Larry Ellison's early competitive advantages - Claude

Ellison came west around 1966, in his early twenties, having left the University of Illinois without a degree after his adoptive mother died, and then a brief stint at the University of Chicago that also didn't stick. He landed in the Berkeley area with no credentials, no money to speak of, and a half-formed sense of what he wanted to do. The Bay Area in the late 1960s and 1970s was not yet "Silicon Valley" as a mythology; it was a cluster of defense contractors, instrument makers, and early computer firms where a smart person could get hired to write code without a diploma. Ellison fit that exactly.

Ellison came west around 1966, in his early twenties, having left the University of Illinois without a degree after his adoptive mother died, and then a brief stint at the University of Chicago that also didn't stick. He landed in the Berkeley area with no credentials, no money to speak of, and a half-formed sense of what he wanted to do. The Bay Area in the late 1960s and 1970s was not yet "Silicon Valley" as a mythology; it was a cluster of defense contractors, instrument makers, and early computer firms where a smart person could get hired to write code without a diploma. Ellison fit that e