The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed Up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, the America's Cup, Twice

About the book

David builds Episode 126 around Guthrie's account as a study of extreme competitiveness: Ellison finances the campaign, Bajurin provides the club partnership, and the team persists through repeated losses before winning twice. Later episodes return to the book's Ellison and Steve Jobs anecdotes.

Why read it

Best if you want a Founders-selected account David revisits for competitive drive, keeping perspective during a comeback, and the leadership ideas he draws from Ellison and Jobs.

Evidence and original sources

This record is supported by 11 public evidence rows linked to original Founders episodes.

• Larry Ellison (The Billionaire and the Mechanic) — Host names Julian Guthrie's The Billionaire and the Mechanic as the book featured in this episode.
• Larry Ellison (Oracle) — David returns to The Billionaire and the Mechanic for the unsatisfied drive that keeps pushing Larry Ellison.
• Henry Leland (Cadillac) — David returns to the book's Jobs-Ellison debate over history's greatest person, contrasting Gandhi and Napoleon with Henry Leland's choice of Abraham Lincoln.
• Ernest Shackleton — David returns to the book's comeback story and its lesson from Navy SEAL training: manage perspective by focusing only on the next step.
• Winston Churchill (Leadership during WW2) — David returns to the book's Jobs-Ellison walk about history's greatest people and Ellison reading Churchill while Oracle neared failure.
• Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography — David uses a Larry Ellison anecdote from this book about dot-com era euphoria.