Monkey Inferno
Monkey Inferno was a self-funded startup studio and incubator in San Francisco, founded in 2011 by Michael Birch and Xochi Birch after they sold Bebo to AOL for $850 million in 2008.2 The studio operated with a team of roughly 21 engineers, designers, and product people, all funded by the Birches' personal wealth.4 Under CEO Shaan Puri and CTO Furqan Rydhan, Monkey Inferno produced a string of consumer apps -- Beer Hunt, Blab, and ultimately a rebuilt version of Bebo -- before the entire operation was acquired by Amazon's Twitch in June 2019 for up to $25 million.9
Founding
Michael Birch described Monkey Inferno on its website as "a personal incubator" and "a place where we dream up cool internet projects, develop them, then nurture them into successful businesses."23 The studio launched in 2011, the same year it partnered with charity:water on WaterForward, a social media fundraising project that directed proceeds to clean water initiatives.2115
The Birches set up the studio in San Francisco and staffed it with a 20-person team tasked with generating and building startup ideas.17 The Wall Street Journal described the office as "a high-style mashup of living and working spaces, complete with fur pillows and craft beer on tap."22 The operation included a full bar, iPad-controlled entertainment system, massage room, ping-pong table, and a private chef.5 The Birches funded the entire enterprise themselves, with no outside investors.1 Business Insider described Monkey Inferno as the place where Birch, his wife, and a team of engineers "attempt to dream up new startup ideas."3
The studio ran alongside The Battery, the private members club at 717 Battery Street in San Francisco's Jackson Square neighborhood that the Birches opened in 2013.11 AllThingsD noted the overlap between the two ventures, describing Monkey Inferno's latest app (Beer Hunt) in the same paragraph as The Battery's construction plans.13 In a 2017 interview, Birch identified talent as the biggest challenge of entrepreneurship: "It's really hard to find exceptional people, and even harder to convince them that they should bet on you."10
Leadership
Shaan Puri became CEO of Monkey Inferno around 2012, when he was in his early twenties.18 A Duke University graduate with a biology degree, Puri had skipped medical school to start a failed fast-casual sushi restaurant before cold-emailing Monkey Inferno with ideas and improvements for their portfolio projects.17 By the time a position opened, Michael Birch already knew his name.17
Furqan Rydhan joined as CTO in 2013 after leaving AppLovin, where he had been founding CTO from 2010 to 2013.16 Rydhan held the CTO role at Monkey Inferno from 2013 to 2015, then continued as CTO and co-founder of the reconstituted Bebo through 2019.16
Products
Beer Hunt
The first product to emerge from Monkey Inferno was Beer Hunt, a mobile application that turned trying new beers into a social game.5 It won a Demo God award at Demo Mobile.5 AllThingsD described it as "a sort of Foursquare for beer."13 Beer Hunt was one of several experimental apps the studio produced before the Birches re-acquired Bebo.
Blab
Monkey Inferno experimented with three different apps before launching Blab in April 2014.6 Blab was a video "walkie-talkie" app for iOS that let users send asynchronous video messages, including to people who did not have the app installed.6 CEO Shaan Puri told TechCrunch that the app had accumulated 775,000 people on its waiting list during four weeks of private beta.6 Blab was the first of three apps Monkey Inferno planned to release that year under the Bebo brand.624
The app later pivoted from asynchronous video messaging to a live-streaming group video chat platform, competing with Twitter's Periscope and Facebook Live.7 In this form, Blab allowed users to host public video conversations where viewers could comment or join the chat.14 By September 2015, the platform had high engagement: the average user spent 64 minutes per day watching livestreams.2
Blab amassed 3.9 million users in its first year as a live-streaming platform, but retention was poor.7 Only 10 percent of users came back daily, and users were not returning to watch archived streams.7 Puri shut Blab down in August 2016, writing on Medium: "Blab was great in many ways, but it wasn't going to be an everyday thing for millions. So we're kicking down the sandcastle, and re-building it as an 'always on' place to hang with friends."7
Bebo 2.0 and the esports pivot
After buying Bebo back from Criterion Capital Partners for $1 million in July 2013, the Birches placed the brand under Monkey Inferno for reinvention.81 Puri told NBC News the plan was to revamp Bebo through the studio rather than compete with Facebook directly: "If we did that we would most likely fail."4 An October 2013 Reddit AMA by Puri, describing the $850 million-to-$1 million ownership arc, reached the site's front page and drew hundreds of questions about the relaunch plans.12
The team relaunched Bebo as a messaging service in December 2014, but the app did not gain enough traction despite quickly attracting 500,000 users.2 After Blab's closure, Puri's team pivoted Bebo to Twitch streaming software, a competitor to OBS and XSplit, before narrowing the focus again in October 2018 to esports tournament organization.9
In its final form, Bebo provided tools for organizing gaming leagues and tournaments aimed at groups from high school students to casual players: scheduling, brackets, and community management for gaming leagues whose streams ran on Twitch.9 Rydhan, who had been building the technical infrastructure since joining as CTO, was central to each of these pivots.16
Twitch acquisition
In June 2019, Amazon's Twitch acquired Bebo for up to $25 million, outbidding both Discord and Facebook, with Facebook reportedly offering $20 million.919 The deal included roughly ten employees and all intellectual property.20 Puri became Senior Director of Product for Esports at Twitch, and Rydhan was absorbed into the streaming company as well.9
The acquisition effectively ended Monkey Inferno as an active studio. Twitch folded the Bebo team and technology into its Twitch Rivals casual esports operation.9
Legacy
The Monkey Inferno team dispersed across Silicon Valley after the Twitch acquisition. Puri left Twitch in 2021 and went on to co-found Milk Road, a crypto newsletter, and co-host My First Million, a business-ideas podcast.17 Rydhan founded Founders, Inc. and co-founded thirdweb in 2020.16 The studio's approach -- small self-funded team, rapid prototyping, willingness to kill products that did not show retention -- anticipated the model that Founders, Inc. would later formalize at Fort Mason.
For a full account of the network of founders and companies that trace back through Monkey Inferno to the original Bebo, see The Bebo Tree.