The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 45 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Ellison: Picking Public Fights Prevents Retreat and Forces Commitment
“Once I'm finally certain of the right direction, I pick a fight. It helps me make my point and it makes it impossible to do an about face and go back. Once a course has been plotted, I sail a long way off and I burn the boats. It is win or die.”
Pursuing High Apparent Risk Deters Competition and Improves Winning Odds
“The bigger the apparent risk, the fewer people will try to go there. We would surely lose if we had to face serious competition. But if we were all alone in pursuit of our goal of building the first commercial relational database system, we had a chance to win…”
Ellison: Gates's true advantage is unmatched focus and endurance, not intellect
“There are a lot of people in the world smarter than Bill Gates. There are very few people in the world that have his focus and endurance.”
Ellison: Mistaking the Present for the Future Is Tech's Worst Mistake
“They were mistaking the present for the future. It is the worst mistake a tech company can make.”
Oracle Slashed Its Global Product Pricing Staff From 200 to Under 10
“We had about 200 people around the world involved in analyzing and reanalyzing, setting and resetting prices. It costs us a fortune in duplication of effort. We were competing against ourselves. It was embarrassing. Now we have less than 10 people working on p…”
Ellison Avoids One-on-One Meetings to Ensure Shared Situational Awareness
“Ellison does not like doing one-on-ones with his direct reports. He prefers communicating as a group so everyone knows what's going on.”
Ellison: Software Buyers Are Forced to Assemble Systems Like Car Parts
“He says, if Detroit ran like Silicon Valley, nobody would sell cars. They would just sell parts. Customers would have to figure out which were the best parts. Maybe you'd grab a Honda engine, a Ford transmission, a BMW chassis, a GM electrical system, and buy …”
Programming Liberated Ellison by Rewarding Output Over Behavioral Conformity
“People, teacher, coaches, bosses, they want you to conform to some standard of behavior they deem correct. They measure and reward you on how well you conform, how you arrive on time, dress appropriately, exhibit a properly differential attitude, as opposed to…”
Larry Ellison Commanded Recruiters to Hire the Cockiest College Graduates
“Ellison insisted that his recruiters hire only the finest and cockiest new college graduates.
When they were recruiting from universities, they'd ask people, are you the smartest person you know?
And if they said yes, they would hire them.
If they said no, …”
Charlie Munger's four core drivers of non-linear "lollapalooza" business success
“Extreme success is likely to be caused by some combination of the following factors. Number one, extreme maximization or minimization of one or two variables. Number two, adding success factors so that a bigger combination drives success often in a non-linear …”
Oracle hired university graduates who claimed to be the smartest they knew
“When they were recruiting from universities, they'd ask people, are you the smartest person you know? And if they said yes, they would hire them. If they said no, they would say who is, and they would go hire that guy instead.”
Enterprise Database Customers Were Effectively Locked In for Ten Years
“Once a customer and Larry understood this right away, once a customer committed to a database vendor, he was pretty well locked in for the next 10 years or so.”
Enterprise Sales Should Be Engineered Around Value, Not Price Negotiation
“I want to get the creativity out of the sales process. If you want to be creative, go write a novel. I want to engineer the sales process. I don't want the people in the field spending all their time wheeling and dealing on price. The primary function of our s…”
Hunting Sales Strategy Is Unsustainable Compared to Customer Farming
“U S salespeople tried to sell the largest possible transaction to any given customer and then move on to the next customer in the next deal. It took me until 1991 to figure out that the U S hunting strategy was both short-sighted and unsustainable. It took ano…”
Renaming Network Computing to Internet Computing Caused Oracle Sales to Surge
“Network computing architecture got absolutely no traction in the marketplace. So we announced a successor called internet computing architecture and sales took off. The big difference between the two, the name.”
Larry Ellison Never Truly Wanted to Be CEO or Run a Company
“Ellison, by his own admission, had never really wanted to be a CEO and never really wanted to run a company.”
Ellison Views Creating Complexity as Computing's Cardinal Sin
“Ellison says that the cardinal sin of the computing industry is the creation of complexity. And he's constantly trying to get Oracle to actually do the work for the customer and then limit the amount of decisions that the customer has to make.”
Ellison Sacrificed Near-Term Profits to Eliminate Vulnerable Rival Sybase
“I wanted to knock out Sybase while they were technically behind and vulnerable, even if it meant sacrificing profits in the near term. If we were successful, the profits would be greater in the long run.”
Early Oracle Sales Relied on Destructive End-of-Quarter Discounting
“One of the oldest and worst habits of the Oracle sales organization was the use of aggressive discounting to get existing customers to buy software before they actually needed it.”
Engineering Discipline Should Be Applied to Every Business Process
“I believe that every process within an organization, marketing, sales, service, everything should be carefully engineered. I'm still an engineer at heart, but now I apply engineering discipline to our entire business, not just product development.”
Fear of Failure Drives Ellison Far More Than Greed
“I've always been more motivated by fear of failure than greed. I hate to lose. Silicon Valley is a killing field. Very few technology companies survive, and we did.”
