It's so graceful to be blown by the wind, to go where the wind takes you. Just drifting over beautiful rivers in a balloon is perfect.

One key to entrepreneurial success is to get a great group of people around you who believe in your idea.

The extraordinary thing about the record industry is how success can take off without warning.

I was fortunate enough, after many visits to many wonderful, weird people to come across Burt Rutan, who is a genius in the Mojave Desert. And SpaceShipOne was born and had three flights into space that won something called the X Prize. And from there, we're building SpaceShipTwo, which is ... a beautiful spaceship that is very, very, very nearly completed and will be ready from about next Christmas onwards to start taking people into space.

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.

The funny thing is people won't let me pay for things. I'll be in a restaurant and the manager will say, 'Oh no, it's on the house.'

I always tell other people to protect against the downside, and not risk roughing on new ventures, but I never stuck to that rule myself.