
Watching Larry Ellison Become Larry Ellison (2014) - tosh
https://steveblank.com/2014/09/25/watching-larry-ellison-become-larry-ellison-the-dna-of-a-winner/
======
sblank
Kathryn Gould, the real author of the post was one of my mentors. She was one
of the first woman VC's in the valley and hated being reminded of it. She said
she wanted to be known as one of the best VC's - period - and she was. Her
commencement speech at the University of Chicago is worth a read.
[https://steveblank.com/2014/08/05/pioneering-women-in-
ventur...](https://steveblank.com/2014/08/05/pioneering-women-in-venture-
capital-kathryn-gould/) She passed on way too early in 2015.

~~~
Mz
_It’s Not the Calls You Take, It’s the Calls You Make One of my sayings

You are the creator of your destiny. In whatever business you’re in, there is
always so much coming at you that you can stay insanely busy just responding.
Don’t do that. Always think about what is your agenda, what do you want to
make happen, what do you want the future to look like. This is not so easy._

I think this is a powerful idea. I was a homemaker for a lot of years. I think
more than men typically are, women get socialized to respond to other people
rather than setting their own agenda in this way, and it consigns us to
servile roles, even if we are very talented.

She was apparently 65:

[https://news.uchicago.edu/article/2016/01/05/kathryn-
gould-v...](https://news.uchicago.edu/article/2016/01/05/kathryn-gould-
venture-capitalist-and-university-trustee-1950-2015)

[https://techcrunch.com/2015/11/26/r-i-p-kathyrn-gould-vc-
pio...](https://techcrunch.com/2015/11/26/r-i-p-kathyrn-gould-vc-pioneer-
straight-shooter-lover-of-curse-words/)

To my surprise, I can find no Wikipedia article about her.

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radicaldreamer
Every time there's a post like this, young entrepreneurs in the valley tend to
ignore the uncomfortable advice like "come to appreciate the sales culture"
and idolize "be ruthless" and often interpret it as "be an asshole, all the
time".

Also, just because some personality traits worked for a certain place, time,
and cultural period, doesn't mean it's applicable to the industry today.

~~~
smd4
I laughed when I read that Ellison often said, “It’s not enough to win—all
others must fail.”

Once, in the early days of the field of synthetic biology, I asked my mentor
George Church why he collaborated with so many people who weren't obviously
doing the highest caliber work. He replied, "When you're involved in starting
a new field, often it's not enough to succeed by yourself. Sometimes you also
have to help others not fail."

~~~
joering2
“It’s not enough to win—all others must fail.”

Because of the way Mr. Ellison been conducting himself business-wise, there is
a saying in the Valley: "I would love to live a life as Larry Ellison, but
heck I would not want to die as Larry Ellison".

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cwyers
Well this anthropomorphizes the heck out of the lawnmower.

~~~
joatmon-snoo
It's one of those uncomfortable truths. It's hard to deny that the lawnmower
is good at what it does, because it _is_ , and has been doing it for a long
time.

Also probably responsible for many decades of lost progress, though.

For those that don't get the lawnmower reference:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5170246](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5170246)

~~~
paulddraper
tl;dr Oracle is not a person. It is a unthinking, unfeeling machine. Treat it
appropriately.

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Top19
Larry Ellison has a lot to teach business people today. I’m willing to concede
it might not be that he is a genius, but simply because he’s from an older
generation and has practices that are mostly ignored now.

1). The influence of Japanese culture on Ellison: in a world of Agile
ironically everyone seems to miss how incredibly beautiful Japanese philosophy
and literature is. In an age of “authenticity” and emotional excess, the “Book
of Five Rings”, by a 17th century Samurai, is eerily relevant today.

2). Destruction, not profit: I actually like this quote. When I first heard it
I rolled my eyes, but if you watch this video Larry Ellison never talks about
profit or EBITDA or any bullshit like that. When people think of destruction
and failure, they think of Microsoft in the 90’s, but really it’s more two-way
than that. I think this philosophy is very motivational in the sense that Time
Warner Cable must be destroyed, Pfizer must be destroyed, Equifax must be
destroyed, etc.

3). Steve Jobs: Ellison and Steve Jobs first met when Ellison went over to
complain to Steve about his peacocks making noises in the morning. After that
they become friends for the next 30 years, and Oracle had a plan in place to
buy Apple and reinstall Jobs in 1995. I wish Ellison had more Steve Jobs in-
him when upgrading Oracle products, but at least he could see the success of
Jobs.

EDIT: I mention a video in one of my comments. For that part I wasn’t
referring to the audio interview posted above, but this:
[https://youtu.be/thRAjlyCfKE](https://youtu.be/thRAjlyCfKE)

~~~
sk5t
This seems a bit of a puzzling list...

1) What specifically of Japanese philosophy informs Ellison's approach? What
has either Ellison or Japanese philosophy to do with agile or its complement?
What is the meaning of "emotional excess"?

