Secret passages and skipped meals: Oracle's CEO Mark Hurd gave us a rare peek at what it really takes to run a 37 billion company

Get the Full StoryOn Friday, October 18, 2016, Oracle founder and chairman Larry Ellison announced that Mark Hurd had passed away at age 62. He had been ill and was forced take a leave of absence from his job as CEO of Oracle last month, a role he shared with CEO Safra Catz.

"Mark was my close and irreplaceable friend, and trusted colleague," Ellison wrote to the announcement posted on Hurd's personal website. "Mark leaves his beloved wife Paula, two wonderful daughters who were the joy of his life, and his much larger extended family here at Oracle who came to love him."

In 2016, Hurd invited Business Insider's chief tech correspondent, Julie Bort, to spend a day with him watching him work. Bort ran after him during one of his biggest days of the year, when he met with customers, analysts and gave keynote speeches at Oracle's annual, massive tech conference. We are republishing that article, unedited, in its entirety.

Oracle had 37 billion in revenue that year. It has since grown its top line to 39 billion.

With 37 billion in annual revenue, Oracle is one of the world's biggest tech companies. And every year, tens of thousands of customers, partners, industry analysts, and journalists descend upon San Francisco for the company's OpenWorld tech conference.

It is a pinnacle week for the company's top execs its two famous CEOs, Safra Catz and Mark Hurd, and its even more famous founder, Larry Ellison, who stepped down from the CEO role in 2014 to become executive chairman and CTO, though he's still very much the leader of the executive triad.

Oracle invited me to spend a full day shadowing Hurd last week at OpenWorld as he met with customers, analysts, and others on the biggest day of the conference.

During the week, Hurd met with nearly 500 people either in one-on-one meetings or in small groups, answering their questions, solving problems, issuing reassurances, and explaining the company's plans and strategy all at a surprisingly exhausting pace.

It was a rare close-up look at the hard work a CEO does to run global tech company., " Our day together started at 8 a.m. at a local Starbucks. Hurd had been up for hours already since about 4:30 a.m. , working. He always wakes up that early. He warned me to wear comfortable shoes.

Mark Hurd

See: The truth behind Oracle CEO Mark Hurd's Starbucks addiction

Hurd surprisingly does not travel with an entourage of assistants. He's famous for his memory, and doesn't need a lot of hand-holding on his schedule. This day, it looked as though he had an entourage, but the crowd was mostly a PR representative and me. We were sometimes joined by the top Oracle exec responsible for the whole event and an Oracle exec responsible for a particular roundtable or meeting.

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Meeting with customers is clearly one of Hurd's favorite things to do. He was in high spirits, happy and joking with me and others all day. He was funny. He's also a singularly focused guy: sales and operations. He's so oriented toward that, that at one point, I mentioned the singer Adele, and he quipped, "Now that's productivity! She had one bad breakup and she turned it into a dozen songs."

Business Insider

See the rest of the story at Business InsiderSee Also:Oracle CEO Mark Hurd has died at the age of 62Meet the 5 execs that Larry Ellison and insiders say are on the short list to one day be the CEO of OracleMeet the 5 execs that Larry Ellison and insiders say are on the short list to one day be the CEO of OracleSEE ALSO: The fabulous life of billionaire Michael Dell, who just completed a 67 billion mega-deal to cement his empire

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