Name Michael Birch Organizations founded Bebo | Spouse Xochi Birch Role Computer programmer | |
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Born 7 July 1970 (age 53) ( 1970-07-07 ) Sawston, Cambridgeshire, England Occupation Computer programmer, entrepreneur, businessman Similar People Xochi Birch, Brent Hoberman, Philip Rosedale, Max Levchin | ||
Education Imperial College London | ||
Michael Birch (born 7 July 1970) is an English computer programmer and entrepreneur.
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Early life
Birch was born in Sawston, Cambridgeshire and raised in Hertfordshire. He attended Imperial College London from 1988 to 1991, studying for a BSc in Physics.
Career
Birch and his wife Xochi Birch have co-founded over half a dozen startups in the past 15 years. Together with Birch's brother Paul, they founded BirthdayAlarm.com and with Morgan Sowden they founded Ringo.com (which was sold to tickle.com in 2003). Birch and Xochi later founded the online social networking website Bebo in January 2005, with a major launch in July 2005. In 2007, Bebo had over 45 million registered users and was the sixth most popular site in the UK, bigger than AOL, Amazon.co.uk and bbc.co.uk.
Michael and Xochi Birch sold Bebo to AOL in March 2008 for $850 million. Their combined 70% stake yielded a profit of $595 million from the deal. The Bebo franchise quickly declined under its new owners and fell into bankruptcy; in 2013 the couple bought Bebo back for $1 million.
Since 2008, the couple has started five separate companies they run in parallel. and also invested in MyStore.com along with Gordon Crawford, Julian Lennon and Todd Meagher. In 2013 the Birches founded an exclusive but not elite members club called The Battery, in San Francisco, with their vision stated as “to create a culture where inspiration is embraced, diverse communities come together and egos are checked at the door.”
In July 2009, Michael co-founded PROfounders Capital with Brent Hoberman Peter Dubens, Jonnie Goodwin, Rogan Angelini-Hurll and Sean Seton-Rogers.
Birch and Xochi are supporters of the non-profit organization charity:water, having given over $20 million to their organization. Birch also helped the organization launch mycharitywater.org, a fundraising platform that has raised more than $21 million for clean water projects around the world since launch in autumn 2009. In October 2011, Birch launched a social media project with charity:water and the startup studio Monkey Inferno, Inc to raise awareness of the water crisis and give millions of people the ability to let their friends know, donate and help solve the water crisis.
In October 2014 the Birches bought the Farmers Arms public house and Manor House properties in the village of Woolfardisworthy, Torridge (Woolsery), North Devon. A popular community pub for decades, the historic Grade II Listed Farmers Arms, the only pub in Woolfardisworthy village, closed in December 2012 and has not re-opened since. The Grade II Listed Manor House has been closed for several years. The Birches are to restore and re-open Woolfardisworthy’s pub and Manor House with the Manor House being put into use as a hotel. The couple have three children.
Michael Birch is co-founder of Blab, a live streaming app or browser based platform that allows 4 users to meet digitally and have a conversation. The platform also includes a chat room where other users can watch or join the conversation. The app was released on the iTunes store on August 17, 2015.