Larry Ellison's Personal Life

Image by nee-nee-lee via Flickr

Larry's first wife left him because he did not work "hard enough." He would do just enough contract work to be able to pay his share of the bills. He has said he "screwed through my 20s." He went ahead and bought a boat. That sent the wife into therapy. She decided the choice was between going crazy and getting a divorce. She picked divorce. During the counseling before the divorce Larry promised to make "a million dollars," the first time he ever talked such big numbers. The wife laughed.

Larry's second wife left him because he worked "too hard." He got on the phone with the first wife and asked, "How does this work?"

Larry's third wife left him for a Harvard MBA. He sent an email to a friend: "Congratulations on getting and staying married."

Larry's fourth wife - from an "aristocratic" Kentucky family, his word - when it was time for her to leave, she had a choice between the family pickup truck and Oracle stocks. She picked the truck.

Somebody around this point described Larry's personal life a "train wreck."

The fifth wife refused to remarry saying her divorce was better than most of her friends' marriages. By now Larry was wealthy beyond imagination.

He has had a steady girlfriend since the late 1990s: Melony. Melony was engaged when he met her: at a mall. She did not know who he was. She feared he might be one of the "suites." Her fiance was an artist. Larry pursued her for over a year. Once he arranged for her and the fiance to show up for an event where Steve Jobs was going to show up. That was his "Melony strategy." Maybe Steve Jobs will impress you. She was a Mac user.

He has said about being a college dropout: "I could not have started a college, but I could have started a company."

About his many failed marriages and an eventual relationship he has said, "I needed to find me first."

Mideast Peace: Tech Industry Style
Oracle, Oracle
Larry Ellison
That StartUp Mentality (2)
Oracle, Oracle
Firing Founders: Mostly A Bad Idea
Rich People's Kids
Larry Ellison's 1995 Network Computer Vision

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Spain: The Octopus Was Right, I Was Wrong

Image via Wikipedia

Spain won. They dominated the game in the beginning, in the middle, and the end. And they won. They scored one goal and they won. This Spain-Germany game was the best game I have watched so far during World Cup 2010. There was no need for one superstar to emerge. These were two great teams that went for it. It was quite a display. What a game.

I started out rooting for Brazil and Argentina. (Brazil And Argentina: My Choices And Those Of My Favorite Actor) Both got wiped out. Then I threw my weight behind Germany. Germany got wiped out today. (The Germans Called Me Robin Hood) And so I have decided not to take sides for the World Cup Final. I will let The Octopus take a go at it.

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A NY Tech MeetUp For Sindre Aarsaether

Image of Sindre Aarsaether

Sindre, if you don't know him, is one uber hacker. He is a geek, a nerd. He is Singularity. He is a friend. He is a foreigner. He is Scandinavian. He has a friend who likes to go couchsurfing.

Welcome, Sindre, back to New York. I will see you tonight.

And there is a fresh email from Brandon Diamond.

* Betterfly: connect with betterists to improve yourself
* HotPotato: share what you're doing with friends
* Learnvest: educational finance resource for women
* Frontal: rich web apps from simple markup
* StuffBuff: auctions anywhere you want them
* HowAboutWe: pick your perfect date then find a match
* Jetsetter: insider access to the places you want to go
* Comixology: read comics on the go and on the web

We'll also be hearing from Clay Shirky who'll be discussing "generosity as a design problem". 

Plus, the entire evening will be guest emceed by the wonderful Dina Kaplan, co-founder of blip.tv.

So come on down to NYU Skirball at 7 PM for another evening with NYC's brightest movers and shakers.

Skirball Center for the Performing Arts
New York University
566 LaGuardia Place (at Washington Square South)
www.skirballcenter.nyu.edu / 212.992.8484

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Brad Feld

The Founders Visa Movement
An Angel Investor Group Move That Makes Me Vomit
Amazon Fires Its Affiliates in Colorado (Including Me) Because of Colorado HB 10-1193

Bummed Out About Bilski
Take the Time to Acknowledge Management’s Performance
Gearbox’s Smart Ball
Founders 2010 #6: We’re Not Alone
How MIT Could Help With A Different Approach to the BP Gulf Crisis
Risk Takers – Pogoplug and RedLaser
Discovering At Least One Awesome Thing A Day On My Mac


"We're Not Alone" The Founders | TechStars Boulder | Episode 6 from TechStars on Vimeo.


"Risk Takers" The Founders | TechStars Boulder | Episode 5 from TechStars on Vimeo.



