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...
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...