Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff hosted a wide ranging conversation yesterday with Richard Branson at the company's Dreamforce social enterprise conference.

Branson, one of the world's most well known and successful entrepreneurs, had a fascinating idea for how we can encourage young people to follow in his footsteps:

“In the UK I have been lobbying the government to do entrepreneurial loans instead of student loans... For some people it’s much better to just get out in the real word and say, “screw it, lets do it” and give it a go. You learn so much from being in the jungle and building a business from scratch.”

It's an idea that comes right out of Branson's career experience. He never went to college, but has managed to create over 400 companies.

In his experience, “The best way of learning about anything is by doing", and he clearly feels that government can do more to take advantage of that reality.

Many of Branson's businesses were started because he decided he wanted to push an industry's boundaries — this was learned through experience rather than expertise.

Branson says it's "the freedom to make mistakes", that will more valuable to entrepreneurs than any amount of schooling.

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