I was expecting to see a lot of Oracle hate here, and looks like the train's already started. Regardless of your perspective of Oracle today, it's hard to dispute that Larry Ellison was a successful entrepreneur and businessman. He co-founded a $150B company, remained in the senior leadership position for decades, and guided the company towards extremely profitable outcomes for shareholders. You may not like him personally, you may not like his products, you may not like his company's work environment, but I'm sure any aspiring entrepreneur can learn a lot from Larry Ellison's example.
Completely agree. Oracle's success did not happen by chance. They have a great track record of navigating successive technology waves. Their strategy is often "bring a gun to a knife fight" like when they bought InnoDB out from under MySQL AB. Not to everyone's taste but they have outmaneuvered an amazing number of competitors over the years.
I was in a couple of meetings with Larry Ellison when I worked for Oracle back last century. I found him to be very pleasant and pretty considerate. Couldn't reconcile this with the fear with which people regarded him.
