Losing My Virginity is the book people quote when they want Branson to have said something bold about risk. It is also the book that least supports the way he is usually quoted — a problem this archive contributed to, having attributed several invented “just do it” passages to it before checking.
What the book actually contains is longer, messier and more interesting: a record of decisions taken against the advice of people who had every reason to be right.
What the book actually argues
Branson’s position on risk is not that fear should be ignored. It is that the regret of not trying is a real cost that most people decline to price:
“I never think that I am going to die by accident, but if I were to die then all I can say is that I was wrong, and the hardened realists who kept their feet on the ground were right. But at least I tried.”
— Richard Branson, Losing My Virginity That sentence is doing something subtler than the bravado it is usually flattened into. He concedes in advance that the cautious people may be correct, and takes the bet anyway on grounds that are explicitly personal rather than commercial.
The appetite is constitutional, not strategic:
“But another part of me is driven to try new adventures, and I still find that I want to push myself to my limits.”
— Richard Branson, Losing My Virginity
The passage that makes the book worth reading
Founder memoirs usually erase the people who disagreed. Branson prints his:
“Simon wasn’t interested in the other projects I talked about and had only ever seen Virgin Atlantic as a huge liability to the rest of the Virgin Group: a business that could be driven to the wall by British Airways or by something out of the blue — something like a war in the Gulf.”
— Richard Branson, Losing My Virginity Simon Draper built Virgin Music with him and had his entire net worth inside it. His objection was not timidity; it was a correct assessment of concentration risk, made by the person carrying it. Branson’s airline nearly did sink the group, and the Gulf War nearly was the thing out of the blue.
Keeping that in the book is the most credible thing in it.
Where to be sceptical
This is the survivor’s account, and it is unusually adventurous. The balloon crossings and the record attempts read as character; they were also, deliberately, marketing that produced enormous free coverage for an airline that could not outspend British Airways. Both things are true, and Branson is more candid about the second than most readers notice.
The philosophy is thinner than the story. Branson’s actual advice, stripped of the anecdotes, amounts to: back yourself, cap the downside, keep moving. The version of it he states most precisely is not in this book at all — it is in Screw It, Let’s Do It: “I take risks, but they are calculated risks. I weigh up the odds in everything I do.”
If you want the philosophy, read that one. If you want to understand how Virgin actually happened — including the parts where it nearly didn’t — read this.
