“Oracle Chairman and CTO Larry Ellison gave the commencement speech at the University of Southern California [on Friday] and told an interesting anecdote about his best friend, Apple’s late founder Steve Jobs,” Arik Hesseldahl reports for Recode. “It was during a long hike in Castle Rock State Park near Los Gatos, Calif., in 1995… On this walk, Ellison and Jobs talked about ways they might together regain control of Apple.”
“At the time, Apple was in ‘severe distress,’ Ellison said, and had faltered badly after Jobs’s exit years earlier. People wondered if the company would survive,” Hesseldahl reports. “Ellison’s idea was to buy Apple and immediately make Jobs CEO. It made sense. Apple was worth only about $5 billion at the time, and, as Ellison said, ‘We both had really good credit, and I had already arranged to borrow all the money. All Steve had to do was say yes.'”
“Jobs proposed what Ellison called ‘a more circuitous route,'” Hesseldahl reports. “He would persuade Apple to acquire Next, and then join Apple’s board. ‘Over time the board would recognize that Steve was the right guy to lead the company.’ As we all know, that’s exactly what happened the following year.”
The Jobs portion of Ellison’s address starts at the 15:00 mark:
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We can still remember the excitement the day the deal for Apple to acquire NeXT was announced. In reality, of course, NeXT took over Apple from the inside out, thanks Jobs!
Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me. — Steve Jobs