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I'm an entrepreneur and I think Larry Ellison is a turd. Am I blowing your mind? People start and run companies for a variety of motives. Obliterating the comp

I'm an entrepreneur and I think Larry Ellison is a turd. Am I blowing your mind? People start and run companies for a variety of motives. Obliterating the competition is one of them, but it seems to correlate with being a pretty awful person to be around, so not everyone chooses to play by those rules. Ultimately you get to choose-and are responsible for-the rules you play by. If there's one big lesson of entrepreneurship, it's "take responsibility", and that includes figuring out what kind of person you want to become.

jiggy2011 12y ago
If you don't want to obliterate the competition, then software is probably a bad place to be if you want to grow big. Winner take all seems to be the rule rather than the exception.
- idlewords 12y ago
  "If you want to grow big". There's plenty of room at the bottom.
  - jiggy2011 12y ago
    Do you think that anyone who runs a large software company is a turd?
    - idlewords 12y ago
      What an odd question. I imagine some of them are very nice people, but I would have no way to know.
      - jiggy2011 12y ago
        It's not an odd question, it follows logically from what you have written. If Ellison is a "turd" for doing what basically every big tech firm has done (gaining a monopoly in a particular market) then they must all be turds too.
- oracleverer 12y ago
  I usually don't comment but this just hits the nerves so hard I couldn't resist; Larry Ellison is as not an entrepreneur, he is a public figurehead chosen to be the face of a company started by a small team of programmers with ties to the intelligence community who then mysteriously got a huge government contract with no company history to speak of despite competitive bids by established, larger companies with experience and concrete histories. Like how, oh, I don't know, another company these days is being shoved in our Face(book)s as a model of success for no other reason than its strategic value to the intell community. Or how Steve Wynn was marketed as a genius developer but it turned out he was just a front for the mob who needed stay in and compete with corporations but couldn't raise funds on wall street due to criminal records. Or how Bill Gates was a "genius" because he insisted on licensing Winblows instead of selling it even though history went on to show that he actually tried to sell it to IBM numerous times but IBM's then CEO, who was a friend of his family and lived a few blocks away in the same neighborhood actually came with the idea to the table and insisted that IBM license the software instead of buying it, which basically set Microsoft with a huge source of un-earned cash just as it was starting up and helped create the mythos of the "genius" entrepreneur. The only thing this is proof of is inexperience, gullibility and lack of insight into the real workings of the world. You want to see a good example of an entrepreneur? Look at Jack Ma. No social background, no spoon in mouth, just a lot of optimism hard work and a sense that success can be mutual and open-looped. Started in China, a country notorious for government/business/family-relation corruption but chose not to seek help from the obvious places and instead earned business the hard way - going door to door and manufacturers and asking them to sign up, one boring conversation at a time. You couldn't make a hollywood movie out of that because its so boring. But it's reality. Any startup story that can have a hollywood movie around it is usually just a public business sockpuppet around a group of allied interests with money to throw around at the next "genius" they want to prop up to create a magical story/script for the next IPO.
josefresco 12y ago
"Obliterating the competition is one of them" is not a goal or motive, but a tactic used to achieve a goal. I think it's a stretch to assert that Ellison started in business solely to "obliterate" his competitors.
parasubvert 12y ago
Generally I think of entrepreneurs as wanting to create a growth business with sustainable competitive advantage, which in turn creates great wealth for customers, employees, and investors. The alternative is starting a lifestyle business. This is fine, but not a source of great wealth beyond your family. It's more aptly described by "small business owner" or "self-employed". Either angle can shape the person you become, but I'm not sure it's so easy to correlate "awful" with "growth company founder". Certainly Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are in this category, and they've been brutal to their competition. Are they turds too?
- idlewords 12y ago
  This is a "no true Scotsman" argument about the nature of entepreneurship. Entrepreneurs are people who start businesses, which is a much wider category than what you seem to have in mind.
  - parasubvert 12y ago
    No, it's a fairly clear cut split, and I am far from the first person to make this distinction.

jiggy2011 12y ago

If you don't want to obliterate the competition, then software is probably a bad place to be if you want to grow big. Winner take all seems to be the rule rather than the exception.

idlewords 12y ago
"If you want to grow big". There's plenty of room at the bottom.
- jiggy2011 12y ago
  Do you think that anyone who runs a large software company is a turd?
  - idlewords 12y ago
    What an odd question. I imagine some of them are very nice people, but I would have no way to know.
    - jiggy2011 12y ago
      It's not an odd question, it follows logically from what you have written. If Ellison is a "turd" for doing what basically every big tech firm has done (gaining a monopoly in a particular market) then they must all be turds too.
oracleverer 12y ago
I usually don't comment but this just hits the nerves so hard I couldn't resist; Larry Ellison is as not an entrepreneur, he is a public figurehead chosen to be the face of a company started by a small team of programmers with ties to the intelligence community who then mysteriously got a huge government contract with no company history to speak of despite competitive bids by established, larger companies with experience and concrete histories. Like how, oh, I don't know, another company these days is being shoved in our Face(book)s as a model of success for no other reason than its strategic value to the intell community. Or how Steve Wynn was marketed as a genius developer but it turned out he was just a front for the mob who needed stay in and compete with corporations but couldn't raise funds on wall street due to criminal records. Or how Bill Gates was a "genius" because he insisted on licensing Winblows instead of selling it even though history went on to show that he actually tried to sell it to IBM numerous times but IBM's then CEO, who was a friend of his family and lived a few blocks away in the same neighborhood actually came with the idea to the table and insisted that IBM license the software instead of buying it, which basically set Microsoft with a huge source of un-earned cash just as it was starting up and helped create the mythos of the "genius" entrepreneur. The only thing this is proof of is inexperience, gullibility and lack of insight into the real workings of the world. You want to see a good example of an entrepreneur? Look at Jack Ma. No social background, no spoon in mouth, just a lot of optimism hard work and a sense that success can be mutual and open-looped. Started in China, a country notorious for government/business/family-relation corruption but chose not to seek help from the obvious places and instead earned business the hard way - going door to door and manufacturers and asking them to sign up, one boring conversation at a time. You couldn't make a hollywood movie out of that because its so boring. But it's reality. Any startup story that can have a hollywood movie around it is usually just a public business sockpuppet around a group of allied interests with money to throw around at the next "genius" they want to prop up to create a magical story/script for the next IPO.

josefresco 12y ago

"Obliterating the competition is one of them" is not a goal or motive, but a tactic used to achieve a goal. I think it's a stretch to assert that Ellison started in business solely to "obliterate" his competitors.

parasubvert 12y ago

Generally I think of entrepreneurs as wanting to create a growth business with sustainable competitive advantage, which in turn creates great wealth for customers, employees, and investors. The alternative is starting a lifestyle business. This is fine, but not a source of great wealth beyond your family. It's more aptly described by "small business owner" or "self-employed". Either angle can shape the person you become, but I'm not sure it's so easy to correlate "awful" with "growth company founder". Certainly Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are in this category, and they've been brutal to their competition. Are they turds too?

idlewords 12y ago
This is a "no true Scotsman" argument about the nature of entepreneurship. Entrepreneurs are people who start businesses, which is a much wider category than what you seem to have in mind.
- parasubvert 12y ago
  No, it's a fairly clear cut split, and I am far from the first person to make this distinction.