From the first days of my career as an entrepreneur, I have always used my own and my team's lack of experience to our advantage. In fact, at our first venture, Student magazine, we used our newcomer status to secure great interviews and generate publicity - people were excited about our new project and wanted to get involved. Our inexperience fed our restless enthusiasm for trying new things, which became part of our core mission.

Learn to raise capital by any means necessary. That's your primary job as an entrepreneur. You must continually raise capital from family and friends, banks, suppliers, customers and investors.

Whether you are launching a start-up or leading an established company, you should start establishing your social media presence if you haven’t already.

Entrepreneurial business favours the open mind. It favours people whose optimism drives them to prepare for many possible futures, pretty much purely for the joy of doing so.

When you are ready to make your first hires, look for people who understand your passion, want to add to your ideas and can envision ways to make improvements.

If people aren't calling you crazy, you aren't thinking big enough.

Virgin could never have grown into the group of more than 200 companies it is now, were it not for a steady stream of intrapreneurs who looked for and developed opportunities, often leading efforts that went against the grain.