Richard Branson: Finally an Entrepreneur in Banking
// November 8th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Banking, Being an entrepreneur, Richard Branson
One of the things you should know about me early-on is that Richard Branson (Virgin Group) is my entrepreneurial hero. I am more or less obsessed with studying his career, his moves, and perhaps most importantly, his outlook and attitude toward business. He wrote a book, whose title I really relate to: Screw It, Let’s Do It.
Branson and Virgin have already been in the banking space to a certain extent with Virgin Money (in the US, Virgin Money helps formalize lending between friends and family; in the UK and a couple other regions, it provides broader financial services). Now, Virgin has applied for a full banking license, to become a complete full-service banking company.
Watch out bankers. There’s finally a real entrepreneur in banking. That should make you very nervous.
That’s because entrepreneurs don’t think like bankers. Bankers think like bankers. But entrepreneurs think about applying business principles and scrappiness to creating and building businesses. They don’t focus on running businesses–that’s for managers. Entrepreneurs, instead, focus on starting and growing…architecting dynamic organizations that shake things up from the traditional.
You can bet I’ll be following Sir Richard’s efforts very closely…and cheering them on.
