14 Useful Ideas From Larry Ellison
I listened to this episode of Larry Ellison twice. The first time I was flying out of Dubai – just taking it in. The second time, I paused, rewound, took notes. What struck me most was how familiar it felt. He was selling software to businesses “over and over and over again” just like I do. He was building and leading teams, just like I am. He was thinking about decisions, targets and motivations, just like I do every day.
Here are 14 takeaways that I noted. I hope you find them as usable as I do.
Lead With Confidence And Bravado
“You cannot lead if you’re filled with uncertainty.
Imagine two officers each leading a company of Marines up a hill.
The first one says – “men, we’re going up this hill and we’re going to kill every fucking enemy soldier on our way to the top. I am going first and you’re all going to make it to the top with me. I haven’t lost one of you yet. Follow me now.”
He is cool, competent, and confident.
The second guys says – “men, we’re going to try to take this hill. I have to admit that I don’t know how many enemy soldiers are on this hill, and I’ve never really done anything like this before, but I’m willing to go first. If you’re willing to follow me, we might make it. We might not. There’s no way to know for certain. Even if we make it to the top, it’s highly likely that some of us will be killed. Follow me.
Well the second guy is impressively honest about his fears and uncertainties. But there’s no way anyone is following that guy anywhere.”
Keep Pushing Your Target Forward
“Whenever I got too close to a goal, I’d raise the bar for fear of actually clearing it. We’re endlessly curious about our own limits. The process of self-discovery is one of testing and retesting yourself. The software business is a difficult test. It is a high stakes game. There’s a lot of people playing this game. It is a lot more interesting game and it’s a lot more exciting.
If I wasn’t doing this, I’m not sure what else I’d be doing with my life. I just cannot accept defeat until I’ve been carried dead from the field. I have a lot of endurance, intellectual, emotional and physical.”
Do What You Love Or Do What Is Important
“We change as our circumstances change. Financial independence means you no longer need to trade time for money. But once you’ve been liberated, the freedom that comes afterwards can be difficult to manage. The good news is that suddenly you have all these choices. The bad news is that suddenly you have all these choices. So you’ve got to figure out what it is that you really love to do. Because there is no other justification for doing it. And if you can’t find anything you love, you have to settle for doing something that’s important.
What we want to do with our lives is the most important question. I think if I found out I was dying and I had a year to love, I wouldn’t change my life very much.”
The Path Ahead Cannot Be Predicted
It took him a while to figure out what he wanted to do and how he wanted to live his life. He was 34 when he started Oracle, which was initially called Software Development Laboratories (SDL). He just wanted a vehicle to live a nice life. He says:
“My original goal was to build a company doing $10 million a year in revenue and employing about 50 people. What motivated me was my desire to control my environment so I wouldn’t have to do things I didn’t want to or spend time with people I didn’t enjoy working with.”
He convinced two other people to start SDL. They started as just a consulting shop. But consulting was hard:
“Consulting proved to be much more work than I ever imagined. I wanted to go into the software product business. A software product offered the ultimate leverage, build it once and sell it over and over and over again.”
Be A Copycat
They scoured the technical literature about databases for new ideas, and IBM had this research division that was publishing all these papers about this prototype relational database that they were building.
“I decided we should use these database papers as an architectural blueprint for our new database product. The opportunity was huge. We had the chance to build the world’s first commercial relational database.
Why? Because no one else was even trying.”
He is always looking at what other people are not doing and finding an edge that way.
Take Risk When It Increases Your Chances Of Success
“The other relational database projects were purely research efforts. They were spending no time on overall system performance and reliability, both of which were essential for a successful commercial database product. If we could build a fast and reliable relational database, we could have it made. At the same time I thought it would be smart to avoid the very competitive and highly conservative IBM mainframe market. So we decided to build our database for the minicomputer market.
I liked the fact that it was risky. The bigger the apparent risk, the fewer people would go there. We would surely lose if we had to face serious competition.
But if we were all alone in building the first commercial relational database system, we had a chance to win.
This was the first in a pattern of apparently high risk decisions I made throughout my life at Oracle. But I only ever picked the highest risk approach when I thought it would increase our chance of winning. Whenever you travel an untraveled path, there is going to be risk.”
