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Founders: #126: Larry Ellison (The Billionaire and the Mechanic)

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What I learned from reading The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, the America’s Cup, Twice by Julian Guthrie. ---- [0:01] Larry Ellison to Steve Jobs: I’m talking about greatness, about taking a lever to the world and moving it. I’m not talking about moral perfection. I’m talking about people who changed the world the most during their lifetime. [0:56] Larry’s choice for history’s greatest person could not have been more different from Gandhi (Steve Jobs’s choice): the military leader Napoleon Bonaparte. [3:15] Steve liked to say the Beatles were his management model — four guys who kept each other in check and produced something great. [3:47] Larry’s favorite history book was Will and Ariel Durant’s The Age of Napoleon, which he had read several times. Like his buddy Steve, and like Larry himself, Napoleon was an outsider who was told he would never amount to anything. [6:09] Now the book is technically about the America’s Cup race. But that is not really what it is about. This books gives insights into extreme winners. [7:50] Steve and Larry had found they had much in common. They both had adoptive parents

[00:00:00] I'm talking about greatness. About taking a lever to the world and moving it, Larry said, walking the grounds of his new woodside property with his best friend Steve Jobs. I'm not talking about moral perfection. I'm talking about people who changed the world the most during their lifetime. Jobs, who had returned to Apple three years earlier, enjoyed the conversational volleying and placed Leonardo da Vinci and Gandhi as his top choices, with Gandhi in the lead. Leonardo, a great artist and inventor, lived in violent times and was a designer of tanks, battlements, ramparts, and an…

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