2) Why would one think of "Microsoft in the 90s" together with "destruction
and failure"? The 90s were an incredibly successful time for Microsoft. Why
must TWC, Pfizer, et al., be destroyed? Because some folks don't like large,
dominant, somewhat pathological organizations?

3) "Upgrading Oracle's products"\--does this happen? Isn't Oracle's approach
the the diametrical opposite of a consumer hardware company that sells on
product strength and style?

~~~
maxlamb
Can't answer all of them but a few thoughts: 1) Agile methodology was
essentially developed by Toyota and its roots are inspired by Japanese
philosophy 2) Microsoft's main philosophy at the time was essentially to
"destroy" all competition in order to remain a monopoly. Regarding TWC,
Pfizer, Equifax, strong arguments can be made that they are very bad for
consumers, either rent-seeking monopoly (TWC thanks to owning large parts of
physical network), attempt to make more money by keeping consumers sick
(Pfizer), or plain fraud (Equifax). If a startup can provide the same or
better services without the harm, it can destroy these parasitic companies,
benefitting both the entrepeneur and the consumer. 3) Sure Consumer (Apple)
and Enterprise (Oracle) product strategies are different but I wouldn't say
they are diametrical opposites..in the end both Oracle and Apple are in the
business of maximizing sales of technology products. Ellison sometimes
appeared to lack the visionary aspect of Jobs when it comes to upgrading
products, i.e. when he said at a conference that cloud is just hyped B.S. (I
think it was 4-5 years ago), then have spent last few years trying to catch up
to the competition. [http://www.cbronline.com/news/cloud/he-said-
what-5-things-la...](http://www.cbronline.com/news/cloud/he-said-
what-5-things-larry-ellison-actually-said-about-cloud-4563323/)

------
postfacto
That photo from 1978 is quite possibly the most explicit portrait of nerdom
ever. It makes Comicon look like a frat party. I have never seen anything so
completely nerdy.

~~~
taway_1212
I think this one beats that:
[http://www.newsweek.pl/g/crop/0/-1050/newsweek/6360443584828...](http://www.newsweek.pl/g/crop/0/-1050/newsweek/636044358482852449.png)

It's a photo of four young (in the 90-ties) Polish algorithmic contests
competitors, chilling out.

~~~
audiometry
Oh man. I haven't seen that in a long, long time. It used to be a popular
meme.

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patman81
If you like this story, you can continue the story with "Softwar" a book about
Oracle and Larry Ellison in quite the same tone.

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hyperpallium
Actors wear eye makeup in theatre, so their eyes are visible from the back
row. “It’s not enough to win—all others must fail.” seems to be a similar
overthetop way to commumicate a message company-wide. Similar might work for
communicating to potential customers...

When Pracle was a startup, they beat IBM to market with a database that used
IBM's idea (Codd's relational algebra), and IBM's query language (SQL)...
which is one of the few (only?) technologies still dominating almost 4 decades
later. Typically, in software, 10 years is pretty good.

So, I think he had excellent foresight into how important SQL could be.

All that said, I was horrified when Oracle bought sun (amd java). I personally
prefer their hippy-like approach of free open standards... but I have to
acknowledge the merits that Ellison did have.

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sumedh
If anyone wants to read more about Ellision, you should read

The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: God Doesn't Think He's Larry
Ellison

[https://www.amazon.com/Difference-Between-God-Larry-
Ellison/...](https://www.amazon.com/Difference-Between-God-Larry-
Ellison/dp/0060008768/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1505737451&sr=8-1-fkmr2&keywords=why+god+is+not+larry)

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senatorobama
Would anyone here honestly be excited to work for Oracle?

~~~
skrebbel
In 1982? Yes.

~~~
johan_larson
If for some reason I would have gotten such a job, or a similar one working
close to Steve Jobs or Bill Gates in the early days, I don't think I would
have lasted. Larry, Steve and Bill were all extremely driven and very high-
strung guys with nasty habits of treating those around them like shit.

Somewhere along the way I would have gotten chewed out over something I
considered either a good-enough solution or an understandable oversight. First
time, no problem. High standards, yes sir, right away sir. But the second? And
the third? At some point I would have decided that life's too short to be
treated like shit by a maniac, and left for some more conventional job.

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floatboth
[https://youtu.be/bNfAAQUQ_54?t=16m30s](https://youtu.be/bNfAAQUQ_54?t=16m30s)

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ilamont
_Larry always had a 10-year technical vision_

Is that harder to do now than back in the 1980s? The pace of technological
development has accelerated, and it's so hard to predict the standards and
platforms and business needs that will arise 5 years from now, let alone 10.

~~~
gtycomb
Those 1980's were quite messy too. Larry picked a robust solution (SQL) to
build upon, something the market desperately needed and he somehow grasped it
better in the smoke and noise of the day. Of course this is not the only
ingredient for them to rise above the heap. The company I worked at that time
was a Sybase shop and Sybase SQL performed so much better than Oracle then. An
ability to sell aggressively, staying power in improving a good technical
vision, etc. is also needed just as it is today.

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coolspot
It's like watching fish rot.

