Larry Ellison

my wife said this was a single stupidest
idea she had ever heard in her entire
life she kicked me out and then she
divorced me growing up in a lower
middle-class community on the south side
of Chicago virtually everyone important
in my life my family my teachers my
girlfriend wanted me to be a doctor over
time their dreams became my dreams they
convinced me I should be a doctor but as
hard as I tried I couldn't do it I was
unable to make myself into the person
that I thought I should be so I decided
to stop trying I was 21 years old when I
dropped out of college
during my California Springs and summers
I spent most of my days in the High
Sierras in Yosemite Valley working as a
river guide and a rock climbing
instructor I loved at those jobs but
unfortunately they didn't pay that well
so I also got a job working a couple of
days a week as a computer programmer
back in Berkeley I had learned a program
in college I didn't love programming but
it was fun and I was good at it I
started taking classes at UC Berkeley
I took several classes but the only one
I can remember was a sailing class
taught at Berkeley marina when my class
was over I wanted to buy a sailboat
my wife said this was a single stupidest
idea she had ever heard in her entire
life she accused me of being
irresponsible and she told me I lacked
ambition she kicked me out and then she
divorced me this is a pivotal moment in
my life my family was still mad at me
for not going to medical school and now
my wife was divorcing me because I
lacked ambition it looked like a
reoccurrence of the same old problem
once again I was unable to live up to
the expectations of others but this time
I was not disappointed in myself for
failing to be the person they thought I
should be their dreams and my dreams
were different I would never confuse the
two of them again throughout my 20s I
continued experimenting trying different
things racing bikes and boats and
constantly changing jobs I searched and
I searched but I just could not find a
software engineering job thought that I
loved as much as I loved sailing so I
tried to create one
my goal was to create the perfect job
for me a job I truly loved I never
expected the company to grow beyond 50
people so maybe I really did lack
ambition or vision back then
today Oracle employs around 150,000
people but when I started it was not my
intention to build a big company we
assembled an all-star team of gifted
programmers who were among the best in
the world at what they did that team
plus one crazy idea
gave birth to a giant company I call it
a crazy idea because of the time
everyone told me it was a crazy idea the
idea was to build the world's first
relational database but back then the
collective wisdom of computer experts
was that while relational databases
could be built they would never be fast
enough to be useful I thought
all those so-called computer experts
were wrong and when you start telling
people but all the experts are wrong
at first they call you arrogant and then
they say you're crazy so remember this
graduates when people start telling you
that you're crazy you just might be on
to the most important innovation in your
life
Oracle doubled in size year after year
after year for 10 years that was growing
so fast that it was impossible for
anyone to control it was like sailing in
a hurricane and then we went public oh
my god maybe I should have been a doctor