Trekking Into Space With Branson? You Can Now Pay Your Way in Bitcoins

People who bet big on Bitcoin in the early days are reaping their earthly rewards now, with the digital currency resting above $750 on Friday afternoon. They may also have earned themselves a ticket off planet Earth altogether.
Richard Branson, billionaire founder of the Virgin empire, announced today that his commercial space flight company will accept bitcoins as payment for a flight to the outer reaches of the atmosphere. "Virgin Galactic is the future of travel," he told his Twitter followers. "It's time we let future astronauts pay with a futuristic currency."
According to Branson, one "future astronaut," has already reserved her seat on a Virgin Galactic flight using bitcoins. Since one of those seats costs a cool quarter of a million dollars, it would have been difficult to pay for back in the summer of 2012, when each bitcoin was worth less than $10. But now fewer than 340 bitcoins would be enough for a ticket to ride.
"I have invested in some bitcoins myself, and find it fascinating how a whole new global currency has been created," Branson said in a post on the Virgin website. "For people who can afford to invest a little in bitcoins, it's worth looking into."
Branson said recently that he expects the first Virgin Galactic passenger flights to take place in 2014, blasting off from the Mojave Air and Space Port in Arizona. Check out his original Twitter announcement below:

What Kind of Entrepreneur Are You?

The other day I read an interesting book called Entrepreneurial DNA, by Joe Abraham, the founder of BOSI Global, an operating partner to venture-backed and owner-operated companies. The book is based on Joe’s study of over 1,000 entrepreneurs. The research confirmed the discovery that all entrepreneurs are not all wired the same way. The book suggests entrepreneurs fall into four distinct types of entrepreneurial DNA’s that leverage unique strengths, weaknesses and tendencies typical in each specific type of entrepreneur:
1. The Builder: You have a drive to build highly scalable businesses very fast. When this DNA is high in an individual, they break past $5 million in revenue within two to four years and keep going to up to $100 million. That's because these individuals measure success through a very unique lens: infrastructure. It drives the decisions they make and the strategy they build and deploy. They aren't satisfied with a certain amount of personal income or goodwill toward man. They are Pied Piper-like individuals who are master recruiters of talent, investors and customers. Builder DNA activates certain behaviors like a controlling temperament, leading to a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde like demeanor in the office. Individuals with high Builder DNA tend to struggle most with personal relationships and typically have a revolving door of talent in their companies.
2. The Opportunist: Picture Sir Richard Branson and you have a pretty good idea of what Opportunist DNA is all about. Individuals wired with this DNA are highly optimistic master promoters. They enjoy marketing and selling. They are wired to sniff out well-timed money making opportunities, jump in at the right time, ride the wave of growth up and (hopefully) jump out at the peak. Opportunist DNA measures success based on the amount of money they make (or will make) when they aren't working. So they are drawn to business opportunities where leverage can be used to create residual and renewal income. This behavioral preset in entrepreneurs makes them impulsive decision makers, especially when it comes to money-making opportunities. This trait can serve them very well or be the source of their demise.
3. The Specialist: This DNA activates in the experts of our world. No sooner does an individual go through years of schooling, apprenticeship or on-the-job training, does this DNA activate, driving the corresponding behaviors. Specialist DNA drives one to be very analytical, relatively risk-averse and anti-selling. Specialists generate most of their new business from referrals and networking. They measure success based on their personal income. Their businesses tend to grow fairly well in the startup and early growth phase, but as soon as their personal income hits preset targets, their internal thermostat kicks in and they go into customer service mode. Research found that most Specialist-owned businesses plateau in revenues well below $5 million. The ones that get past this level take significantly longer to get there than Builder DNA companies -- often decades.
4. The Innovator: Picture Mark Zuckerberg in the movie The Social Network and you'll see Innovator DNA at work. Like most Innovators, he was doing something he loved, when a business opportunity popped up. The breakthrough discovery typically drives this entrepreneur in the "lab" of their business -- where they want to invent, design and tinker. They would much rather be in the lab of their business than at the cash register or in the business office. They find operating a business draining. They measure success based on the impact their product or service is having on mankind. "It's not about the money," you'll hear them say. "I'd do this for free for the rest of my life if I could." Individuals with high Innovator DNA control most of the great intellectual property of our time. Unfortunately, they hide in dungeons and find it hard to engage in business discussions.
For centuries the approach to entrepreneurship has been -- what worked for one entrepreneur will work for every entrepreneur. But research has proven that entrepreneurs are all different. Some of us are Innovator-Builders. Others are Specialist-Opportunists.
Knowing your DNA and the DNA of those surrounding you is critical to selecting the business, strategy and team best suited for you. Just because it worked for Richard Branson (Opportunist-Builder) or Bill Gates (Specialist-Builder), doesn't mean it will work for you.

