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It Is a 120-million-member social network that's incorporating in excess of 300,000 end users a day, with a lot more than 4.3 million day-to-day photograph and video clip uploads, and 7 billion regular monthly page views. It has Facebook's fastest-growing app, with 570,000 new everyday users, making it the third-biggest app of all soon after FarmVille and CityVille. Massively profitable, it is forecast to produce hundreds of millions of bucks this year, and is becoming aggressively courted by venture-capital firms valuing it in the billions. And it really is run from London by a secretive Russian serial entrepreneur who has steadfastly refused to be interviewed or photographed. Until now.

The world's greatest social network

Badoo is the world's largest social network that you possibly haven't but heard of. Operate from 800-square-metre loft-style offices in Soho, it is brilliantly efficient at delivering 1 simple and universally compelling service: hooking up members according to their profile photographs and location. "Chat, flirt, socialise and have fun!," implores the house page, alongside photographs of potential friends these kinds of as Terri, 21 ("Wants a candlelit dinner"), and Christopher, 25 ("Wants wake up with a girl" [sic]). Signal in, and a communication declares that "204,516 ladies [or guys] in close proximity to you are hunting to meet a guy your age!". Describe your intentions (the pull-down menu's recommendations contain "to talk about sex", "to get a massage", "to flirt") and Tatyana, Oshrit or Gary might just give you accessibility to their stash of non-public photos.

Still barely registering in Britain or the US, the free-to-use network -- on the internet and through smartphones -- is a mass phenomenon in Brazil (14.1 million members), Mexico (nine million), France (8.2 million), Spain (6.5 million) and Italy (six million). Relying on word-of-mouth relatively than any advertising spend, it has cracked the internet's eternal conundrum: how to persuade consumers to spend difficult hard cash in a planet drowning in free electronic services and content, by charging members each and every time they want to improve their visibility to other folks looking for a date.

A year following Badoo's 2006 launch, when it had 12 million members, Russia's Finam Technologies Fund purchased a ten per cent stake for $30 million, valuing it at $300 million (this yr Finam will realise an alternative for a further 10 for each cent at a increased valuation). Today, A-list investors this kind of as Sequoia and Accel are courting the enterprise and there is discuss of an preliminary manifeste share offering. "Cracking the Anglo-Saxon industry will probably give us double to triple present day reach," says Bart Swanson, recruited as CEO previous September, getting expanded Amazon into Europe and operate EMI in France. "The option for folks discovery [through Badoo] is a horrendously big market place -- it is a confluence of social, proximity, mobile, and it really is really local. The fundamental mechanism of what Andrey has formulated is genius -- just like Google with its AdWords, it can be individuals paying for self-promotion. And it works."

Mysterious Andrey Andrey is Andrey Andreev, originally from Moscow but primarily based in London for the past six years, who founded Badoo on a string of other extremely worthwhile Russian world wide web businesses: Mamba, SpyLog, Begun. Andreev, a youthful 37 with a cherubic smile under a floppy fringe, has so far eluded media attention: Russian Forbes previous 12 months named him "one of the most mysterious businessmen in the West" (it also reported his original title as Andrey Ogandzhanyants, underneath which the SpyLog.net domain was registered). We were introduced in January by Israeli investor Yossi Vardi at Burda's DLD convention in Munich, which Vardi co-chairs, and later fulfilled in London. (Vardi has no stake in Badoo.) And then in mid-February, alone in an office environment belonging to Freud Communications, Andreev agreed to share his story. It has been a active couple of days. Andreev explains that Michael Moritz, the legendary Sequoia investor who took early stakes in Google and Apple, has just flown in from Palo Alto to meet him; he has also been meeting Kevin Comolli of Accel's London office. Moritz declined to speak to Wired, but Comolli -- whose investments include Playfish, Kayak and Getjar -- calls Andreev a "genius" with whom he would like to work. "Badoo is a social phenomenon," Comolli says. "It's explosive growth, viral, it can be playful, it looks constant with offline social interaction but in this hypervirality mode that only the net has enabled. The key sauces in companies like this are so nuanced, and the distinction in between finding it wrong and right lies only with these specific people like Andrey. He Is designed one thing quite powerful." So why has Andreev remained silent? "I enjoy to target on generating points fairly than exploring myself," he states quietly and precisely, his 5' 8" body continually heading in agitated pain at being quoted on the record for the 1st time. "I will not really feel that it assists to make funds or make business." And now? "I experience Badoo is all set for me to establish with. Due To The Fact it works, it grows like crazy. And men and women enjoy it."

There is one more unspoken reason: with an IPO becoming considered, the firm needs to increase consciousness to maximise the valuation becoming floated by traders and bankers (currently getting reviewed at "around $2 billion", in accordance to Andreev). The company is printing money: revenues and gain are developing by "double-digit percentages" every month, he says. "We see bankers everywhere. We are like celebrities."

Badoo explodes Badoo released in late 2006 in Spain, in which Andreev was then living, as a typical photo-sharing website. "We assumed that the 'meet new people' thought wouldn't perform there -- Spanish girls are like princesses, you could not touch them, you had to meet their parents very first just before inviting them to the cinema," he says. The site wasn't creating revenue, but numbers ended up growing sharply: the 2007 Google Zeitgeist listing of fastest-rising research terms outlined "Badoo" second, just under "iPhone". In 2008, Andreev determined to check his assumptions of Spanish females and as an experiment refocused the site on meeting new people. "And the women didn't leave. At that time, France was growing fast, Italy was. Then 1 day we found we had 30,000 registrations in Turkey [that day]. What happened? Was it a hacker assault or scammers? No, somebody wrote an article about us. It's as if all the consumers jumped on the bus and went there. Bang -- in two months, quickly we have a Turkish industry with a million members." Today the all round gender ratio is 45 % female, 55 for each cent douleur (in Brazil and Poland girls outnumber men); 86 % of users are aged 18 to 34.

