Number
Bebo sold to AOL for $850M, and the founders owned 70%
Shaan tells how Bebo, dominant in markets like Ireland (more trafficked than Google there), sold to AOL in 2008 for $850 million, more than MySpace got, with founders Michael and Sochi owning 70% of the company at exit.
$850M
Bebo acquisition price (AOL, 2008) · USD
“decides to sell, sells the company for $850 million to AOL. Huge exit at the time, sold for more than MySpace did. And, um, and so amazing exit for Michael and Sochi, and they went on to do a whole bunch of great things, both philanthropically as well as in business. And they own 70% of the company at the exit.”
Story
Sold Bebo for $850M, then bought it back for $1M at auction
Shaan recounts the wild arc: after AOL wrote Bebo off as a near-zero tax loss and it passed through bankruptcy, his team bought the brand, domain and email list back for $1M at auction, then later sold the company again to Twitch (Amazon).
“We go buy it back. We go buy it back for $1 million. And so we go to this crazy-ass auction I can talk about, but buy the, buy the company back for $1 million. So sold for $850, bought it back for $1 million. And then a couple years later, we now sold it again, uh, you know, to, uh, to Twitch.”
Take
Bitcoin is the internet; competing with it is AOL fighting the open web
Svetski argues Bitcoin is a basic, unstoppable network that routes value the way the internet routes data — and the winners will be the value-added services built on top of it. A bank's send/store/receive service needing hundreds of millions in infrastructure can be replicated with a small app for a couple hundred grand.
“And the analogy that I give to people is trying to compete with Bitcoin is like AOL trying to compete with the internet. The companies that succeeded were the ones like Google, Netscape, etc., who built on the internet, which was this really dumb basic packet routing network.”
Number
Bebo sold for $850M to AOL, bought back for $1M, resold to Amazon
Shaan recaps Michael Birch's arc: Bebo sold to AOL for $850 million, then Birch and team bought it back for $1 million years later, then sold it again to Amazon.
$850M
Bebo acquisition price by AOL · USD
“That company, Bebo, if you've ever heard that before, sold for $850 million to AOL. And when I met Michael, we got back together and we bought it back for $1 million. Years later. And then we actually sold that again just now to Amazon.”