Richard Branson on How to Make The Most of Your Network

Editor's Note: Entrepreneur Richard Branson regularly shares his business experience and advice with readers. Ask him a question and your query might be the inspiration for a future column.
Q: How much of an impact does a really effective networker have on a company's success? Does it ever make sense to hire someone whose only function is to make connections internally and externally? - Christine Rozman, Entrepreneur reader

Succeeding in business is all about making connections. While we at the Virgin Group have never hired anybody whose job description was limited to making internal and external contacts, it is implicit that almost everyone on staff has these skills. This has helped Virgin to expand into so many different industries, from music to mobile phone services: As we build connections in other areas, we have been able to grow our expertise and multiply our reach.
For an entrepreneur, the ability to forge connections is a great asset. When you're conducting business in a field where you don't have specialist expertise, it's often the only way to get a job done right. When our team at Virgin wanted to go to space, I looked for the best engineer in the world to help us build a spaceship. Once we'd connected with Burt Rutan, creator of the revolutionary SpaceShipOne, we were able to get to work on creating Virgin Galactic.
I was thinking about your question in October, as we celebrated the 40th anniversary of the launch of Virgin Records -- time flies when you're having fun! We got the original gang back together and went for a tour of all our old haunts in London. It brought us back to the heady days in the '70s when Nik Powell was planning Virgin Records' expansion into retail, Simon Draper was out scouting the coolest new bands, Tom Newman was experimenting with new recording techniques and I was busily marketing our brand.

During the tour, we visited the church crypt that we used as an office for Student Magazine, the houseboat my family and I had lived on, and Virgin's original head office in Notting Hill. We wound it up at an exhibition, "Virgin Records: 40 Years of Disruptions," at Victoria House, where we celebrated in style. It retrospect, it was interesting how close the tour locations were -- in those whirlwind first years, we quickly built a creative community where lots of like-minded people lived and worked. Those connections benefited everyone involved, in the same way that the networks in Silicon Valley and London's Tech City have promoted innovation.
My three friends and I have had our fair share of arguments over the past four decades, as people will -- especially when they're running a global business together. But we all went on to work on different projects, and we were always ready to shake hands again. I'm delighted that we're still so close. Our celebration gave us a chance to renew those friendships and make new connections: Everyone is still full of ideas and working on various new ventures, and as we spent time together, we came up with more plans, as always.
That got me thinking about how important networking is for entrepreneurs, and how to encourage people to network. It's all about personal contact. No matter how heavy your workload is, do not allow yourself to work in your cubicle or office all day, every day -- for your own well-being and the health of your business, you need to get out and about, meeting people and developing relationships. If you discuss a work matter with an employee or a potential client over coffee rather than simply sending over an email, you're more likely to build rapport, which will be useful if you ever need to tackle any problems together. Good managers give their teams the freedom to set their own schedules, realizing that the same is true of employees' relationships with their co-workers and the company's clients.
That said, you can also make great connections while sitting at your desk. Through social media, you can get in touch with almost anyone, and then connect in the real world as well. Just recently, a 12-year-old business studies student sent me an email asking for some tips, and I spotted her note and wrote back. These days, the only thing stopping you from building up your network is how much time you dedicate to it. Everyone can and should be a networker.
Those good connections will breed more good connections. In the end, it all comes down to talking to people. Track down people you would love to work with and start sharing your ideas. You'll soon discover that you have found some great partners -- and more importantly, some great friends.