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Watching Larry Ellison Become Larry Ellison – The DNA of a Winner

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Re: Watching Larry Ellison Become Larry Ellison – The DNA of a Winner

#41

Post by josefresco »

idlewords wrote: post #30
parasubvert wrote: post #15

You 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…

"Obliterating the competition is one of them" is not a goal or motive, but a tactic used to achieve a goal.

I think it's a stretch to assert that Ellison started in business solely to "obliterate" his competitors.

Re: Watching Larry Ellison Become Larry Ellison – The DNA of a Winner

#42

Post by notacoward »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #32
notacoward wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ask anyone who worked on Sun or MySQL whether they think Oracle has been a good steward, even compared to a volunteer-run foundation after the initial sponsor went bankrupt. For example, let's see what Sun's Bryan Cantrill had to say.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc

No, Oracle isn't a steward. At best they're just using those projects at cash cows. At worst they intended to destroy their erstwhile competitors instead of trying to outdo them. What they are most definitely not doing is devoting the resources necessary to improve or even maintain the health of those projects or their communities.

As for contributions to Linux, here are some figures.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/09/google...

Oracle doesn't even crack the top ten (none/unknown/consultant don't count). For a company that makes so much revenue selling open-source-based products, such as repackaging Red Hat's work and selling against them, 1.3% is a pretty paltry figure. What's really sad is that they contribute even less to anything else, from the Apache or OpenStack foundations down to the zillions of smaller independent projects. Just about the only comparable company with less open-source visibility is Amazon.

Lastly, don't think I or others can't see how your claims keep getting changed or reduced as you're proven wrong again and again. First it was about startups not valuing collaboration, then about Oracle producing more useful open source, then about being a good steward of the open source they've acquired . . . and even that isn't true. What's next? Saying we should still worship Larry because (as far as we know) he hasn't actually killed any babies for three whole months? Stop fawning and learn about the topic.

Re: Watching Larry Ellison Become Larry Ellison – The DNA of a Winner

#43

Post by amirmc »

adventured wrote: post #5

"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.

I've no idea why you've been downvoted. The numbers you point out seem to be accurate and not taking external investment does indeed leave you with more equity (as does sticking with the public company and the associated stock awards). I believe Microsoft was another company that didn't take much (if any) external investment.

It's worth pointing out that VC as an industry may not have been very mature around the time of these companies.

Re: Watching Larry Ellison Become Larry Ellison – The DNA of a Winner

#44

Post by mikestew »

adventured wrote: post #5

"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.

Kind of old-fashioned, don't you think? All that hard work and patience, building a solid product that people actually need. Much easier to win the VC/exit lottery with a Cat-Pictures-as-a-Service product.

On a side note, boy, I'm at a loss to come up with a reason for someone to down vote you. Factual statement, complete with a reference to where you got your information, and some little shit who doesn't like facts comes along and clicks the down button. That, or someone on a mobile device who tried to click one of two buttons that are separated by about four pixels, and hit the wrong one. The good news is that one of those can be fixed.

Re: Watching Larry Ellison Become Larry Ellison – The DNA of a Winner

#45

Post by orbifold »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #32
notacoward wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They kind of have to contribute to Linux in order for their database software to be fast.

Re: Watching Larry Ellison Become Larry Ellison – The DNA of a Winner

#46

Post by josefresco »

notacoward wrote: post #6

What a fawning piece of tripe. Uncle Larry's monomania and "others must fail" sociopathy might have worked for Oracle in a particular market and time, but it would be a recipe for utter failure in a modern startup where adaptability and collaboration are more valued. He didn't have unique entrepreneurial DNA. He had some skills that were valuable, others that were deficient, and enough luck that the former outweighed…

"He didn't have unique entrepreneurial DNA. He had some skills that were valuable, others that were deficient, and enough luck that the former outweighed the latter."

Luck plays a part in every success story. However, I find it dubious at best to consider that luck is the main factor in Ellison's and Oracle's success.

Re: Watching Larry Ellison Become Larry Ellison – The DNA of a Winner

#47

Post by pdevr »

"Softwar" is an insightful book about Larry Ellison, written by someone who had access to Ellison. I do not want to chime in with my own opinion, but would suggest to read the book to learn a lot about the history of Oracle and Ellison.

You will learn a lot of things, including:

* How being adopted affected his personality

* How he wandered around for a long time without any clear objectives

* How someone filed a false case of rape against him, and how he survived

* Death of one of his co-founders due to cancer

* How Oracle competed with other database companies, including the technical details (this is the part which I found most interesting)

Re: Watching Larry Ellison Become Larry Ellison – The DNA of a Winner

#48

Post by benjohnson »

javajosh wrote: post #37
parasubvert wrote: post #15

You 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…

Very well said.

My version of being an entrepreneur includes having enough time to be with my family and raise awesome children who will have the ability to be entrepreneurs as well.

Re: Watching Larry Ellison Become Larry Ellison – The DNA of a Winner

#49

Post by hkarthik »

> The “50 people” was motivated by his dream that we could just have the very, very best developers in the world, and hardly any salespeople—it was just talk. I think he came to appreciate the sales culture later on.

I found this statement interesting as many entrepreneurs still think this way. Seems like it's a right of passage to hate sales people and then later grow to love them as you watch them bring revenue into your company.

Re: Watching Larry Ellison Become Larry Ellison – The DNA of a Winner

#50

Post by unclebunkers »

parasubvert wrote: post #15

You 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 dunno, Notch seemed to do alright for himself. Having made at least a billion as a result of starting his own company. I suspect that qualifies as an entrepreneur. He didn't seem the KKND type, but I could be wrong.
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