The Battery

The Battery is a private members club and boutique hotel at 717 Battery Street in San Francisco, founded in October 2013 by Michael and Xochi Birch.⁶ The couple financed the club with proceeds from the $850 million sale of their social network Bebo to AOL in 2008, a deal that netted them approximately $595 million from their 70 percent stake.¹² Housed in the 1907 Musto Building, a former marble factory in the Jackson Square neighborhood, the five-level, 58,000-square-foot club contains a restaurant, four bars, a 3,000-bottle wine cellar, a library, a gym and spa, an outdoor garden, and 14 hotel suites.¹¹¹⁸ By 2017, membership had grown to 4,605 with a 91 percent renewal rate, far exceeding the founders' original cap of 1,200.⁴ The club's philanthropic arm, Battery Powered, had raised more than $31 million for over 240 nonprofits by its tenth anniversary in 2023.⁵

Origins

Michael Birch, a physics graduate from Imperial College London, and Xochi Torres met at a student pub called the Southside Bar in London in the summer of 1990.¹ Xochi was studying through the University of London on an exchange from the Bay Area when she approached Michael to escape another man's unwanted advances and asked him to dance.¹ They married in 1994, moved from London to San Francisco in 2002, and co-founded a series of internet companies, including BirthdayAlarm.com and Ringo.com, before launching Bebo from their home in January 2005.⁹

After selling Bebo to AOL and pocketing nearly $600 million, the Birches wanted to build a physical gathering place modeled on the English village pubs Michael had grown up with.¹ "We're fans of the village pub, where everyone knows everyone," Michael told the San Francisco Chronicle. "A private club can be the city's replacement for the village pub, where you do, over time, get to know everyone and have a sense of emotional belonging."¹ They also drew inspiration from London's private club scene, particularly the Soho House.⁶

In 2009, the Birches purchased 717 Battery Street for $13.5 million.³ They initially planned to convert the building into a tech incubator space, but changed course early in the design process and decided to build a members club instead.⁷

The Musto Building

The site at 717 Battery Street sits on what was once San Francisco's shoreline, where the edge of the Bay reached much further into the city.³ The first building on the site was a factory built in the 1830s by Alpheus Basil Thompson.⁷ By the early 1900s, it had become the Musto marble factory.⁷ During the 1906 earthquake, the building caught fire and burned down.⁷ It was completely rebuilt in 1907 as a three-story brick-and-timber warehouse.⁶⁷ Over the following decades, the building housed a candy manufacturer, a crafts business, and, from the 1960s onward, office space, during which period its internal courtyard was filled and a historic light well was covered over.⁷

When the Birches purchased it, the building was covered in white paint, its interiors filled with cubicles, and its courtyard overgrown with trash.¹ During renovation, crews discovered grooved bedrock and artifacts from the site's original use as a boat launch, buried beneath the courtyard.³

Design and construction

San Francisco interior designer Ken Fulk, who had previously designed the Birches' homes in San Francisco and London and the offices of their Monkey Inferno incubator, was hired as creative director.¹⁶ FME Architecture + Design handled the building's core and shell, with Holmes Culley providing structural engineering and BCCI Construction doing the build.⁷ The team used "performance-based building design" to model seismic performance and preserve as much of the original exposed brick as possible, adding moment-resisting steel frames that worked aesthetically with the brickwork.⁷

The owners' vision exceeded the existing building's footprint, so FME added a fourth-floor penthouse with a glass curtain wall system, walk-in closet, fireplace, outdoor patio, fire pit, and infinity hot tub offering views of the San Francisco skyline and Bay Bridge.⁷¹ In the basement, BCCI lowered the floor several feet, extended the exterior walls, lengthened the original columns, and waterproofed the space to create room for the spa and gym.⁷ The crews also uncovered the light well that had been covered in the 1960s and restored it to bring natural light into the lower level.⁷

Fulk's interior design mixed antiques, contemporary art, taxidermy -- including a water buffalo head gazing down on one of the bars -- and the Birches' own art collection.⁶⁵ Custom features included a glass-enclosed, suspended steel staircase weighing 23,000 pounds, displaying a three-story art wall, and a glass elevator custom-built by KONE with one of the only glass counterweights ever made for an elevator.³⁷ Among the more unusual planned features was a chandelier made of taxidermied seagulls in full flight for the library; Birch confirmed this plan did not come to fruition.²³

The club's focal point is the House Bar, with restaurant seating for 120.⁵ The second floor houses the Musto Bar, clad in black-and-white cerused oak, with a hidden room called the Green Room accessible by waving a hand over a Winston Churchill bust on a bookcase.⁵ A library on the same level features a pink onyx bar and live jazz.⁵ The 6,200-square-foot penthouse on top provides the club's largest event space, with an indoor living area and outdoor terrace.⁵

Opening and early operations

The Battery opened in October 2013 with an initial class of approximately 700 members personally invited by the Birches.⁶⁴ That first group included Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom, Eventbrite co-founder Julia Hartz, art collector Vanessa Getty, furniture designer Christopher Deam, and Trevor Traina, who had sold his first online company to Microsoft for $100 million.⁶ The opening restaurant was led by executive chef Jason Arbusto, who had trained under Alain Ducasse, alongside French master sommelier Christophe Tassan.¹⁶

The first year was turbulent. Michael Birch later admitted that the couple knew nothing about hospitality going in.⁴ "We thought it would be easy to have great service and great food. We thought, you just hire a great chef and director of F&B -- this has been done for centuries. But it turned out to be really hard," he told the Chronicle.⁴ Three weeks after opening, they fired the general manager, the chef, and the director of food and beverage all on the same day, with no replacements lined up.⁴ Birch described that first year as "pretty chaotic."⁴

