Paul Birch


Paul Birch

In 50 Words

Internet, Web 2.0, Entrepreneurship, Viral Marketing, Word of Mouth, Skype, Happiness, Business Models, Value Proposition, Advocacy, Influence, Psychology, Brainstorming, Motivation, Customer Mapping, Open Source, Mashups, APIs, Creative Commons, Network Effect, Collaboration, Emergence, Human Potential, Data Analysis, Coaching, Mentoring, TV Show Formats, Social Entrepreneurship, Emergent Democracy, Parenting, San Francisco, Restaurants.

In The Distant Past

Worked in accountancy for two years after university (Imperial College), but the only area that really intrigued me was the IT systems bit. Walked out of an accounting exam (literally) and into IT development with Zurich Insurance. Did two years programming and then moved into the analysis arena for a further 5 years. Then spent 3 years as one of many IT contractors in the then deregulating electricity industry.

Left contracting in 1999 to start an Internet business at the start of the UK wave of dot com startups. I felt that having a strong IT background would give me some advantages. Raised ½ million of funding for what was in retrospect clearly a rather poor idea for a business. However - I 'lived the dream' at the start of the web and learned some fundamental lessons (but the 'school fees' were high!). If you ever meet me - I will rather briefly explain what the business did. See if you can keep a straight face when I tell you.

And More Recently

I am co-founder of the Internet based birthday reminder/ecard service BirthdayAlarm.com with my brother and sister-in-law (who live in San Francisco). It is free and has many millions of members. Please do join and let me know what you think!

Here are some of my favourite cards that we offer... (click to view full size)

We have some free ecards but most are now part of our premium service which offers a much bigger choice of ecards for $13.95 per annum.

Co-founder with Robert Loch of the 'business networking' service soflow.com . Service launched in July 2004. Seed investment from Mel Morris and Martin Clifford who sold Udate.com to AIG for $150 million. Martin ended up as the CEO and he eventually shuttered the site in mid-2007.

Originally a 'minority cofounder' at Bebo.com. My brother Michael is the CEO and launched the site in 2005. The technology platform is based on that we developed for BirthdayAlarm. It have been very successful as shown on Alexa and is the most highly trafficked website in Ireland. In May 2006 Bebo took $15 million dollars funding from Balderton Capital.

And in 2008...

Cominded has developed the technology for yabb which moved to 'apply for beta access' status on 24th January. We are working on other projects also, but none are public yet.

Books (last updated January 2007)

I am an avid user and fan of librarything which is a social web 2.0 service for cataloguing your books. This helps you keep track of what books you own and allows you to discover new books and also people - but the discovering people bit does not seem to be something the service is currently strong on. I now have more than 1750 books catalogued.

(Each book is linked to amazon.co.uk.)

(I would love to hear what your favourite books are.)