Whether he’s listening to an employee’s idea or considering investing in a new startup, Virgin Group co-founder Richard Branson says he looks for one particular quality in anyone he works with: the ability to inspire others.
“You need to be able to inspire people,” the 75-year-old billionaire tells CNBC Make It. “You need to inspire them to believe in an idea and commit to the vision.”
Even the best ideas still typically need a strong sales pitch. A person’s ability to sell their idea effectively — enough to inspire others to believe in the idea as much as they do — can help those merits stand out from the rest, Branson says.
Branson constantly fields pitches, particularly from entrepreneurs who want him to back their big ideas, he says. (Virgin StartUp, his not-for-profit program for funding early-stage entrepreneurs, has distributed more than $80 million in startup loans to over 40,000 founders, Branson wrote in a June 2024 blog post.)
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He gives one particularly high-profile example: Jamie Siminoff, founder of smart doorbell company Ring. In 2013, Siminoff took Ring to ABC’s “Shark Tank” and walked away without a deal. He got publicity, but was desperate for funding: “We were out of money at the time,” Siminoff said in December 2017.
A guest at Branson’s resort in Necker Island connected the billionaire and the struggling entrepreneur. Branson emailed Siminoff, initially only intending to order a bundle of Ring doorbell cameras as gifts for his friends, he says. Instead, Siminoff took the opportunity to pitch Branson on joining Ring’s in-progress Series B funding round.
The product alone didn’t necessarily demand Branson’s investment, he says. He was won over by Siminoff’s passionate description of how Ring could disrupt the home security industry, and became convinced that Siminoff had “the personality to promote and market” Ring, he says.
“The reason I jumped in and helped [Siminoff] get Ring up and running was him as an individual,” says Branson. “He had strong conviction and personality and determination.”
Branson ultimately co-led the investment round, which gave Ring $28 million of funding at a $60 million valuation, the company announced in August 2015. Amazon bought Ring for a reported $1 billion in February 2018.
Branson discussed the required skill for selling a big idea while promoting a new project called the “Doorbell of Dreams,” which launched in the U.S. on Tuesday. It calls on people to walk into Virgin Hotels New York in Manhattan and record a 60-second business pitch on a video doorbell. (The doorbell is not advertised as being manufactured by any particular brand.)
Together, Branson and HelpBnk founder Simon Squibb review “select pitches” from the recordings for their social media followers, he says. In the U.K., where the program first launched on June 17, thousands of prospective entrepreneurs have already submitted pitches.
Squibb’s advice: “People need to be themselves. Don’t try and be anything other than who you are.” In the best pitches he’s seen so far, the entrepreneurs are “not pretending to be something else. It’s not sustainable if you do that … Be authentic,” he says.
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