How This Founder Convinced Richard Branson to Invest

Name: How This Founder Convinced Richard Branson to Invest
Uploaded: 2025-06-11T15:01:14+00:00
Duration: 53 s
Channel: Sam Parr
Description: In this first‑person recount, the founder explains how he used his advisory‑board member Mark Kelly (now a U.S. senator) to arrange a 15‑minute meeting…

11 Jun 2025 · 1 min

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In this first‑person recount, the founder explains how he used his advisory‑board member Mark Kelly (now a U.S. senator) to arrange a 15‑minute meeting with Richard Branson. By ghost‑writing an email from Kelly, he got Branson’s attention and pitched Boom, an aerospace startup planning a Mojave rollout. During the pitch, the founder highlighted that Virgin was a natural partner against BA, offering the first few airplanes to Virgin once the technology succeeded, while seeking funding elsewhere. Branson responded positively, and the next day Virgin emailed a commitment for the first ten airplanes, ready for public announcement. The story illustrates strategic networking, tailored pitching, and quick conversion of a high‑profile meeting into a concrete commercial commitment.

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Mark Kelly, who is now Senator Mark Kelly, was on our advisory board. He hung out with Richard, and I sort of discovered I could ghostwrite emails from Mark Kelly to Richard Branson, and he would send them. And so the pitch to Branson from Mark was, hey, the Boom guys are going to be in Mojave for your spaceship rollout. You should really meet with them while you're there. And he said, okay. And so we got a 15-minute meeting. He asked us if we want anything to drink, and I said, no, I've already had lots of coffee. And I realized a couple minutes into the pitch, he's drinking scotch. You failed the cool guy test. He's like, guys, this is brilliant. Like, I love what you're doing, but I'm already doing Virgin Galactic. And I said, Richard, we're not asking you for money. We're asking if when this works, if you'd like the first few airplanes to be for Virgin. I'll go get all the money elsewhere. It was really Virgin versus BA. And if you know anything about the history of— oh, you know that Richard cares about PR and he hates BA. And so that's Monday. Tuesday, I'm sitting at my desk, up pops this email from Virgin that says, we're in for the first 10 airplanes. You can announce it tomorrow.