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#9August 7, 201958:58

The Hippie With A Billion Dollars

About This Episode

Shaan Puri sits down with Bebo co-founder Michael Birch to discuss his journey from a bored insurance company programmer to a billionaire entrepreneur. Birch reveals the viral growth mechanics used to scale Birthday Alarm and Bebo, explaining how a lack of marketing budget forced him to build products that grew autonomously through user invites. The conversation covers the $850 million sale to AOL and Birch's current focus on revolutionizing hospitality software.

Episode Description

Michael Birch sold his social networking site to AOL for $850M....and then bought it back for $1M years later. (buy low, sell high. boys and girls). His business portfolio is impressive. He's an early investor in companies like Calm and Pinterest, owns two giant hotels, and bought a private island off of Richard Branson. Despite all that success, he's a down to earth guy, and in this podcast he talks through his early struggles and failed ideas before he had his billion dollar breakthrough and reminisces his days being head to head with Zuckerberg.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Key Takeaways

1

Prioritize 'inherent virality' by building products that naturally encourage users to invite others, such as the contact-request mechanism used in Birthday Alarm.

2

Embrace technical and financial constraints as they often force entrepreneurs to develop more efficient growth strategies than those with large marketing budgets.

3

Focus on solving fragmented user experiences; Birch’s current venture aims to replace the 5-7 different software systems used by hotels with a single, unified code stack.

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Quick Stats

Duration58:58
Guests1
Ideas Discussed0
Topics4