Fortunately Ellison's DNA wipes off easily with warm, soapy water.
Watching Larry Ellison Become Larry Ellison – The DNA of a Winner
31–40 of 82 posts
Re: Watching Larry Ellison Become Larry Ellison – The DNA of a Winner
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
It wouldn't surprise me if Oracle were responsible for more useful open source than every "modern startup" combined.
Why don't you make at least a token attempt to research and prove such a strong claim? Most of their open source was acquired, not generated internally, and is demonstrably less active than it was before it became Oracle. Examples include everything from Sun or MySQL. Oracle has probably done more harm to open source than any other company including Microsoft.
Oracle is a better steward of these projects than a bankrupt Sun would have been. Besides , Oracle has been an active contributor to Linux for years.
Re: Watching Larry Ellison Become Larry Ellison – The DNA of a Winner
#33I kind of hate articles that start off by implicitly buying into the whole winners vs losers ethos. 'The DNA of a winner' - as if it was both an obvious fact that 'winners' and 'winning' are inherently superior to 'losers' and 'losing', and that it is an admirable goal to always be 'winning' all the time, in that totalizing way where you only win if others lose. And who doesn't want to be a 'winner,' right? I mean, who wants to be a pathetic loser like anyone who doesn't have 46 billion dollars? Certainly not me!
How about 'successful' or 'exceptional'? Certainly says the same thing without the implied value judgment against those who don't share the same value system
Re: Watching Larry Ellison Become Larry Ellison – The DNA of a Winner
#34You can tell who is an entrepreneur and who isn't by those who talk shit about Larry and Oracle. Some here seem to think Entrepreneurship has changed into a kumbaya group hug where we just attend conferences together , check code into GitHub, might make a bit of money if we ask nicely, or sell "ads", and hope for an early exit because of our sheer brilliance, leaving the dirty work to our future parent. The most valu…
I'm an entrepreneur and I think Larry Ellison is a turd. Am I blowing your mind? People start and run companies for a variety of motives. Obliterating the competition is one of them, but it seems to correlate with being a pretty awful person to be around, so not everyone chooses to play by those rules. Ultimately you get to choose-and are responsible for-the rules you play by. If there's one big lesson of entrepreneu…
If you don't want to obliterate the competition, then software is probably a bad place to be if you want to grow big. Winner take all seems to be the rule rather than the exception.
Re: Watching Larry Ellison Become Larry Ellison – The DNA of a Winner
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm an entrepreneur and I think Larry Ellison is a turd. Am I blowing your mind? People start and run companies for a variety of motives. Obliterating the competition is one of them, but it seems to correlate with being a pretty awful person to be around, so not everyone chooses to play by those rules. Ultimately you get to choose-and are responsible for-the rules you play by. If there's one big lesson of entrepreneu…
If you don't want to obliterate the competition, then software is probably a bad place to be if you want to grow big. Winner take all seems to be the rule rather than the exception.
"If you want to grow big". There's plenty of room at the bottom.
Re: Watching Larry Ellison Become Larry Ellison – The DNA of a Winner
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you don't want to obliterate the competition, then software is probably a bad place to be if you want to grow big. Winner take all seems to be the rule rather than the exception.
"If you want to grow big". There's plenty of room at the bottom.
Do you think that anyone who runs a large software company is a turd?
Re: Watching Larry Ellison Become Larry Ellison – The DNA of a Winner
#37You can tell who is an entrepreneur and who isn't by those who talk shit about Larry and Oracle. Some here seem to think Entrepreneurship has changed into a kumbaya group hug where we just attend conferences together , check code into GitHub, might make a bit of money if we ask nicely, or sell "ads", and hope for an early exit because of our sheer brilliance, leaving the dirty work to our future parent. The most valu…
> You can tell who is an entrepreneur and who isn't by those who talk shit about Larry and Oracle.
There is room for a variety of entrepreneurial styles. In economics as in a natural ecosystem, there is room for an astounding variety of survival strategies.
The Disney movie "The Lion King" just isn't referenced enough on HN. Your comment is roughly equivalent to saying "You can tell who is a successful species on the savannah by those who talk shit about Mufasa." The truth is that apex predators like lions are very cool, but, by biomass and evolutionary longevity not nearly the most successful animals in any ecosystem.
And, uniquely to humans, there is a meta-game, wherein what we say about the world influences the world. This effect is so strong that we can indeed redefine what success means with our words. Success in nature is, unambiguously, survival. Live long enough to reproduce, die happy. But we humans can and often do alter this definition. And we do it in economics as well. The traditional definition of capitalist success is (to paraphrase) "die a billionaire". That's a valid definition, and I wouldn't take it away from anyone, but realize there are other valid choices who's existence doesn't affect the validity of Larry's credo.
I would argue that the problem with that definition is the fact that success has to be personally attributable value. Money is, in the end, just a kind of primordial "like". Larry has amassed billions of "likes". But how much more value could he have created had he not worried so much about localizing the rewards?
I'm glad you want to be an apex predator, but I don't think you'll get very far by insisting that the world only needs (or would only benefit from having) apex predators.
Re: Watching Larry Ellison Become Larry Ellison – The DNA of a Winner
#38"Larry was loathe to sell any of the company stock; he generally took a dim view of VCs and preferred to bootstrap" Which is why 37 years after its founding, and after 28 years as a public company, he still owns 25% of the company (per Bloomberg). All the more remarkable considering Oracle is worth $173 billion.
'he generally took a dim view of VCs and preferred to bootstrap" that's pretty counter-intuitive in today's bubble-blowing tech climate. we praise companies for raising the most money from the hippest VCs rather than customer retention, technology, and market position
After the first dotcom bubble just the opposite was praised arguably to the extreme. The answer is somewhere in the middle - focusing on profit from day 1 can stop you from doing things, but taking VC money from day 1 with no plan for revenue is also potentially fatal.
Re: Watching Larry Ellison Become Larry Ellison – The DNA of a Winner
#39You can tell who is an entrepreneur and who isn't by those who talk shit about Larry and Oracle. Some here seem to think Entrepreneurship has changed into a kumbaya group hug where we just attend conferences together , check code into GitHub, might make a bit of money if we ask nicely, or sell "ads", and hope for an early exit because of our sheer brilliance, leaving the dirty work to our future parent. The most valu…
Not all entrepreneurs are trying to build super valuable companies anymore. I am trying to build a super valuable developer ecosystem to be a part of. Watsi is trying to build a super valuable nonprofit health insurance network.
There's also reason to believe that being central in such a structure, one you do not own or control, is actually a good strategy for building a super valuable company.
And using different strategic framework can be a competetive advantage. It's harder for a competitor to destroy you completely if they don't understand your support system as well as you do. Doubly so if the framework you are using turns out to be ascendant regionally or globally.
Re: Watching Larry Ellison Become Larry Ellison – The DNA of a Winner
#40It's amazing how early and correct he was on what we now take for granted in databases: portable, networked, declarative, and relational.