 1: has very large, very private plane should be allowed to
Speaker 1: take off and land at night, and that's it it
Speaker 1: should be. And Judge Jeremy Fogel said, for you will
Speaker 1: make an exception. Really, so he didn't change the law.
Speaker 1: The law still stands, but Larry Ellison is exempt from it. Well,
Speaker 1: at least now when people get woken up by airplane noises,
Speaker 1: they could go Larry and shake their fists. That's my
Speaker 1: favorite book about Larry Ellison. My favorite is because the
Speaker 1: title is the difference between God and Larry Ellison. God
Speaker 1: doesn't think he's Larry Ellison. I probably shouldn't say my
Speaker 1: thoughts on that one, as I was hoping the book
Speaker 1: name would be Larius Ellison picked a peck of private planes,
Speaker 1: not just private planes. You know what. Also he picked
Speaker 1: a peck of what. According to the author of that book,
Speaker 1: Ellison would date as many as three Oracle employees simultaneously. Oh,
Speaker 1: he's also in one of the Marvel Cinemac Universe movies.
Speaker 1: He yes, he and Elon Musk are both an iron
Speaker 1: Man too. They're two of the big wigs at the
Speaker 1: the Big Meeting. And some say that Robert Downey Jr's
Speaker 1: portrayal of Tony Stark a k. A iron Man is
Speaker 1: based in part of Larry Ellison. I can see that.
Speaker 1: I can totally believe that very colorful individual. Um, he
Speaker 1: likes to wear all of the colors. He is a
Speaker 1: remarkable person in many ways. I like, he's so complicated,
Speaker 1: Like in some ways it's incredibly inspiring to come from
Speaker 1: a background where he did not know his parents, never
Speaker 1: knew his father, and and and the people who were
Speaker 1: raising him were like, no, you're not going to make it.
Speaker 1: You're not at least is adopted. You're not gonna do
Speaker 1: anything good, And and dropping out of college twice, and
Speaker 1: then becoming essentially a self made computer programmer and then
Speaker 1: going on to co found the second most valuable software
Speaker 1: come in the world. Ah, that's an amazing story. It's
Speaker 1: also complicated by the fact that he comes across as
Speaker 1: a tony start kind of guy, where he seems to
Speaker 1: project this feeling of being the most competent, confident, and
Speaker 1: intelligent person in the room. Like that, at least that's
Speaker 1: his own perception of himself, according to the portrayals I've
Speaker 1: read of him. I mean, but regardless, he doesn't just
Speaker 1: talk a big game. He plays a big game. Oh
Speaker 1: brings He's very successful. So that is really inspiring. So
Speaker 1: I would have to say, like for for us, when
Speaker 1: we talk about the brink and that moment, really this
Speaker 1: one comes all the way back to Ellison just deciding
Speaker 1: to go after that software space super hard. You know.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind Microsoft was founded in the mid seventies.
Speaker 1: They had a headstart and a different focus than a
Speaker 1: base business that Oracle is after, and Larry Ellison didn't
Speaker 1: care about that. He just kept on pushing and still
Speaker 1: does to this day. So interesting guy. I am curious
Speaker 1: to see how Oracle goes while Larry Elson maybe takes
Speaker 1: a further step away from the company. Eventually he's going
Speaker 1: to have to and what will happen to the company
Speaker 1: after that, but a fascinating company and a fascinating person
Speaker 1: behind it. Obviously the other co founders of Oracle also
Speaker 1: very important, but both of them left in the eighties
Speaker 1: and nineties, and Ellison stuck with it the whole way,
Speaker 1: and by all accounts people said Oracle was really Ellison's
Speaker 1: company when you get down to it. So another person
Speaker 1: who has really made their stamp. I think Larry Ellison
Speaker 1: is going to be another one of those figures where
Speaker 1: twenty years in the future, people will say, whenever Oracle
Speaker 1: makes a big move, how would Larry have handled this?
Speaker 1: And it probably would have been on a private plane
Speaker 1: with a whole lot of very expensive shampato. I think
Speaker 1: you're right. I think it's a private plane towing a
Speaker 1: yacht and and him saying I'm gonna go race boats. Yes,
Speaker 1: if you want to hear more technical details, there are
Speaker 1: some episodes about Oracle over on the show Tech Stuff
Speaker 1: that I host. There did a three part series over there,
Speaker 1: so I go more into the technical detail of the
Speaker 1: company on that side, but we really just wanted to
Speaker 1: focus on kind of the fun stuff here. We are
Speaker 1: going to wrap this up. So I have been Jonathan
Speaker 1: Strickland and I have been aerial casting. If you would
Speaker 1: like to learn more about what we've talked about, as
Speaker 1: well as keep track of all of our episodes, make
Speaker 1: sure you visit our website at the Brink podcast dot show,
Speaker 1: or you can email us at Feedback at the Brink
Speaker 1: podcast dot show.