Simon Nixon: "Michael O'Leary isn't completely mad"
By Kate Pritchard, published 356 days ago in Leadership.
Even though Ryanair has attracted more bad press for its exorbitantly priced in-flight food and drink, moneysupermarket.com's Simon Nixon still reckons the airline's chief executive, Michael O'Leary, is pure genius.
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"Michael O'Leary has certainly got his own style," said Simon Nixon when we interviewed him as part of our My Greatest Inspiration campaign, in association with Orange. "But the statements he comes out with generate ten of millions of pounds worth of PR.
"He's not completely mad – he's very calculated. He gets the headlines."
Nixon, who floated moneysupermarket.com on the London Stock Exchange in 2007 for £843m and now runs travel website simonseeks.com, admitted that while he admires entrepreneurs such as O'Leary, the Innocent founders and Sir Terry Leahy, he doesn't have a mentor and rarely heeds other people's advice: "You're so into doing your own thing, you don't listen to other people – they can make you doubt yourself," he said.
He also believes it's impossible to teach entrepreneurship: "You can't put 100 people in a room and teach them to be an entrepreneur. It's something you've got in your DNA."
[We ought to put Nixon in touch with Dragon Peter Jones, who has very different views on this point.]
Watch the full interview with Simon Nixon here.
Related articles:Simon Nixon vodcastLaunchpad: Simonseeks.comI'll have what Simon Nixon is having
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