Who is Larry Ellison?
Larry Ellison was born on August 17, 1944. His father was a US Air Force pilot who spent most of his time traveling and flying, not knowing he was going to be a father. After Larry was born, his father contracted pneumonia, so his mother decided to offer a relative in Chicago to adopt Larry, who was only 9 months old at the time. Larry did not see his mother again until he was 48 years old.
Larry dropped out of the University of Illinois after missing his sophomore exams due to the death of his adoptive mother. He later joined the University of Chicago, but he also dropped out after only one semester. In the 1970s, Larry got a job at Impex. Hence, the idea of creating an Oracle program that he designed for US intelligence came to him. He was not able to establish his own company to develop electronic programs to develop software until 1979.
In 1977, Ellison and two colleagues established software development laboratories, and soon secured a contract to design a database management system - they called Oracle - for the CIA. The company had fewer than 10 employees and revenue of fewer than 1 million dollars annually. However, after 1981, IBM decided to use the Oracle system, and the company's profits doubled annually, and here Ellison decided to name it Oracle.
In 1986, Oracle went public (initial public offering), but some banking issues caused most of the company's market value to collapse, and Oracle was on the verge of bankruptcy. However, after getting rid of the old management and revamping the product cycle, new Oracle products revolutionized the field. By 1992, the company had become a leader in database management.
Larry met his neighbor and friend Steve Jobs in a strange situation. Larry went to his neighbor Steve Jobs's house to complain about one of Steve's pesky animals that broke into Larry's garden and woke him up with its annoying voice. Steve expressed his dislike for this animal, and the two agreed to try to persuade Steve's girlfriend to get rid of this animal.
The Birth of Oracle:
After Larry moved to California, he worked in many businesses and moved from one job to another for about ten years, and most of these jobs were computer related. Larry benefited from some of his university education and ten years of experience in computer software and was able to get a job as a programmer in a company in 1970, but Larry Ellison's ambition did not stop there. He wanted to establish his own project. In 1977, Larry's success path began. In that year, Larry and two colleagues founded a company called "Software Development", and the amount invested in the company was about $2000. Larry held the position of CEO of a company that specialized in database management. The company was ordinary and small, but the big transformation in the company began when the CIA requested a project to manage databases in its system, and the “Oracle '' project won, which is the name Larry chose. Oracle was an approved name in database management in the American intelligence agency system, and this was the first step in the success of Oracle. The Oracle project was the best project for the company and deserved to be the new name of the company. What earned the company a lot of credibility and fame was that its first client was the American Central Intelligence Agency, and Oracle was working on examining and arranging all the information collected by the agency from all over the world. After this success, Ford International Motor Company used Oracle software to collect, verify, and examine sales information. In 1990, Oracle went through a stifling financial crisis that almost led the company to bankruptcy, but Larry quickly overcame this ordeal, and after this ordeal passed safely without damage, the company's successes continued and returned to its path toward rising to the global level. What began as a small project turned later into a giant company that made its founder the fifth richest man in the world.
Larry’s Personal Life:
Larry Ellison has been married four times, all of which ended in divorce. He married Adda Quinn for the first time, and their marriage lasted from 1967 to 1974. Then he married Nancy Wheeler Jenkins, who was his second wife, and his marriage to her lasted from 1977 to 1978. He then married for the third time to Barbara Boothe, and their marriage lasted from 1983 to 1986. His last marriage was based on a romance with Melanie Craft, and their marriage lasted from 2003 to 2010.
He had two children from his third wife, Barbara Booth, David and Megan, who work in the Hollywood sector as executive producers for many famous films.
Highlights and Achievements:
In 2000, Larry was named the richest man in the world, in 2010, he was ranked the sixth and in 2011, he rose to the fifth place, then in 2012, he fell to the eighth place in the world, and third in the United States only after Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. Rank was not as important as maintaining his position among the world's richest people.
In 2010, he was named the best CEO, as he managed to raise the company's profits to $1.84 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Until 2010, Ellison was the owner of the world's tenth largest yacht, dubbed the "Landing Sun", a large yacht spanning 453 feet. The cost of this boat was more than 200 million US dollars, and it consists of 82 rooms spread over five floors, and it also contains Jacuzzi bathrooms, a gymnasium and a spa, and a cinema with a plasma screen. It also has a basketball court and a helicopter landing site. This yacht is now owned by David Geffen.
Ellison also has a few planes. These include both private jets and two combat aircraft including the Sea Marchetti S. 211 and MiG-29. Ellison is one of the signatories to the bid pledge. This was a movement to encourage the richest people in the United States to commit to donating most of their wealth to charities and foundations. Other people signed the pledge, such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Warren Buffett. Over the years, Ellison has donated to countless charitable organizations. He has also donated several million dollars because he believes in the importance of sharing and has claimed that he will continue to do so over the years, both publicly and privately. After all, for him, charity is a personal matter.
Takeaways:
Success awaits us all, we just have to be brave, wise, and patient enough to get to wherever we want. This is what Larry Ellison taught us all.
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