Oracle Founder and CEO, Larry Ellison became the world’s second richest man, briefly surpassing Jeff Bezos this week. Larry Ellison becoming the richest tech billionaire is largely thanks to Oracle, which clocked shares up to 5.1 percent recently. Larry Ellison’s business acumen helped Oracle grow from a small start-up with three programmers to become the second-biggest provider of business applications and the largest supplier of database software. Larry Ellison's Net Worth in 2024 as of April is $146.8 billion, according to the Forbes World’s Billionaires List. The American businessman & entrepreneur shares distinctive personality traits such as being persistent, having strategic vision and having a passion for innovation.
Growing Together with Oracle
A technological company called Amdahl Corporation was where Larry Ellison landed his first job. He then did a stint at Amtex, an electronics business, at the start of the 1970s, mainly responsible for developing the "Oracle" database for the CIA. In the same company, Larry met his boss, Bob Miner, who left Ampex quickly after, and on June 16, 1977, he invested $800 with Bruce Scott and Ed Oates to co-found Software Development Laboratories (SDL). A few months in, Larry joined the two and invested $1,200 in the company and became a business partner.
Later, a book by Edgar F. Codd titled "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks," introduced by Ed Oates to Miner and Ellison, inspired them to work on developing the database management system (DBMS). It is a system used by businesses to keep client lists, equipment specifications, financial notes, transaction data, correspondence, legal papers, and more.
In 1982, following the launch of its flagship product, the object-relational database management system Oracle RDBMS, the company changed its name to Oracle Systems Corporation. Functioning under version 2.0, Oracle RDBMS was first released, since Ellison was certain that no one would purchase version 1.
The same year, Oracle had 75 micro- and mini-clients and $2.5 million in sales. Larry used a quarter of the proceeds for research and development to create a portable and commercially viable Oracle RDBMS built on the C programming language compiler. Thanks to that, Oracle's employees were able to develop commercially viable solutions that would enable them to overtake IBM and other IT businesses in the market. It is also thanks to the government contracts that had given them sufficient funding.
Excellent Strategist in M&A Deals
Larry Ellison is also considered a brilliant strategist, particularly when it comes to merger and acquisition deals. Under his guidance, Oracle made some of the most phenomenal M&A deals.
In 1994, Oracle acquired DEC's Rdb division, a relational database management system (RDBMS), which marked the first-ever formal acquisition of the company.
The second major acquisition came in 2004 when Oracle acquired PeopleSoft Inc., for $10.3 billion. It is considered as one of Larry’s best moves, as the company had around 12,750 people and offered enterprise performance management software, supply chain management, financial management solutions, customer relationship management, and human resource management systems.
The third major deal was when Oracle Corporation acquired BEA Systems, Inc., in 2008, for a sum of $8.5 billion.Here, Larry was observed to have made a careful decision, which helped Oracle overtake the industry titans in the software sector at the time, since BEA Systems produced software for enterprise infrastructure. This helped position Oracle Corporation as the leader in the computer technology sector.
The fourth major deal is Oracle's most important purchase, which was Sun Microsystems, Inc. Larry agreed to purchase it for $7 billion in 2010. Following the completion of the transaction, Oracle started to market new databases and services built on Sun Microsystems technology.
Expert Initiator in IPO
Oracle Systems Corporation began its initial public offering (IPO) in the year 1986, on the NASDAQ (ORCL) stock exchange. The price per share was $15 at the beginning, but by the end of the trading day, it jumped to $20.75 after 2.1 million shares were sold, raising $31.5 million.
In looking for ways to sell Oracle's products and offerings in more than 35 countries, Larry established marketing subsidiaries in 17 different nations following the IPO.
This helped Oracle to quickly drop in the SQL Star, a program that could process and obtain data from any computer system connected to the network.
A Foreseer of the Internet Boom
Larry was also among the first to predict the transformational wonders that the internet could bring into the corporate landscape. This is particularly evident when Larry led Oracle to focus only on critical online business software platforms during 1997. This genius tactic mainly had an impact on customers who were not ready for the change at the moment. However, it did manage to put the company in a position to benefit from the dot-com boom. Soon, Oracle would become one of the most well-known companies in Silicon Valley by 2000 and for a little while, Larry even managed to overtake Bill Gates as the richest person in the world.
As a visionary businessman, Larry Ellison, turned Oracle from a start-up into one of the most valuable companies in the world, with sales projected to reach $50 billion in the fiscal year 2023 and a market valuation of about $389.37 billion as of September 2024.
By creating a wide range of integrated software packages, including relationship databases, servers, apps, storage, and cloud computing, Larry helped Oracle cement its position.
On the other hand, Oracle also gains from Larry’s guidance, as he led the industry in building internet-compatible business applications when he prophesied in the 1990s that the internet would be the future of computers.