05 Larry Ellison
拉里·埃里森，“硅谷”的知名顽童

名人标签

01 Ellison has donated（捐赠）up to 1% of his wealth to charity and has signed The Giving Pledge.

埃里森为慈善事业捐献了自己全部财产的1%，并签署了“捐赠宣言”。

02 Larry Ellison is arguably the first Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur to live large and fast.

拉里·埃里森是第一位受到非议的却又如此快速壮大的硅谷企业家。

了解他/她多少

Personal life

Larry Ellison was born in New York City to an unwed Jewish mother. After Ellison contracted pneumonia（肺炎）at the age of nine months, his mother gave him to her aunt and uncle for adoption. He did not meet his biological mother again until he was 48. Although Ellison was raised in a Reform Jewish home by his adoptive parents, he remained a religious skeptic（怀疑论者）. Ellison left the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign after his second year, not taking his final exams. After spending a summer in northern California, he attended the University of Chicago for one term, where he first encountered（接触）computer design. Ellison owns many exotic cars, including an Audi R8 and a McLaren F1. Ellison is a licensed pilot who has owned several aircraft.

阅读超链接

拉里·埃里森被称为“硅谷花花公子”。1944年出生在曼哈顿，他的未婚妈妈只有19岁。埃里森是由舅舅一家抚养长大的。埃里森高中毕业，进入伊利诺伊州立大学就读，二年级时离开了学校。他离开的原因是因为平均成绩没有达到及格水平。过了一个夏天他进入芝加哥大学，同时还在西北大学学习。虽然经历了三个大学，最终他没有得到任何大学文凭。

Career

During the 1970s, after a brief stint（停留）at Amdahl Corporation, Ellison began working for Ampex Corporation. His projects included a database（资料库）for the CIA, which he named “Oracle”. In 1977, he founded Software Development Laboratories (SDL) with two partners and an investment of$2,000. In 1979 the company renamed itself Relational Software Inc., in 1982 officially became Oracle Systems Corporation after its flagship product, the Oracle database. The European Union approved Oracle's acquisition（获得）of Sun Microsystems in 2010 and agreed that Oracle's acquisition of Sun “has the potential to revitalize important assets and create new and innovative products”. Forbes‘ 2004 list of charitable donations made by the wealthiest 400 Americans stated that Ellison had donated $151,092,103, about 1% of his estimated personal wealth.

阅读超链接

1977年埃里森和其他两个人合伙出资2000美元成立了软件开发研究公司，那时大多数人认为关系数据库不会有商业价值，因为速度太慢，但是埃里森认为这是他们的机会：他决定开发通用商用数据库系统“甲骨文”，这个名字来源于他们曾给中央情报局做过的项目名。以不择手段的经营方式和强力的市场竞争手段，埃里森击败了一个又一个对手。埃里森是《福布斯》美国富豪榜的第3位，并且在“捐献承诺”的榜单里也仅次于盖茨和巴菲特。

妙语连珠

Please, take a good look around you. Look at the classmate on your left. Look at the classmate on your right. Now, consider this: five years from now, 10 years from now, even 30 years from now, odds（胜算）are the person on your left is going to be a loser. The person on your right, meanwhile, will also be a loser. And you, in the middle? What can you expect? Loser. Loserhood. Loser Cum Laude. In fact, as I look out before me today, I don't see a thousand hopes for a bright tomorrow. I don't see a thousand future leaders in a thousand industries. I see a thousand losers.

You're upset. That's understandable. After all, how can I, Lawrence “Larry”Ellison, college dropout（辍学学生）, have the audacity（厚颜无耻）to spout such heresy（异端邪说）to the graduating class of one of the nation's most prestigious（享有声望的）institutions? I'll tell you why. Because I, Lawrence “Larry” Ellison, second richest man on the planet, am a college dropout, and you are not. Because Bill Gates, richest man on the planet—for now, anyway—is a college dropout, and you are not.Because Paul Allen, the third richest man on the planet, dropped out of college, and you did not. And for good measure, because Michael Dell, No. 9 on the list and moving up fast, is a college dropout, and you, yet again, are not.

阅读超链接

这是Oracle的CEO拉里·埃里森发表的世人看来最为狂妄、不受欢迎但又是最现实的演讲。他让毕业生们清楚地看到了现实世界。