Losing My Virginity
How I Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way
by Richard Branson
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Recommended by 3 notable people, including The Barefoot Investor and Jen Sincero
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Reading Profile
Should I read this?
Losing My Virginity is a chatty, episodic memoir that rides on big, colorful stories about launching airlines, music ventures, and other audacious bets. What works best is vivid, energetic storytelling and a sense of how publicity, timing, and personal daring shaped several ventures. The main limitation is selective hindsight: detailed operational takeaways are scarce, failures are often skimmed, and the tone can tilt toward self-praise, leaving practical readers wanting more concrete explanation.
Read this if...
- •a first-time entrepreneur launching a consumer brand who needs morale-boosting tales of risk, PR stunts, and why bold positioning can grab attention now
- •a marketing manager inside a conservative company trying to argue for disruptive branding who wants colorful examples of publicity-first moves to illustrate a pitch
- •an undergrad studying entrepreneurship who needs readable, era-rich anecdotes to bring class presentations and case discussions to life
Skip this if...
- •you want step-by-step playbooks or frameworks — the book lacks hands-on exercises and concrete operational guidance
- •you’ll likely put it down when the anecdote cascade becomes repetitive and the author keeps glossing over messy failures rather than analyzing them
- •annoying if you prefer modest, self-critical memoirs: the tone is breezy and often self-promotional rather than reflective
"Oh, screw it, let's do it."That's the philosophy that has allowed Richard Branson, in slightly more than twentyfive years, to spawn so many successful ventures. From the airline business (Virgin Atlantic Airways), to music (Virgin Records and V2), to cola (Virgin Cola), to retail (Virgin Megastores), and nearly a hundred others, ranging from fina...
Before You Buy
Reading Specifications
Difficulty:easy
Audience Fit
- a first-time entrepreneur launching a consumer brand who needs morale-boosting tales of risk, PR stunts, and why bold positioning can grab attention now
- a marketing manager inside a conservative company trying to argue for disruptive branding who wants colorful examples of publicity-first moves to illustrate a pitch
- an undergrad studying entrepreneurship who needs readable, era-rich anecdotes to bring class presentations and case discussions to life
- you want step-by-step playbooks or frameworks — the book lacks hands-on exercises and concrete operational guidance
- you’ll likely put it down when the anecdote cascade becomes repetitive and the author keeps glossing over messy failures rather than analyzing them
- annoying if you prefer modest, self-critical memoirs: the tone is breezy and often self-promotional rather than reflective
Check formats, pricing, and availability options for Kindle, physical print, or audiobooks directly.
View available editions on AmazonKey themes
Why recommended
Recommended by 5 sources and appears in Personal Trainers, Most Recommended Books, and Business.
Recommended by notable people
People and public figures who have recommended this book.
Recommendation Signals
Recommendation proof is sourced from public posts, interviews, reading lists, and cited references.
Appears In
Not sure if this is the right fit?
Consider Accidental Presidents by Jared Cohen. Recommended by 10 sources.
“Accidental Presidents offers eight narrative portraits of men who succeeded to the U.S. presidency without election, using anecdote-rich scenes and readable context to show how personality and circumstance interact with office power. It’s strongest as a set of self-contained stories that make succession stakes concrete for non-specialist readers; it does not prioritize dense archival argument or exhaustive methodology, so expect some interpretive generalizations and repeated themes across cases. Use it for fast historical orientation rather than scholarly deep-dives.”
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How recommendation signals are reviewed
Each recommendation is collected from a public source — interviews, articles, or curated lists — and linked to its original URL. Books with many verifiable recommendations from respected people rank higher.