flâneur

Oracle: Ellison's Voyage to Software and Beyond

mbi-deepdives.com · 3,269 words · saved by 1 readers

(Note: while I usually use my own AI voice to narrate the Deep Dive, I have decided to use a "professional AI voice" and utilized a different AI tool this time. It's better.) This addiction to competing even for the sake of it has served Larry Ellison, the Co-founder of Oracle, exceedingly well in life. Ellison, along with Bob Miner and Ed Oates, started Oracle with just $2,000 in 1977; Larry contributed $1,200. They never raised money from venture capital and Ellison was largely allergic to raise equity. As a result, Ellison still owns ~42% stake in Oracle which is currently worth ~$220 Billion. While working at Ampex, Ellison came across a research paper authored by an IBM employee named E.F. Codd in 1970. The paper introduced the relational model for databases, which revolutionized how we organize and access data. Before this, databases were structured like rigid hierarchies or networks, making them inflexible and requiring users to understand complex data organization. Codd propose

You can listen to this Deep Dive here (Note: while I usually use my own AI voice to narrate the Deep Dive, I have decided to use a "professional AI voice" and utilized a different AI tool this time. It's better.) “Wh y do we do these things? George Mallory said the reason he wanted to climb Everest was because ‘it's there’. I don't think so. I think Mallory was wrong. It's not because it's there. It's because we're there, and we wonder if we can do it. …It's hard for me to quit when I'm losing—and it's hard for me to quit when I'm winning. It's just hard for me to quit. I'm addicted to competi

related reading