My first job out of uni was for a company called sparks.com, a startup boasting of being the

world's largest online paper greeting card store. The average sale size was one card, which is

worth a couple bucks. Once you found a card, we'd then ship it out to you, so postage alone

eliminated any profit. But back then, I didn't know any better.

Like so many other 20-somethings, I was entranced by this thing called the Internet,

which appeared to be minting overnight billionaires and changing just about how everything worked.

I showed up to work in cargo shorts.

Yes, cargo shorts.

My desk was a painted door set on a pair of sawhorses. I played a lot of table football.

It was great. Until, I was laid off, along with about a third of the company.

As the stock market imploded, Sparks.com's venture capital backers

turned off the money spigot. And his chance would have it. It was around then that Michael and

Sochi, living across the bay from my dingy two-bedroom apartment, were working on a website

that may very well have hastened the demise of my first employer and put me out of a job.

It was called Birthday Alarm, an astoundingly simple idea.

It was a birthday reminder service.

Turns out it was wildly profitable.

Perched on one of those impossibly steep only in San Francisco Hills is a stretch of a few

blocks of lavish, spectacular homes. It's called rather unimaginatively Billionaires Row.

Birch Castle, an imposing five-story stonewall estate, the color of milk chocolate, definitely belongs.

It is the home of Michael and Sochi Birch. A few months ago, I showed up at their door to talk to the Birches about the early

days of social networking. And what will definitely go down is one of the most extraordinary

...