1. have fun 2. differentiate from competition 3. nurture employees
The title of the article is over dramatic. There are lots of examples of businesses that don't do any of the above and yet they still turn a profit. Even then, you can do all 3 and still fail.
Solid advice nonetheless, just have to take it with a grain of salt.
The PR department who runs the blog thought would be cool to have some Richard Branson words there. So they sent up an email asking Mr. Branson to write a short advice post. He started writing easy stories he use to share every other interview or lecture, and create a title to make his particular case sounds like a general advice.
The blog guy thinks it is still necessary to put a little more context to make it sound like cool, wise advice. So he writes an intro that resonate with founders. That's it. Out of the microwave advice to generate traffic.
For me, not a single word of value for my startup management. The HN upvotes tricked me. Just some curiosities about how Richard Branson do business.
Maybe YC can found LoungeBase[tm] - my new start-up which offers lounge services for customers of other startups.
More seriously, I read Branson's autobiog recently. He likes taking chances, but if he hadn't had family resources to fall back on when starting out he would have been in jail.
So that helped too.