The club also struggled to enforce its no-photography policy. Despite the rule, someone filmed Justin Bieber at the club with Hailey Baldwin in 2016.⁴ Members were allowed three guests each but those guests often ended up unsupervised, and the club's annual Pride party left ticketed guests waiting outside for over two hours on at least one occasion.⁴

Membership and the diversity debate

The Birches' original plan was to cap membership at 1,200 to 1,400, with no more than one-third from the technology industry.¹² The remaining seats would go to painters, philanthropists, doctors, musicians, and others.¹ "We want diversity in every sense of the word," Xochi Birch said. "I view it as us trying to curate a community."¹ Computer use and shop talk would be discouraged in favor of conversation about arts, ideas, and current affairs.¹ Members were required to be nominated by an existing member and approved by a confidential membership committee.¹

The club arrived during San Francisco's second tech boom, when rising rents were pricing out longtime residents and cultural diversity was declining.² The New York Times described the Battery as "a new members-only social club in San Francisco that seeks to bring a dash of British exclusivity and decorum to the land of billionaire geeks."¹⁰ The New Yorker's Anisse Gross argued that the club's emphasis on "diversity" was contradicted by its selective admission: "Clubs that select their own members are, by definition, not diverse; they reflect the tastes of the existing club members."² She compared the Battery to the Bohemian Club, another San Francisco institution founded during a boom that started with journalists and artists but quickly became dominated by male plutocrats.² The writer Rebecca Solnit, asked for comment, said: "Clubs are as great or awful as their raison d'etre and members."²

Valleywag ran a headline calling the Birches "San Francisco's Playboy Geeks Trying Very, Very Hard To Be Cool."⁴ The initial annual fee of $2,400, roughly equivalent to a high-end gym membership, included scholarships offered on a case-by-case basis.¹²

By December 2017, membership had grown to 4,605, more than triple the original cap.⁴ The overall composition skewed more heavily toward tech than the Birches had planned.⁴ Birch said he had found it difficult to distinguish who counted as "tech": "If you take a company like Uber, they want to be a tech company, but really they are a transportation company."⁴ Members were split almost evenly between men and women, with slightly more men.⁴ Only 111 of the 4,605 members were on scholarship rates.⁴

A member-initiated group called Battery Recharge (originally "Black Battery") formed in early 2016 in response to the underrepresentation of Black members.⁴ In a club profile, P2Health Ventures co-founder Marquesa Finch described the first time a group of ten Black members gathered: "You definitely could tell that the Battery hadn't seen a group of black folks before at once. People would come in thinking there was a special event going on."⁴

Gallery director Micki Meng of Altman Siegel Gallery visited just twice during her year as a member, despite receiving a half-price scholarship membership of $1,200.⁴ "I don't really see my peers there," she said. "You can get a pack of Tecate for $10, or you can get a drink for $20 at the Battery. We all go to the Uptown in the Mission."⁴

By 2024, annual fees had risen to $2,800, with a reduced rate of $1,600 for members under 30, plus a one-time $1,000 initiation fee.⁵

Battery Powered

The philanthropic arm of the club, Battery Powered, operates as a separate nonprofit entity.⁴ Founded by director Colleen Gregerson and named by philanthropist Lynne Benioff, it functions as a giving circle: new participants contribute at least $4,000 up front, then vote collectively on three annual themes and the organizations that receive grants.⁴

By 2017, Battery Powered had 550 members -- about half of new Battery members joined -- and had distributed at least $11 million.⁴ Themes have included women's health and wealth, housing and homelessness, climate action, and childhood nutrition.⁵ By the club's tenth anniversary in 2023, Battery Powered had raised more than $31 million for over 240 nonprofit organizations.⁵

"From the very beginning, we strove to activate generosity among our members," Xochi Birch said. "Battery Powered is an opportunity to help break down some of the barriers people feel when getting involved with philanthropy."⁵

Separately, the Birches had donated more than $10.5 million to charity:water, the clean-water nonprofit, including a $1 million wire transfer shortly after meeting founder Scott Harrison in 2008.¹⁹

The hotel

The Battery includes 14 hotel suites that are open to the public, not restricted to members.⁵ Guests receive full access to the club's facilities, restaurants, bars, and events during their stay.⁵ The suites are part of the Small Luxury Hotels of the World brand.⁵ Each room was individually designed by Ken Fulk with custom furnishings, eclectic artwork, vintage pieces, and Japanese soaking tubs.⁵ The penthouse suite offers views of the Transamerica Pyramid and the Bay Bridge.¹

Sonato and later ventures

Michael Birch also used the Battery as a testing ground for Sonato, a hospitality-software startup with 11 employees as of 2017.⁴ He described the Battery as having "all the components that a large Vegas hotel might have in terms of complexity, but it's just a much smaller version of it."⁴ Birch planned to keep the Battery as Sonato's sole client for approximately two more years before commercializing the software.⁴⁹

The Birches' $35 million Pacific Heights home, listed for sale in 2022, included a British pub built into the property -- an extension of the same village-pub concept that had inspired the Battery.¹⁴

Context in the Bebo tree

The Battery is one of several ventures the Birches built with the proceeds of the Bebo sale. Alongside the club, they ran Monkey Inferno, the startup studio that rebuilt Bebo into esports tournament software before its $25 million sale to Twitch in 2019.³¹³ The club itself became a gathering point for San Francisco's tech community, creating social connections that fed back into deal flow and hiring across the wider Bebo tree of companies and founders.¹⁰¹³