Oracle co-founder and former CEO Larry Ellison has built a computer software empire over the last 40-plus years, growing the company into a global powerhouse, with some clear leadership lessons for others to see.
Key Details
- Ellison’s path to success was not an easy one. After dropping out of college, Ellison moved to Silicon Valley, where he worked odd jobs, but his primary source of income was computer programming, he says in a Fox Business interview.
- In the beginning, Ellison’s plan for Oracle was to create a 50-person company filled with “people that I respected and enjoyed working with every day.”
- Now his company has more than 140,000 employees.
- Though Oracle has grown to become the second-largest software company in the world, Ellison is still looking ahead and planning for ways to make the company even greater.
Why it’s news
Larry Ellison is one of the most successful business leaders in the world. He has taken Oracle from a small startup in Silicon Vally to the second-largest software company in the world. As a result, Fox host Maria Bartiromo says: “You came from such humble beginnings, grew up on the south side of Chicago, dropped out of college, now you have collections of cars, jets, private homes, owning the island of Lanai,” referring to the Hawaiian island where he spends much of his time.
But that success came from his hard work, smarts, ambition, and reliance on others to be part of a successful team and business.
“I had all the disadvantages necessary for success,” Ellison says. Ellison says that living in the south side of Chicago makes a person eager to look for better opportunities in the world. Following his adoptive mother’s passing, Ellison dropped out of college, where he was studying as a premed student. He later studied physics and mathematics during an additional year of college, but he did not complete a degree.
Though his company has grown from a place of disadvantage to a place of great success, he does not plan to stop pushing forward any time soon.
Ellison has one main goal for Oracle: he wants it to surpass Amazon as a cloud database provider. Amazon, Ellison explains, provides its users with easy use and access to the cloud, but Oracle wants to build on that by providing the best data security.
He says business is similar to basketball in that a company should strive to win the championship, not just be content with a few wins.
Backing up a bit
Oracle has been prominently featured in the TikTok ban debate. As part of an attempt to remain in the U.S., TikTok has partnered with Oracle to store all of its U.S. user data at one of its data centers in Texas.
“Project Texas” would address many lawmakers’ security concerns with TikTok by keeping the data in a secure, U.S.-based location.
A preliminary agreement between TikTok and the White House last September featured Oracle as the solution, allowing them both to store user data and monitor the social-media company’s algorithm.
