Pro-business evangelist for reinvention, Tom Peters, describes Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle Corp., as, “…a great creative person, shockingly disciplined. He is changing the world’s view of things. If 20% of the people aren’t against you, then you’re not going anyplace interesting.”
Oracle Corp. rules the database software realm, powering most of the top Web sites. To that, Ellison is fashioning new enterprises whose products and services are integral to the Internet.
Says Peters, describing this stage of players: “We have a ludicrously unfair share of the world’s demented dreamers, all gathered in Santa Clara County. The most demented of them all is Larry Ellison, the Earth’s [second] richest human being. I think he’s just fabulous. He doesn’t have a single screw in place, and that puts him in damn good company.”
Charles Phillips of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter says about Ellison: “He was considered a little over the edge, but that’s how you get people’s attention. He makes crazy predictions, and sometimes, they actually come true.”
In 1996, Ellison’s amassed fortune was a number six followed by nine zeros. Today he has increased that by nine fold, nearly $55,000 million on a bad day (subject to stock prices).
No responsible entrepreneur of wealth leaves their financial stature to dwindle by idleness. Larry Ellison’s vision is for a more simple appliance-like approach to using computers and the Internet. Worthy projects and people he trusts receive his blessings, guidance and ample funding.
Fifty-six years old, ladies’ man, and pilot, Ellison is ultra competitive. He is flamboyantly outspoken on issues from computing to public policy and will do practically anything to make a billion.
Ellison has publicly joined other influential corporates calling for the breakup of Microsoft. Dividing the company along product lines, as has been proposed, would spawn new monster monopolies, he argues. Those would reclaim to their former recklessness behavior for which the present management has been legally convicted.
Instead, Ellison suggests that Microsoft be cloned twice, making three identical copies. each in competition with the other two and the marketplace! Gates would get one clone, Steve Ballmer another, and the last one for Paul Allen, who hasn’t been actively involved in the company for 15 years.
What does a multi-billionaire do for enjoyment apart from collecting yachts and perpetuating a golf-course tan? This one is conspicuously engaged in a crusade to reinvent the computing industry.
Ellison’s infusion of fresh cash to fragile Bay Area enterprises extends far and wide. He’s investing in companies that have the greatest potential to solve the epidemic ails of computing complexity, confusion and instability.
Evan Goldberg, a former Oracle VP, launched a multimedia company selling software over the Web. His accounting program was inadequate; so with Ellison’s encouragement, they built a better one.
Ellison was Golderg’s most significant investor in NetLedger, joined by ADP and Paine Webber. NetLedger, now with 90 employees, offers a flat-fee accounting service for small businesses, resolving another boil on the complexion of the industry.
The new trend is away from owning software license, and toward using applications over the Internet. Business subscribers generate payroll, expense reports, customer tracking and other operations with an easily accessible relational database on their Web site, and at a cost savings. In this way, high powered accounting software that was formerly only affordably by large corporations is customized for use by small businesses.
Goldberg says about Ellison: “He sees huge macroscopic trends in the industry and helps relate those in the day-to-day running of my business. He helps me on strategy and vision. I talk to him frequently. He calls me up with great ideas and gives me perspective.”
Arcade Planet’s Norm Petermeier has been best friends with Ellison for a decade. With legal help from Ellison, Petermeier bought back his Lazer-Tron Inc.’s patents from a failed merger with Acclaim Entertainment for $6M. The Arcade Planet web site has in three years logged 1.2 million games to six million players.
The 200-employee company, Ncube, is half owned by Ellison’s Oracle. President Mike Pohl said, “It’s always good to have a visionary like Larry. His ability to think things through and stay with it is impressive. He’s a incredibly bright. HP and IBM tried this [streaming media] years ago and gave up.”
Another Ellison goal is to mass produce a $199 single-switch box called New Internet Computer, an appliance for the masses. The free Linux operating system plus Oracle’s database and browser will power it. These devices will simplify Web and email for everyone.
Ellison’s choice for CEO is Gina Smith, former CNet journalist. Smith, admittedly inexperienced as company head, is motivated. She confers with Ellison via email regularly on legal and business matters. Says Smith about her boss’s confidence in her, “He’s basically said to ‘run with it.’”
Among other significant pursuits of Ellison’s company is OracleMobile, wireless hand-held communications systems, and eTravel, both aimed to simplify and expand these needed services. Oracle’s financial holdings now number 17 companies, and $203M poured into eight startups since January 2000.
Larry Ellison has been quietly steering his financial investments into areas
that will benefit those who are tired of struggling with the bloat and bugginess
of buying off-the-shelf software. The Internet is the vehicle for change.