Elliot Costello, co-founder of social enterprise company YGap, had an email from a director of one of Richard Branson's companies expressing dismay that they were thinking of closing an apparel firm from which she had ordered five T-shirts.

She wanted to commiserate. "I said no, it's great we put a couple of thousand dollars in, we tried it for six months, it didn't work," Mr Costello told The Australian Financial Review Business Summit.