Birch's Early CEO Bet

A story about how Michael Birch, a Silicon Valley billionaire, showed tremendous belief in Shaan by promoting him to CEO at age 24.

"Michael Birch was what I wanted to be - a Silicon Valley billionaire who built multiple successful companies, living the life, had a cool office in San Francisco. I moved to San Francisco to work with him. I was 24 years old, probably the youngest guy in the company of 18 people.

He took me off-site and I thought I was getting fired because that's what I'd seen in movies - they take you out to coffee because they want to shoot you in the head out there and not cause a scene in the office. I texted my mom 'Oh no, he wants to meet off-site, I'll be home for lunch, it's over.'

He sat me down with his wife and said, 'You know when you meet somebody sometimes you just know.' I thought he was talking about his wife. He continued, 'I've met a lot of people in Silicon Valley. I know now when somebody's special and they're going to do something special in their career. You're either going to do it here or elsewhere, so I want to give you the keys and have you do it here.'

I was blown away. It didn't mean anything - there was no evidence, no logic, no explanation, no rationale. But him just saying 'you're going to do something special' fueled me. I then failed for 6 years straight right after that, which felt horrible because this guy believed in me and I felt like I couldn't deliver this billion-dollar company that I was supposed to, but that fueled me for a very long time."