Challenging Industry Heavyweights Forces Companies to Improve Their Products
“If you're a fighter, the only way up is through the top fighters in your division. So we picked fights with Microsoft and IBM because they're the ones we had to beat to reach the top. By constantly measuring ourselves against the two top heavyweights, we const…”
Ellison Abandoned Client-Server to Focus Entirely on Internet Computing
“Ellison's decision to the horror of many colleagues and customers to abandon all further development of client server based applications and concentrate Oracle's entire engineering effort on building for the new computing architecture of the internet.”
Oracle Once Paid Salespeople More to Route Deals Through Partners
“The sales force convinced their boss that the best way to fix this was to pay more money to the sales force if the deal went through a partner than if the deal came directly to Oracle. For example, if you sold a million dollar deal directly, Oracle would get a…”
Ellison Realized Preferring Fear Over Love Is a Lie
“He thought for a very long time that his true motivator, if you could choose between being feared or loved, he used to say that he'd choose fear. And what he realized is like, that is always a lie. And he says, it took me a long time to understand that we all …”
Jobs: Moving Away From a Single System Invites Compounding Complexity
“The further that you get away from one, the more complexity you invite in.”
The CIA Was Oracle's Very First Commercial Database Customer
“And so the very first customer turned out to be the CIA.”
Enterprise Software Companies Cannot Survive If Customers Doubt Their Longevity
“And if customers don't believe you're going to survive, you won't.”
Early Oracle Won Deals Across Major US Intelligence Agencies
“We had won several deals, the CIA, Navy intelligence, air force intelligence, and the NSA.”
Public Fights with Bill Gates Greatly Enhanced Oracle's Brand
“This intentional fight that he picks against Bill Gates and Microsoft and how beneficial the positioning was. That he chose and how this message spread through the media and actually enhanced greatly enhanced not only his individual stature, but the stature of…”
Larry Ellison: Core team turnover interrupts compounding knowledge
“You do not want turnover on your core team. That knowledge compounds and don't interrupt that compounding.”
Oracle recruited college grads by asking if they were the smartest person they knew
“Ellison insisted that his recruiters hire only the finest and cockiest new college graduates. When they were recruiting from universities, they'd ask people, are you the smartest person you know? And if they said yes, they would hire them. If they said no, the…”
Ellison Was Embarrassed by His Performance as Early Oracle CEO
“A huge chunk of this book is Ellison being embarrassed by his performance as CEO of his own company for the first decade and a half of its existence.”
Safra Catz Compensates for Ellison's Weakness in Execution and Follow-Through
“She makes up for one of my biggest areas of weakness. She's disciplined and thorough, and I'm not. I'm pretty good at separating the good ideas from the bad ideas, and I'm pretty good at drilling into detail and solving problems. But once a problem is understo…”
Tech Press Originally Claimed Relational Databases Would Never Be Useful
“The technical press at the time was saying that the relational database would never be useful.”
Oracle Once Traded Software for Jets from Israeli Aircraft Industries
“Exotic barter deals were entered into in one Oracle was given a couple of jets by an Israeli aircraft industry by Israeli aircraft industries in exchange for software.”
Ellison Faced Margin Calls After Borrowing Heavily Against Oracle Shares
“He had borrowed heavily against his shares, That had now slumped to a point where he faced the equivalent of a margin call from his creditors.”
Oracle Created Phantom Revenue by Booking Multi-Year Software Contracts Upfront
“The sales teams would often book multi-year contracts upfront. They would recognize the revenue immediately for software that wouldn't be delivered or paid for months or years. And in many cases, never paid for it. So this is, this led to what they call phanto…”
Oracle Previously Operated 70 Separate HR Databases to Track Employee Headcount
“Oracle had 70 separate HR systems, each with its own database. To find out how many people worked at Oracle, you had to look into 70 separate databases.”
Ellison's Original Goal for Oracle Was $10M Revenue and 50 Employees
“My original goal was to build a company doing about 10, ten million dollars a year in revenue and employing about 50 people.”
Don Lucas Arranged a Loan for Oracle After Ellison Refused Equity
“Even though he wouldn't, Larry wouldn't sell him equity, he actually helps arrange a loan for Larry Ellison and the company.”
Oracle Planned a $5M Energy Center for Only $10M in Sales
“A prime example was something called the energy center of excellence. This was intended as a place to showcase Oracle software for the energy industry. Ellison uncovered plans to spend millions of dollars to run the center. So I asked how much energy software …”
Oracle Named Its First Database Release Version 2 to Project Maturity
“The first version of our database was called Oracle version two.”
Ellison Secured an $80M Loan from Nippon Steel to Avoid Dilution
“Instead of surrendering equity in Oracle to pay off the banks, Ellison has secured a deal that gave him an eighty million dollar loan on highly favorable terms. He does this by going to Japan, which their economy was doing great at the time. So in exchange for…”