Serial entrepreneur and hugely successful businessman, Virgin’s Richard Branson is an iconic figure, but tells The Telegraph that if he was starting out today he’d have turned to crowdfunding to get his business off the ground.
“When I was young, the word entrepreneur was almost a dirty word,” he said. “Few people were willing to back young people with big ideas.”
Today crowdfunding services such as IndieGoGo (in which Branson has a stake) are transforming that environment: “It allows people worldwide to get their big ideas off the ground without having to go through gatekeepers who decide who can and can’t raise money.”
Branson says the emergence of crowdfunding has changed the balance of power when it comes to early stage investment, taking it away from the banks and private equity funds and putting it into the hands of a wider church of individuals.
Don’t expect to find a Virgin pitch on Kickstarter any time soon, though — but you needn’t be too surprised to find the company taking an investment in innovative philanthropic projects: “We will be looking to select a few potential philanthropic projects to raise money on the platform.”
It seems possible Branson will be looking for key projects on IndieGoGo, however, given he’s invested “several million” in the service, alongside PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, Yahoo! chairman Maynard Webb, and Google VP, Megan Smith.
Photo credit: INMA/Jarle Naustvik
