Lawrence Joseph Ellison (born August 17, 1944) is an American business magnate and investor who is the cofounder, executive chairman, chief technology officer (CTO) and former CEO of Oracle Corporation. Larry Ellison was born in New York City, to an unwed Jewish mother. Ellison attended South Shore High School in Chicago and was later admitted to University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and was enrolled as a premed student. At the university he was named science student of the year. While it would appear the Ellison has a packed schedule, not much is known about his bedtime ritual or sleeping habits. However, during his time helming Oracle, he was a bit of a night owl. While serving as Oracle’s CEO, Ellison would be the driving force of the company. He was in charge of making most to all of the executive decisions and each choice shaped Oracle in a different way. Ellison was a master of delegating and succeeded by putting the right people in the right positions. Being involved in many positions required Ellison to put in the time. It wouldn’t be a surprise for Ellison to stay at the office to midnight, while Oracle was first forming or when issues arose. Some day-to-day tasks included tweaking Oracle print ads, fiddling with press releases, and ask questions to techies as they worked. When asking him what he does, he said he ran engineering from day 1, until he left.
Hyper Competitive and Always Winning
Larry Ellison believes business is a sport, and you’re always in constant competition. A company’s goal should be to enter a marketplace and dominate. “Its my job to go in the marketplace and win”, says Ellison.
Ellison believes that by motivating and elevating your employees, you will get the best results. One way he did this was by giving out gold coins as bonuses to those who worked exceptionally well or beat their quotas. He’d suggest for his executives to meditate 3 times a day to stay motivated and fresh as well. Bonuses motivate employees to work harder at what they are doing and to compete with others. Because of this, Oracle developed a reputation for having managers compete with each other and wage internal wars. While this could be a problem at times, as people would fight or argue, it prompted everyone to work at their greatest potential.