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Comment by detritus | Hacker News Reader

Downvotes? Presumably not from Britons or anyone who knows anything about the guys history?

So what HAS he done then, other than brand anything he can then offload to third and fourth parties to run the businesses for him?

And don't say Virgin Galactic - that's just some clever peripheral branding to encourage the likes of the downvoters here that he is in any way novel or dynamic.

He's marketing clever, not strategically or developmentally-so.

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Well, you're criticizing him for only acquiring things and slapping his brand on them. But the criticism is leveled in the context of him investing in an unproven technology. It seems like your comment would be more apt if he were taking an action that follows the pattern you are criticizing. For example, if he were acquiring a computer company and calling it Virgin Computing or something.

That's fair enough, I suppose. I guess I simply distrust his motivations beyond self-aggrandizement and inflating the idea that he's somehow an ideas man, when I can't for the life of me think of anything novel he's done for literally decades.

I'm coming across like a 'crab in a bucket' here - I've nothing against the guy or his success, but I'm not for one second convinced he's 'challenging the impossible'.

He's worth $5 billion. He's a high-school drop-out dyslexic that started from nothing. He built a successful airline and record label, along with countless successful branded companies whose success partially rides on the vast effort he has put into building his own well-known brand - a substantial feat unto itself.

Yes, golly gee, what HAS he done.

While what he has done should be commended, I don't think it's fair to say that he "started from nothing". His own mother was an entrepreneur, obviously not as successful as him but come on, he went to a "prep school" for goodness sake[1].

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Branson#Early_life

The point is that he built his businesses from scratch, and did so with a significant learning disability that meant he struggled to understand even basic P&L statements and balance sheets. His mother didn't build his record store or record label. His mother didn't build his airline. His mother didn't build his brand.

His early business successes were built from nothing. They weren't seeded with millions of dollars. They weren't inherited. He rolled one success into another.

This obnoxious notion, so common on HN, that someone has to crawl out of a ditch with not a penny to their name, or they're not self-made or deserving of any credit for their own success, needs to stop. It eliminates nearly every possible success story that could exist (which is of course the whole point). It's nothing more than a base envious desire to drag someone down because they've been successful.

On the other end is the absurd notion that someone who starts with a (comparatively) huge cushion or even more is "self-made" in any meaningful sense of the term.

Take this example: Bill Gates as compared with Jan Koum. Applying the label "self-made" to both of them is nonsense. There's nothing "envious" in pointing out that one had a lot more going for him than the other.

I trust my respone to 'waegawegawe' pads out where I'm coming from.

He has a certain reputation here in Britain, however we here in Britain also have a certain reputation of shitting on people's success - I sincerely hope that's not how I'm coming across here.

Anyway, this is tangential nonsense, I'm sorry for diluting discourse!

> however we here in Britain also have a certain reputation of shitting on people's success

That's okay, I appreciate you loaning us John Oliver. ;)

In a sense, I think you gave him to us. You often do :)

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