The Most Overlooked Entrepreneurs - Larry Ellison

HYPEWORKS works with the best brands in the worlds of consumer technology and commerce. We love entrepreneurs! But the usual suspects always get the headlines - Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and so-on. We prefer to talk about those that we respect that aren’t in the headlines, and we’ll start with the enigmatic Oracle founder Larry Ellison.

Larry Ellison is now richer than Bill Gates and the world's 4th richest person, with a net worth of $126 billion dollars. Here are some things I admire about perhaps the most overlooked successful businessman in the world.

Who is Larry Ellison you might ask!? Well, Ellison founded Oracle Corporation in 1977 to become the leader in database software. Today, Oracle has several businesses in hardware and software, a market cap of $326 billion, with Ellison himself owning 42% of the company!

Lawrence Joseph Ellison was born on August 17, 1944, in New York City to Florence Spellman, an unwed Jewish mother. After Ellison contracted pneumonia at the age of nine months, his mother gave him to her aunt and uncle for adoption.

Ellison attended South Shore High School in Chicago and later was admitted to University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He studied physics and mathematics but dropped out and moved to Berkeley, California to work in the burgeoning Silicon Valley.

He became influenced by a paper on relational database design starting SDL, the company which later became Oracle. Their success was mid and low-range systems on Windows and Unix, taking advantage of IBM's delay in entering the field. It wasn't straightforward, however..

In 1990 Oracle laid off 10% of its workforce because it was losing money. This crisis almost resulted in the company's bankruptcy. Ellison learned from his mistakes, doubled down on the company's best products and people, and would never look back.

With the defeat of rivals Informix and Sybase, Oracle enjoyed years of industry dominance in databases. Oracle now competes with Amazon AWS and Google in the growing cloud computing industry. The company is currently growing the fastest among its peers.

Larry Ellison isn't as famous as Bill Gates however he did have many famous friends - including Apple icon Steve Jobs. Ellison and Jobs shared passions for design and Japan, and they often advised on each other's products. Ellison even sat on the Apple board!

Ellison directed his competitive drive into sports, with the Team Oracle USA America's Cup team, Indian Wells Tennis Tournament, and Oracle Red Bull Racing Team. The key theme behind his sporting ventures is winning, while encouraging others to push themselves to the max.

Larry Ellison's investment prowess also helped kickstart many famous tech companies from Salesforce to Tesla. He also invested in several dozen Real Estate properties around the world and Lanai, the sixth-largest of the Hawaiian Islands.

As of 2023, Ellison is still CTO and thus actively involved with Oracle, owning 42.9 percent of the shares and has a net worth of $128 billion dollars. Even at 78 years old, he shows anyone can be successful with a competitive will to win, plus hard work and dedication.

What do you think of Larry’s story? Who other ‘overlooked’ entrepreneurs do you admire? Leave a comment.