If you ask a random person on the street who is founder of oracle, they’ll probably bark back one name: Larry Ellison. It makes sense. Ellison is the billionaire with the fighter jets, the private Hawaiian island, and the kind of "win at all costs" reputation that makes Silicon Valley both terrified and fascinated. But history is rarely a solo act. While Larry is the face, the loud voice, and the undisputed architect of the company’s aggressive culture, he didn't actually start the fire alone.
Oracle wasn't born in a garage with a single visionary. It was born in 1977 as Software Development Laboratories (SDL). The founding team actually consisted of three men: Larry Ellison, Bob Miner, and Ed Oates.
They weren't looking to change the world initially. They were just trying to build a business. Honestly, the whole thing started because they saw a white paper written by an IBM researcher named Edgar F. Codd. Codd had this "crazy" idea about relational databases—basically a way to organize data so it could be easily searched and linked. IBM, in one of the biggest corporate blunders in history, ignored their own guy. Larry and his partners didn't. They saw the future while Big Blue was still staring at the floor.
The Trio Behind the Code: More Than Just Larry
It’s easy to get swept up in the Ellison mythos. He’s the guy who once said, "It's not enough that I succeed, all others must fail." That’s a heavy vibe. But if you look at the early days of Oracle, the dynamic was way more nuanced.
Bob Miner was the technical heart of the operation. If Larry was the engine, Bob was the transmission. He was the one who actually sat down and wrote the code for the first versions of the database. He was known as the "nice guy" of Oracle, a stark contrast to Ellison’s ruthless sales-driven approach. People who worked there in the late 70s and 80s often say that while they feared Larry, they loved Bob. He created a culture of engineering excellence that kept the product viable while Larry was out selling "vaporware"—promising features that didn't actually exist yet to land massive contracts.
Then there’s Ed Oates. He was the one who actually found the IBM paper that started it all. Without Ed’s curiosity, there is no Oracle. He was the glue. He stayed with the company until 1996, and while he isn't a household name, his role in the foundational architecture of the system was critical.
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Why the Name "Oracle"?
Funny enough, the name didn't come from some deep philosophical meditation. It came from a project they were doing for the CIA. Yeah, the actual CIA. The project was code-named "Oracle." The goal was to build a massive relational database that could handle the agency's data needs. The project itself was technically a bit of a mess and was eventually scrapped, but the guys liked the name. They kept it.
They renamed the company Relational Software Inc. in 1979, and then finally just "Oracle" in 1982 to match their flagship product. It was a brilliant branding move. An "oracle" is someone who sees the future, and in the world of data, that’s exactly what their software promised to do.
The Brutal Early Days and the 1990 Near-Collapse
You can't talk about who is founder of oracle without talking about how Larry almost lost the whole thing. Most people think Oracle was just a steady climb to the top. Nope.
By 1990, Oracle was the darling of the tech world, but the wheels were falling off. The sales culture Larry created was so aggressive that salespeople were booking future revenue as current earnings. It was a mess. The stock price crashed. The company was literally on the verge of bankruptcy. This is the moment where Ellison’s leadership style changed forever. He fired most of the upper management, brought in "adult supervision" in the form of Ray Lane from Booz Allen Hamilton, and pivoted the company toward actual financial stability.
This period defined the modern Oracle. It became less of a scrappy startup and more of a predatory beast. They started buying everything in sight. PeopleSoft, Siebel, BEA Systems, Sun Microsystems. If you were a competitor, Larry didn't just want to beat you; he wanted to own you.
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What Most People Get Wrong About the Founders
People often assume the founders were best friends. They weren't. They were colleagues with a shared goal. Bob Miner eventually stepped back from the day-to-day operations because he grew tired of the corporate politics and the sheer intensity of the environment Larry cultivated. He passed away in 1994, which was a massive blow to the company's soul.
Ed Oates eventually moved on to follow other passions, like music and theater. He’s often the "forgotten" founder, but he seems perfectly fine with that. He got his payout and his legacy, and he didn't have to deal with the stress of being a public figure.
- Larry Ellison: The visionary and relentless salesman.
- Bob Miner: The engineering genius and cultural counterweight.
- Ed Oates: The researcher who spotted the opportunity.
The Impact of the "Founder Mentality" Today
Even though Larry Ellison stepped down as CEO in 2014, make no mistake: he still runs the show as Chairman and CTO. His DNA is in every line of code and every sales contract. The "founder mentality" at Oracle is about dominance.
Take their move into the cloud. For years, Larry mocked the cloud. He called it "idiocy" and "complete gibberish." Then, when he realized Amazon Web Services (AWS) was eating his lunch, he pivoted with a ferocity that was almost scary. Today, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is actually a legitimate contender, specifically for high-end enterprise workloads and AI training. Why? Because the founder's ethos is: "If we're late to the party, we're going to bring the biggest speakers and the best booze until everyone forgets who got here first."
Actionable Insights: Learning from the Oracle Story
Looking at the history of these three men provides some pretty stark lessons for anyone in business or tech today.
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First, don't build in a vacuum. If Ed Oates hadn't been reading IBM's research, they would have built something else entirely. The best ideas often exist in the "trash" of larger companies who are too slow to see what they have.
Second, you need a balanced team. If Oracle had been three Larry Ellisons, the company would have burned itself out in three years due to internal ego clashes. If it had been three Bob Miners, they would have had a perfect product that nobody ever bought. The friction between the salesman and the engineer is where the value is created.
Third, admit when the model is broken. In 1990, Larry had to choose between his ego and his company’s survival. He chose the company. He brought in people who were smarter than him in areas where he was weak.
If you are trying to understand the tech landscape of 2026, you have to look at how Oracle is positioning itself in the AI race. They are leveraging their foundational database dominance to become the "plumbing" for the next generation of LLMs. They are doing exactly what they did in 1977: finding a massive amount of data and figuring out the most efficient way to store and retrieve it.
The story of the Oracle founders isn't a fairy tale. It’s a story of opportunism, technical brilliance, and a level of competitive drive that borderlines on the pathological. Whether you love them or hate them, you can't ignore them. Larry might be the one on the magazine covers, but the trio of Ellison, Miner, and Oates changed how the world handles information forever.
If you're looking to dive deeper into how this history affects modern enterprise tech, your best bet is to look at current OCI white papers or follow the quarterly earnings calls where Ellison still regularly goes off-script. The past is very much present at Oracle.
Next Steps for Implementation:
- Audit your data stack: Are you using relational databases because they are the best fit, or just because it's the "Oracle way" that became the industry standard?
- Review the "Codd Paper": Read the original 1970 paper A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks. It’s a masterclass in seeing the future.
- Assess team balance: Ensure your project has a "Salesman" (Ellison), a "Builder" (Miner), and a "Researcher" (Oates). Without all three, your chances of scaling drop significantly.