Richard Branson: Born to beat the odds

Chatham House [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]

Born in London in 1950, Richard Branson dropped out of high school at 15. A dyslexic, he wanted no formal education. No business training either. All he wanted was to become an entrepreneur fast.

His headmaster told him he’d become a millionaire or wind up in prison.

After failed attempts to grow and sell Australian parakeets and Christmas trees, Branson started a magazine named Student. In addition to advertising popular records, he also interviewed and wrote stories about such luminaries as Mick Jagger, writer James Baldwin, journalist James Cameron, and actress Vanessa Redgrave.

The first issue of Student came out in 1968. A year later, Branson was worth about $50,000.

So Branson opened a record shop on Oxford Street in London but he soon got in trouble with customs.

A year later, Branson co-launched the record label Virgin Records. An early employee suggested the name because all of them knew so little about business.

Virgin went on to sign such bands as the Rolling Stones, Peter Gabriel, Steve Winwood, and Paula Abdul, among others. In a few years, it became the largest independent record label in the world.

He went on to found Virgin Group, a venture capital investment firm that today has interests in more than 60 businesses with planes, trains, and spaceships bearing the Virgin name.

In 2004, Branson introduced a new space tourism company, Virgin Galactic, to take paying passengers into suborbital space. Tickets: $200,000 each.

Now 69, Branson loves to set impossible challenges and try to rise above them. According to Forbes, Branson’s net worth today is $5.1 billion.