He made a lot of REALLY bad business decisions (i.e. decisions which lost him lots of money) in the first 25 or so years running Virgin which is pretty good evidence that this blog post is not just PR.
On an unrelated note, something else I learned from the book is his success was pretty much 100% due to a cousin of his from South Africa showing up in London unannounced and looking for a job - turns out that cousin had a great ear for "what's cool", which resulted in Virgin signing their first successful artist (a studio musician who hung out at one of their studios), whose record sales kept the company afloat for its first 10 years.
Just goes to show you the importance of the right team - as well as being in the right place at the right time...
I read the book 2 years ago so my memory is a bit fuzzy... My biggest takeaway from that book is he took an approach to entrepreneurship which emphasized low risk / high uncertainty ventures.
For example, he started his business selling Virgin records by mail and used pre-orders to limit any real inventory risk. That gave him the cash flow to fund the eventual opening of the Virgin Record Store.
Then later, when he decides to open an airline, he purposefully chooses to lease rather than buy planes. That lowered his initial capital outlay and made the risk of the airline going bust not so bad on his wallet.
I think I also remember that he was really good at setting up his different companies using a holding co structure. I think that allowed him to segment out each business and made it so that the failure of one would not affect the others (esp. re financing).
I also got the idea that he took a lot of small low risk bets. Taking his Virgin brand and simply applying it to pre-existing products (maybe even cola? I cant remember too well). Even the airline was already another airline I believe. So by applying his brand to a wide variety of products he was able to circumvent having to do a ton of R&D or heavy capital investments.
It's important to separate the decisions he made, versus the decisions his McKinsey & Co Trade "business manager" made.
I get the impression from the book that people would call Richard up looking for money, and if it sounded like fun Richard would say "Sure", to which all the other Virgin stake holders say "Are you nuts?". Then Richard moves forward with it one way or another, and its up to the other employees to make it work.
That, at least, sounds like the story behind Virgin Atlantic, as well as a few of his big adventure trips.
"as well as being in the right place at the right time..."
Just going by your statement that he "made a lot of REALLY bad business decisions...in the first 25 or so years," it seems like he was at a lot of different places at a lot of different times. This very much increases the probability of eventually being at one of the right places at one of the right times.
To Clarify - in his book he makes it seem like if he never signed Miked Oldfeld (Tubular Bells), then the company would have gone bust in its first few years, and that 25 year period would never have happened.
Hence, it was being in the right place at the right time once which allowed those future bad decisions to be made.
Having read both Losing My Virginity and Business Stripped Bare I totally agree with your comments, he is the first to admit that his success is largely born out of the ability of the people he surrounds himself with.
The branded venture capitalism method they have adopted for new ventures is something to be very envious of. The success stories of Virgin Blue (Australian Budget Airline) and Virgin Mobile are perfect case studies for anyone looking to learn about how to launch a disruptive company in a dilapidated market.
Also the importance of avoiding the wrong places. Managing to stay out of jail for import tax evasion was a big help, and a great incentive in growing his business to pay off the fines.
Tom Bower's unauthorized biography is an interesting counter point. Branson is very good at self-promotion, including his own books.
He made a lot of REALLY bad business decisions (i.e. decisions which lost him lots of money) in the first 25 or so years running Virgin which is pretty good evidence that this blog post is not just PR.
On an unrelated note, something else I learned from the book is his success was pretty much 100% due to a cousin of his from South Africa showing up in London unannounced and looking for a job - turns out that cousin had a great ear for "what's cool", which resulted in Virgin signing their first successful artist (a studio musician who hung out at one of their studios), whose record sales kept the company afloat for its first 10 years.
Just goes to show you the importance of the right team - as well as being in the right place at the right time...