Oblong is Hiring
The Magic of Email Conversations
eBay Acquires RedLaser
Startupbootcamp – TechStars Global Affiliate in Compenhagen
Fun and Games with BigDoor

The Wall Street Journal: Blogs: Venture Capital Dispatch:
A Summer Romance Between Founder And Venture Capitalist

a world where many entrepreneurs see venture capital as a necessary evil ..... the tale of meeting Foundry Group’s Feld and how the VC’s unorthodox approach to learning about the company ultimately cemented Smith’s desire to have him as an investor...... Brad intrigued me because he didn’t come across like any venture capitalist I had ever met ..... ‘I’m not going to conform’ persona, and are both passionate to their core about helping startups ........ “The mindset of a typical VC is geared more towards a later stage company that has crossed the chasm and the customer base is beyond early adopters,” Smith told us. “Finding someone that knows you still need to find out where to aim your rocket is very important.” ....... Feld’s process was simple: He wanted to get to know the founders and find that each interaction had been more interesting than the last. ....... When I told him that we didn’t have an investor presentation put together yet he quipped, ‘The last thing in the world I want to see is a f—ing presentation ....... Brad and I spent the next six months getting to know each other, during which Brad and his partners repeatedly drilled us on our thinking, our strategy, our technology and our market approach. We told him we would invite him into the “sausage making” process and he readily donned his hairnet and dove in. ....... Foundry never asked for projections or historical financials. “We talked about where we want to take the product and how we want to serve customers ..... “After we signed a term sheet, I finally asked Brad if he wanted to see our deck. I sent it to him and he said, ‘That scared me.’

BigDoor: Blog: Venture Capital: A Love Story

We quickly concluded that we needed to kill everything we had just spent six months building and go back to the drawing board. Given that we had only two months of cash in the bank at the time, this decision wasn’t an easy one but we felt strongly that it was necessary. ....... Andy has a favorite saying, “We know your plans are wrong, we just don’t yet know how wrong.” ...... changing direction like this meant he was willing to forget every one of those prior promises and start down a new path. ....... we went from 0 users to 8 million users in an afternoon. ....... he wasn’t your typical VC. Brad is an early investor in Zynga the undisputed king of social gaming. ....... we knew that having Brad as a partner would give us a huge amount of credibility with potential customers, so we began stalking him. ...... We mostly went back and forth via email, where niceties were commonly replaced with a raw curiosity of how best to build BigDoor and how we would meet the coming onslaught of demand for our platform. Brad was direct and often told me where he thought I was wrong, which laid the groundwork for me being able to do the same with him. We found some common ground and a fair amount of areas to disagree and challenge each other. We joked about 80’s bands, compared reading lists and shared paranoid rants about how machines will eventually take over the world (they will). But what’s most notable is what we didn’t discuss. Never once did anyone at Foundry ask us for projections or historical financials. We didn’t talk about the deal, valuation or board composition and we never talked about exit timing or how much money they needed to make. Product, customers and philosophy – that’s where we spent our time. ...... On two separate occasions Brad told me he was “out” and wasn’t going to invest. ..... “The word ‘no’ is simply a milestone on the path to ‘yes’.” This emboldened me to go back to Brad and tell him he was wrong and that he was the perfect partner for us. I made no attempt at all to posture or play hard to get .......... This wasn’t done out of desperation – we had multiple offers from other great VCs – we conducted ourselves in a completely transparent fashion because that’s how Foundry was toward us. ......... until one day Brad sent an email that said, “Ok – I’m ready (and psyched) to do a deal.” He then laid out deal terms in one very simple paragraph. I responded with a very long email that ultimately asked for just one change, and he simply responded with “Deal.” That was it, that email exchange was the extent of our term sheet. Instead of grinding us on terms, Brad spent the three weeks from our agreement to closing making introductions for us to potential customers. ....... we’ve never had a deal go this smooth nor have we ever had anyone who was so awesome to work with on the other side of the table. ......... Having great investors isn’t just about warm fuzzies, it should (and does) also result in real customers. ..... as we endeavor to weave the BigDoor platform into the very fabric of the Internet.

Video: Brad Feld On How To Get Funding

A Month of Mac
Rethinking The Laptop
I’ve Failed Over and Over and Over Again in My Life



Swimming At Night
Founders 2010 #4: Let’s Be Honest
Van Gogh’s Starry Night Updated



Who Wants To Be A Tech Star?
Learning Leadership From The Movie 13 Days
Mr. Feld Goes to DC To Talk About Innovation
Founders 2010 #3: Be Fearless. Today.

It is of great interest to me that Brad Feld's most popular blog post is this one: The Founders Visa Movement.

An Immigrant Story For Brad Feld
Paul Graham, Brad Feld, Me, BBC
Me @ BBC
To: Brad Feld, Subject: Iran And Me (Digital Ninja/Commando)

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Rome - Phoenix W/ Devendra Banhart

(Via Fred Wilson)

Lyrics

Ah I never loved you
And if I loved you
I wouldn't say I'm sorry oh no
I stand outside under broken leaves

Always and forever more
And together getting lonely
I thought I couldn't do this without you
Single in his bed somewhere
Ashes still it fall fall falls