"Entrepreneurs are the crazy people who work 100 hours a week so they don’t have to work 40 hours for someone else" (https://twitter.com/richardbranson/status/488646661326245888)
He had a hippy indy prog record company that got lucky with an unexpected hit record. The rest is investing, self-marketing, and networking, hard work (a la Jobs or Carmcak or Gates etc.) was seldom required.
But something tells me probably does something besides sit around and sip Daiquiris (or read HN) all day. "Networking", if you want to call it that. Or "investing" in ways that don't actually lose money takes actual work, you know.
That is: "work", nonetheless.
If we contrast it with sitting at home or at some beach drinking Daiquiris (which is still a huge part of his time), then yes.
If we contrast it with what is actually work, stressful hard work, then no.
Then we'd be shifting the goalposts.
The point is that, while it's not like he toils away in a coal mine -- and we know he ain't no brain surgeon -- whatever it is that Branson actually does, by any common sense definition it qualifies as "work".