Bebo's Rapid Growth Paradox

A story about how Michael Birch, founder of Bebo, experienced product-market fit and eventually sold the company for $850M.

"Michael had struggled for 3.5 years before Bebo. He quit his job with two kids and a third on the way, mortgaged their house, and told his wife 'give me 6 months to try this.' Three years in, he still hadn't figured out anything that worked.

With Bebo, he finally put together all the pieces. He knew social networking would be big - this was before Facebook. He knew people would talk to other people on the internet, have profiles, and comment on each other's pages. He also knew how to grow it through viral profile quizzes that people would share with friends.

In 9 days, they hit 1 million users, which was huge back then. But none of them came back - they had a retention problem. So he turned it off and started working on giving people reasons to come back every day. When it finally worked, he didn't feel immense joy. Instead, he felt even more pressure: 'Now you finally did it, don't mess this up.'

He worked so hard that about 5 months after selling the company for $850 million, he had major heart surgery because he had been under so much stress and pressure that whole time."