Have The Courage To Stand For What You Think Is Right
“I will never forget being with an analyst, and he said that the relational database will never work. It is just a toy. We had to fight that for maybe 10 years. Larry was very good at this. He was like a spiritual leader, an evangelist for the relational database model. The technical press at the time was saying that the relational database would never be useful.”
This shows Larry’s contrarian nature and his ability to go against the grain.
“Fashionable ideas are hot while others are not.”
And one of the most fashionable ideas that he leaned into was building internet applications while everybody else was building client server applications. And he took the lead in educating the market.
“Client server was dead and the people in the room would figure it out at the funeral. By then it would be too late for Oracle to change course. We had to change to internet applications now, before the rest of the field figured it out.
I knew I was right and they were wrong.”
When You Start Anything You Have To Do Everything
The very first customer turned out to the CIA. In a little over six months time, he had won several deals – The CIA, Navy Intelligence, Air Force Intelligence and the NSA.
“I was writing computer programs, writing documentation, answering customer support calls, giving training classes and sending out marketing literature.
The very last thing I would do every evening was stamp a stack of manila envelopes stuffed with a spiral bound Oracle introductory manual I had written. Everyone and anyone I spoke with on the phone that day would get one. I’d arrive home around midnight most evenings.
The more you win, the more you want to win.”
Have Systems In Place To Avoid Disaster
“I couldn’t run away. I had to save Oracle to save myself. I was interested in the technology. I wasn’t interested in sales or accounting or legal. If I wasn’t interested in something, I simply ignored it.
All I had to do is keep legal and accounting organized as separate control functions, and a lot of the problems we had could have been avoided. You cannot run a company without strong checks and balances. I just wasn’t paying proper attention to my job. I was doing only the things that interested me.”
Good Hires Require More Than Brilliance
“I like very smart people. In those days whenever I was defending somebody my defense would be to point out how smart they were.”
Jeff was not impressed by this argument. He said “Yea Larry, he’s very smart , but can he do his fucking job?”
I just stared at Jeff and said nothing. But I was thinking “oh my God, he’s right.”
Brilliance is not enough.”
Pick An Enemy And Then Make Some Noise About It
Larry understood that once a customer committed to a database vendor, he was pretty well locked in for the next 10 years or so. So they invested heavily in introductions to new customers. One way Larry does this in addition to sales is that he starts to use the media to get attention. And one way he gets attention is by picking a fight and having an enemy. He had to have something to beat.
“Oracle may not be as well known as IBM or Microsoft, but that’s our class. That' is our category. That’s who you should compare us to. We pick our enemy very carefully. It helps us focus. We decided to pick a fight with the biggest, most dangerous bully in the schoolyard. There was no way to avoid this fight. So let’s start it.
So we picked fights with Microsoft and IBM because they’re the ones we had to beat to reach the top. By constantly measuring ourselves against the top two heavyweights, we constantly improve the competitiveness of our products and services.”
The media loved this fight. And it helped the Oracle brand.
Ask These 4 Basic Questions
“If I just ask “Why” repeatedly it’s a really great way to find poorly thought out strategies.”
How much did you sell last year?
How much are you going to sell this year?
How much did you spend last year?
How much are you going to spend this year?
This sounds simple right? Wrong!
It took many hours and multiple meetings to pry answers to these four basic questions from senior managers. One senior manager came in with 200 slides.
Hire To Plug Your Weaknesses
Larry would make a decision and nobody would check to see if they’d been carried out. People would hope that because he had so many things to do he would forget.
“She makes up for one of my biggest areas of weakness. She’s disciplined and thorough and I am not. I’m pretty good at separating the good ideas from the bad ideas, and I’m pretty good at drilling into detail and solving problems. But once a problem is understood, once a plan is in place, I usually move on to the next thing rather than following up and making sure that the agreed upon plan is actually implemented. It’s called execution and Safra is brilliant at it.”
Choose To Be Loved Over Being Feared
He thought for a very long time that his true motivator, if you could choose between being feared or loved, he used to say that he would choose fear. But he realized that that is always a lie.
“It took me a long time to understand that we all want to be loved. Even me.”
I highly recommend you listen to the full podcast. I loved it!
See you next Sunday.
👋 I’m Harsh. I collect useful ideas to win in business and life.
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