Take an exclusive tour of Oracle's new live-in campus in Austin, where college grads live, work and party together

Oracle Austin

Oracle has opened a massive new campus in Austin, Texas, which houses about 5,000 employees, with capacity for up to 10,000.
The campus includes a luxury on-site apartment building.
The initiative was the brainchild of Oracle co-CEO Mark Hurd as part of his Class Of program.

On Thursday, Oracle officially opened its massive new Austin, Texas, campus which houses about 5,000 employees today, but will eventually hold 10,000.

This campus is unique in that it includes a luxury on-site apartment building. The live-in campus was the brainchild of Oracle co-CEO Mark Hurd as part of his Class Of program.

Hurd was inspired to create the program by a dinner he had with his daughter and her friends a few years ago. They had just graduated from college, landed sales jobs and were rooming together. They were chattering about their lives which consisted of selling stuff and partying.

"They had this infectious enthusiasm and I thought we should do the same thing at Oracle," Hurd told Business Insider. People inside Oracle's legendary competitive salesforce were not happy with the idea at first. Hiring untrained college grads was a big change for the software giant who had "historically hired from competitors," he said.

Undeterred, in 2013, Hurd began to hire thousands of college graduates to sell Oracle's cloud. He had to figure out how to train them and support their career growth until they could handle territories and clients on their own.

Today, the grads spend a few weeks in training, are tasked with cold-calling, then they shadow sales people. It takes three years of graduated training and work to get their own territories.

Then he decided Class Of employees need state-of-the-art facilities and help with affordable housing.

So in 2015, the story of this Oracle campus began, when Hurd hopped on a plane with Oracle founder Larry Ellison to Austin, and they walked along the river in search of the spot for the live-in campus.

Take a look ...

The new campus is on 40-acres of prime riverfront property, mostly undeveloped.

The story goes, after seeing a few properties that were too small, Ellison and Hurd were walking along the river when Ellison turned the real-estate agent, swept his hand out and said, "how much for this area?"

The agent nearly choked. Ellison was pointing to acres and acres of premium land, one that included a partially finished apartment building.

Here is the front of the Austin Azul apartment building. My guides today are Oracle's senior director of real-estate Lindsay Pomeroy (left), Oracle's director of building services Ron Skipper Jr. (center), and a PR director, Greg Lunsford (right).

My tour guides also included four Class Of participants who work in the new facility.

They are (from left to right) Matt Cox from Boston College; Lauren Mosley from Baylor (originally from Southern California); Iesha Brown from Xavier University of Louisiana; and Jack Roberts from University of Virginia.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider