Why Did Larry Ellison Leave Consulting?

David Senra reads Larry Ellison's reason for leaving consulting almost immediately: it proved to be much more work than he ever imagined, and a software product offered the ultimate leverage: build it once and sell it over and over.

Ellison was 34 when he started Oracle, then called Software Development Laboratories, with no grand ambition for it. His original goal was a company doing about $10 million a year in revenue and employing about 50 people. What motivated him was control over his environment, so he would not have to do things he did not want to do or spend time with people he did not enjoy working with. He convinced two other people he was working with to start Software Development Laboratories as a consulting shop. They bid on a contract they saw as a great way to make a lot of money, but he thought the money came with way too much work. They wanted a product and did not know which one to make, so they scoured the technical literature about databases for new ideas. IBM had a research division publishing papers about a prototype relational database it was building. He decided they should use the IBM papers as an architectural blueprint for the new database product. The opportunity was huge: a chance to build the world's first commercial relational database, because no one else was even trying.