Business Stripped Bare Read Free

via our website. We employ a gatekeeper – a corporate development assistant – whose job it is to record, log and classify all ideas as they arrive. She then passes them on to our experts. They read through and research the best of them. A tiny number are passed to our investment professionals – whole teams of them, working in London, Switzerland, New York, Shanghai and Sydney – and they are more forensic about business than the detectives on Crime Scene Investigation .

What if we like your idea? If you've seen the BBC's Dragons' Den – or American Inventor , its US equivalent – then you know what's coming. We will strip you bare.

We normally invite people to come along to Virgin's Investment Advisory Committee and present their plans in London, New York or Geneva; and sometimes in the Far East, in Japan or China. At these weekly meetings we have a team of six Virgin managers we can pull in to help examine projects. So that our own vested interests don't blind us to new opportunities, none of the committee runs a Virgin business on a day-to-day basis – but they work closely with all of the top people who run our businesses and bounce ideas off them all the time.

Our global chief executive, Stephen Murphy, who operates in Switzerland, and Gordon McCallum (our UK chief executive), ask some very tough questions. They will rigorously push and pull your business plan about to see if there is a profitable business underneath. Facing the committee can be daunting for the uninitiated – and you are normally expected to be well prepared, with the facts at your fingertips. But these people don't bite, and (unlike some of their television counterparts) they are not remotely rude. They can ask for more meetings so that deeper questions can be answered. Often the committee meets several times before a final decision is given. We look at spending plans, income forecasts, the marketing budget, and when the company is likely to break even. We work out our exit strategy – will it be a sale, or a flotation on a stock market? And, above all, we look at the key managers who will be running the business. This is the holy grail for us, because it's the people that make a great business idea work.

More often than not, after all things are considered, they'll recommend that we don't invest in your business. The possible reasons for this are so many and various, they're not even worth agonising over. Dust yourself off. Learn what lessons you can. Make your next call.

The Virgin team acts just like any other commercial venture capitalist organisation. It assesses your potential, whether it fits with the group's ambitions and strategy, and of course brand values, and what the possible returns and profits will be. Then it works out what kind of stake the Virgin Group should take. In return, the new company gets the full range of Virgin's expertise – and I'll agree to help raise the profile, make key introductions and offer any advice that I can.

The Investment Advisory Committee are my trusted lieutenants and they know almost everything there is to know about the Virgin global business. I'm rarely at their meetings – the team don't like my interruptions and interference. I know this because they have a nickname for me. They call me Dr Yes – a parody of the wonderful James Bond movie Dr No .

If I like your idea, but the investment committee have concerns, then I usually ask them to go and find solutions to the problems they've identified. I prod these people constantly. I remember, before we developed our mobile phone business, I was on to them every week saying: 'Why aren't we in this yet?' The committee didn't want to launch Virgin Blue, either, but in the end they saw sense!

But, you see, I have an ace up my sleeve. If I believe in your business idea, I can be quite persuasive in getting people to accept my point of view. I never do this lightly – but, as I've said, usually go with my gut instinct, disregarding whole