Larry Ellison An Unlikely Entrepreneur

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Larry Ellison An Unlikely Entrepreneur

The Oracle of Oracle started off with very humble beginnings. Adopted by his aunt and Uncle before he was one Larry lived on the south side of Chicago in a small apartment. His success depending on him pulling himself up by his bootstraps, money was tough to come by and he needed to relyon his drive and focus to get him through school.

He saw his adoptive father lose his real-estate business before Larry became a teenager and lost his adoptive mother during his second year of college. But through his younger years Larry Ellison showed signs of being a unruly kid, which most likely was a part of the drive that allowed him to be a successful entrepreneur.

Because of the loss of his mother, Larry dropped out of school. Despite the fact that he tried to return later on, he ended up dropping out yet again which prompted his father to presume that Larry would never amount to anything. Clearly, one of the celebrated leaders in the software industry proved him wrong. He also proved that to be a successful entrepreneur you don’t always need a college education.

What Larry may have lacked in education he made up many times over for with his drive and dedication.  This was not only true in his professional life but also true in his personal life as well. Many that know Larry, or know of him have watched him drive himself to the point of injury to be the very best he could be at any sport he endevours to succeed at.

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Larry took this win at any cost approach and built himself up from a programmer at Ahmdal to starting his own software company in 1977. Along with his partners Ed Oates and Robert Miner Larry Ellison won a two year contract with IBM to create a relational database software solution. He finished the project ahead of schedule which allowed him to focus his skills on creating a product for the private sector. The product code name was “Oracle”, which, as we know, later became the name of his company.

You would think that the rest was easy and that Larry now had his company on a glide path to the multi billion dollar establishment it is today. But, while there were a lot of successful years, Oracle confronted many rough patches as well. This was a real test of Ellison’s ability to steer his business as well as adapt and grow to the changes in the market. Riding high on the product success’s Oracles young management team made many mistakes that just about bankrupted the company in 1990 when capitalization fell by almost 80%.

But being an individual committed to success, Larry looked at where his problems were and made the changes in management essential to right his corporate ship.  Since then he has never looked back, he has used his keen awareness of the market to continually alter his product offerings to keep his company one step ahead of the market. In addition he has continued to make strategic acquisitions which has pushed him ahead of his competition and when he didn’t beat them he bought them.

Larry also saw a change in the way that companies were buying and owning their software which permitted him to adapt his entire business model to a service and support model along with a software development business. This has allowed him to stabilize his revenues even during the slump in the economy, making his company a solid player in the 21st century and setting oracle up for continued future growth.

What we can learn from Larry Ellison and Oracle, is one of the most typical threads that passes through most people who become entrepreneurs. It’s not their education or where they start out in life. It isn’t, in many cases, their natural intellect. while Larry would be considered a brilliant man, it had been his drive, determination, persistence and willingness and ability to adapt.

We see this again and again when we take a look at entrepreneurs. It doesn’t matter if they are in software or hamburgers, or if they came from a rich family or a lower income family like Larry Ellison did. It is that fire in the belly, don’t give up at any cost mentality that we can learn from.

If you are serious about becoming an entrepreneur, and things are going rough, remember Larry Ellison, a kid who was adopted at a young age, dropped out of school and was told he probably wouldn’t amount to much.