Lawrence Joseph Ellison (1944-), co-founder and CEO of Oracle Corporation, founded his company in 1977 with a sum of $2,000.

Once a school dropout, he is now one of the richest people in America with a net worth of around $25 billion.

As a young man, Ellison worked for the Ampex Corporation, where one of his projects was a database for the CIA. He called it Oracle, a name he was to reuse years later for the company that made him famous.

Ellison is quite a colourful man, and has long dabbled in all kinds of things. Want to learn more? Try his biography, The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison.

Image: Oracle CEO Larry Ellison in San Francisco. | Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images