Richard Branson Entrepreneurial Iterations

Late last week I finished the Richard Branson autobiography Losing My Virginity. The book is an entertaining read that provides a great number of stories around the personal and professional life of one of the world’s great entrepreneurs. The name Virgin, as most of Richard’s companies start with, came when they were working on the name for the first company and one of his friends suggested it since they didn’t have any business experience.

One of the more interesting aspects of his story is the continual iterations of businesses he had early on. Here are some of those:

• Magazine called Student targeted towards the college-age student, popular on many UK campuses, even though Richard never went to college
• Mail order record business designed to undercut store prices after Student went under due to not being profitable
• Record stores started after the UK postal service went on strike for many months and there was no other way for the mail order business to survive
• Record label with a recording studio as a way to capture more from the value chain of the recording industry
• Airline after a US lawyer sent him a letter saying that since British Airways had acquired the only other UK competitor that flew to the US there was a law that another company could come in and gain access to the routes

Now the Virgin group has over 150 companies doing everything from rail services to vacations to cola. It is pretty amazing the scale and success he’s achieved by bringing a fun, irreverent brand to a variety of otherwise boring industries. I’d recommend this book to get a glimpse into the life of a fascinating entrepreneur.