This being the 30th birthday of Oracle, the opening ceremony had to be special. Sunday Night Live-30, a
s it was called, started off with a wonderful and somewhat nostalgic speech by none other than Larry Ellison. This wasn't the usual LJE who'd be talking about why you shouldn't invest into IBM DB2 or MS Exchange - rather it was an enthusiastic Larry Ellison reminiscing about the journey of Oracle from its initial days as SDL(Software Development Laboratories) to where it is now - the largest enterprise software maker with around 300,000 customers!
Here are few excerpts from his speech which was accompanied throughout with applause from the thousands gathered at Moscone North.
"...Bob(Robert Miner) had a good job and he had a family in San Francisco... that made risk taking like this a little problematic. But I decided to spend time with Bob trying to persuade him that this is a good idea. So every night, regular at dinner time, when Bob would get home after work, I'd arrive at his house at San Francisco and tell him about this incredible opportunity to start a software company. And Bob's wife Mary would listen to my sales pitch, if you will, (and Mary's sitting right there in the front of me laughing as she did then)... and I went on something like three times a week, and Mary said, 'Dont you have a home to go to? Why do you keep coming by here? I've listened to you guys talk for hours and hours and all you guys keep saying is how great you are'! And she told Bob, 'You do what he wants to do and we'll all starve' "
- About initial resistance while starting the company
Buses carrying posters of DB 11g, AIA and Unbreakable Linux
"We bid 300,000 dollars and we won easily, because the next big bid was 2 million. Bob looked at me and said 'This is not a good start'"
- About winning one of the initial contracts with Precision Instruments and later realizing that they'd bid too low.
"And we had a very modest little office down in Silicon Valley... that was actually rented to us by Precision Instruments... We had 4 little offices right off the computer room.. I think they'd used it for paper storage before they rented it to us ... it wasn't too elegant... we had one window"
- About the first office of Software Development Laboratories
"... the first version of Oracle - Oracle Version-2. We didn't have a Version-1. Who would buy Version-1 of a database from four guys in California?"
- About calling it Oracle Version 2
"We had lots and lots of orders but no money. So we had to cut back on few things - like my salary and Bob's salary. The difference between Bob and me was, Bob had savings; when they cut Bob's salary, Bob simply dipped into his savings. When they cut my salary, I had almost no money to eat. I was building some credit card debt and the bank started foreclosing on my house... (pause)... But you've got to ignore these things are keep your eye on the ball and not let these little things let you down"
- About going close to bankruptcy during the initial days
Posters from yesteryears"We were trying to get a loan - we needed a credit rating - and they said, 'Well, send in your financial statements'... (pause) I looked at Stuart, 'Whats a financial statement?'. Stuart said 'I dont know what's a financial statement'... there's this P&L - they're easy to understand - money comes in, money goes out, and the difference is profit, very simple. But there's this thing called the balance sheet - If you're not an accountant, there's no way to know why does a balance sheet balance. There are things like Stockholders Holdings, Retained Earnings and all sorts of stuff that are completely inscrutable on a balance sheet. We finally got the loan but we were kind of guessing by looking at other people's financial statements. Its supposed to balance, but we'd no idea how this balanced. These were interesting times"
- About those days when there wasn't anyone with a proper accounting background.
"None of us knew accounting and we were desperate to hire someone who really understood accounting. We used to work late in the night and as all programmers do, we had pizza for dinner... and there was this delivery boy who used to come in to deliver pizzas. After some ten times or so, we'd become friends and started asking questions like where are you from and what do you do and so on. He said he was studying at Berkeley and we asked him what his major was. He replied 'Accounting' and we asked him 'Why don't you stop being a pizza boy and instead be our Chief Financial Officer'
- About how the first CFO, John Kemp was hired :)
There were many more, but then I guess I wouldn't have enough space to put them down here. Hopefully Oracle's gonna have a recorded version of the speech. Let me know if you find one.
And before I end this post, just want to say -
Happy 30th B'Day to you Oracle!
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