Sir Richard Branson

By Patrick Betts

Sir Richard Branson

Sir Richard Branson is a British born business man and investor, born in Blackheath, London on the 18 of July 1950. Richard was born with Dyslexia and struggled through school until he dropped out to start his own business. After the success of his first business he was soon to start another 4 years later. Through luck, skill and safe investments Richard grew his business empire until he started his Airplane business “Virgin Galactic Airways”, this was Richard’s most riskiest investment of the time. After rich success with his airplane business he started the expand his “Virgin” group for over 3 decades. After expanding his “Virgin” group to over 400 different companies in 2004 he started one of his most well known companies, Virgin Galactic, This new company is self funded by Richard and aims to send people into space commercially by 2016.

Early life

Richard Branson was born on the 18 of July 1950 in Blackheath. He started to attend the Scaitcliff school in 1955 at the age 5 only to change schools to the Stowe school in 1963 due to Richard struggling with his work due to him being dyslexic. When he still found school difficult he dropped out of the Stowe school at age 16. Shortly after he dropped out of school he started up his first business, a magazine aimed at young adults called “Student”. This magazine was free for the public and costs of publishing and paying workers were covered by the advertisements.

Business Ventures

Richard Branson is one of most well known business men and investors of all time. He has over 400 different companies inside his “Virgin” group and many other companies outside of this group. His most well known and world wide company are his Airplane companies, he started his first company is the air business at age 34 in 1984. After the success of his first airplane company he soon expanded his company onto a larger scale. After 16 years he ventured his business to Australia and started Virgin Australia. Another one of his well known businesses would be Virgin Galactic, a business aimed to commercially send passengers into space and a specially modified plane and/or Rocket.

Some of his main Business sectors would be;-Aviation-Mobile/Telephone-Space ventures

World Record Attemps

Richard Branson has attempted different types of World Records, he has succeeded in breaking 4 World records, all by Boat or Air Balloon.

His first attempted a World record was in 1985 when he attempted to break the record for fastest Atlantic crossing. After a failed attempt he succeeded in breaking the record with his boat “Virgin Atlantic Challenger 2”.

6 Years after breaking his first world record Richard managed to break the world record for fastest Hot air balloon flight across the Pacific ocean.

After his success in breaking his first world record by Hot Air Balloon Richard Branson, Per Lindstrand and Steve Fossett attempted to break the world record for the first Around the world by Hot Air Balloon. They tried to complete their goal between 1995 and 1998, although they where unable to complete their original goal they did succeed in fastest flight from Morocco to Hawaii.

Early March in 2004 Branson successfully broke the record for fastest English channel crossing by Amphibious vehicle. He broke the record with a time of 1 hour and 40 Minutes, smashing the previous holders who completed it in just over six hours.

Philanthopry

Philanthropist: A Philanthropist is a billionaire who pledges to give away at least half their entire fortune to charity and welfare causes.

Sir Richard Branson in the latest member to join Bill Gates’ elite philanthropy pledge. He is part of a 92 large group of multi-millionaires and billionaires to sign up to the pledge to give away at least half of their fortune to philanthropist causes. Bill gates has managed to sign up a group of people collectively worth in excess of 500 Billion USD and has already distributed over 25Billion USD through his foundation.

Richard has promised over 2.3billion USD out of his 4.6Billion USD Fortune.

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Branson http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/richard-branson-is-latest-billionaire-to-join-bill-gates-500bn-philanthropy-club-giving-pledge-8501276.html http://www.forbes.com/profile/richard-branson/ http://www.richard-branson.com/ http://www.bornrich.com/richard-branson.html