Andreev launched some basic top quality services. You could shell out a dollar or a euro to "rise up" the search results, and so draw in higher attention. You could pay again to have your profile picture a lot more extensively visible throughout the site. He launched virtual presents to get for your prospective date. "No one's pushing you to commit money, but if you want to draw in more users, you have to pay," he explains. "You pay out to promote yourself. If you want a thing to go faster, you pay. And some folks pay out tens of times each and every day to rise up." By the conclude of 2009, the internet site had 48 million registered consumers -- a fifth of whom, then CEO Neil Bryant explained at the time, have been paying out to enhance their profile.

Badoo mobile "Then we had the concept of mobile -- how to meet people nearby," Andreev says. "We understood that people could meet each other in a big town, but how a lot more exciting to see who's sitting following to you in a café? Or you can just stroll past a nightclub and see who you can select up ahead of you get in. It Really Is another opportunity to hook up random individuals for adventure. We're speaking about actual life, true time. We know this lady is five hundred metres from right here now."

Badoo Cell launched last summer season on the iPhone, and in March on Android. In weeks, with hardly any marketing, the iPhone app was the number-one social-networking app in France; right after eight months, it had been downloaded 1.5 million times. Andreev sees proximity as key to the business's future. Even desktop personal computer end users can share their spot by downloading an app that accesses Wi-Fi networks, IP addresses and other info points. "If you might be sitting at property and someone's strolling with an iPhone nearby, we know the distance amongst you. We can also display the iPhone person that you are nearby. So it works for everyone."

Mamba Before Badoo there was Mamba, a Russian online-dating company that Andreev introduced in 2004 as "an interface for offline relationships, for all type of adventures". It was, he says, rewarding in month two. He provided it as a white-label support to existing dating sites, letting them preserve their ad income and deepening their subscribers' pool of possible dates. As Soon As it had a million members, a similar model emerged: a free site, it permit customers pay via premium SMS to be more easily discovered. "You register, upload a profile picture, and we set you at the leading of the search list," Andreev explains. "Then you slowly and gradually shift down the hill -- if we have 50,000 new clients a day, you can quickly comprehend how a lot of minutes of attention you have. When you eliminate attention, like a Google research result, no one finds you.

"The very first day [of this paid service] we created $5,000, the second $6,000, the 3rd far more -- I wasn't expecting this. But people adore marketing themselves. A Lot of folks use this operate a number of occasions a day. They become addicted."

A number of weeks later, the internet site extra the opportunity to be briefly noticeable on each and every page, for a fee. "This was even much more successful. Some people put in hundred of bucks each day. Individuals complained they couldn't publish SMS messages fast enough, and a lot on pay-as-you-go had to maintain likely to kiosks to buy new scratchcards to charge yet another $50." So Mamba started using credit cards, online currencies, Yandex money. Revenues climbed ever much more steeply.

"We just sat back, relaxed, and added a lot more providers every day," Andreev says. "There were virtual presents -- before Zynga. You could send a gift, make a virtual phone phone at 50 cents per minute. It was Mamba time. You cannot imagine how awesome it is to operate items that are expanding fast, obtaining revenue, observing the charts as the money grows -- it really is a sport." He grins.

Finam invested a reported $20 million in 2005 for a bulk stake; Mail.ru took a minority stake. Following 18 months, Andreev had marketed a fast-growing and highly rewarding business, retaining no equity for himself. "I leap from project to undertaking when I have new inspiration," he says. "I desired the freedom to do no matter what I wanted."

And he knew that the limited Russian industry would not hold him thrilled for long. It was time to go global.

Meeting Andrey It's 8.55pm on the previous Saturday in February and, at the open up ground-floor kitchen of L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon in Covent Garden, Andreev is searching for reactions to the soup he created. L'oignon doux -- "Sweet onion soup 'Andreï style'", in accordance to the two-Michelin-starred menu -- is something he devised when doing work in the kitchen as a weekend hobby alongside head chef Olivier Limousin. "I'm not positive if it was a joke, but when they got their 2nd Michelin star," he says matter-of-factly, "Olivier explained it was simply because of my soup."

Andreev slips unobtrusively into chefs' whites in this and other London kitchens as "sometimes you need to have a distinct form of adventure". He provides with a grin: "And I Am not speaking about employing Badoo." He realized cookery in Spain, exactly where he lived ahead of coming to London in 2005. "Street education. If you check out to understand something, you just get it." Why did he move to London? "Badoo is not only in London -- we have offices in Prague, Miami, Malta, Cyprus and Moscow too," he states speedily and a tiny anxiously. But with all around 65 of its 120 staff, like its conduite and govt teams, centered in Soho, this is effectively a British business. "London's the international hub, exactly where you can discover something you want," he says. "Crazy town. I feel at home here." He owns a house in central London -- but winces at the suggestion of naming the neighbourhood -- and spends weekends selecting luxury vehicles to investigate England's countryside. "I've been everywhere, stayed in manors, castles, really cool." His social circle is a combine of locals and Russians, and he is single. "I do not know why. No time." Marriage could take place 1 day, he says, "but I'm frightened to create a loved ones now. I Am not sure I am capable to give adequate time." Does he use Badoo? "I use any alternative to meet new people, not only Badoo. But I do play with Badoo, yeah." And...he has enjoyed pleasant experiences? He pauses, then smiles. "Yeah. I assume most of the guys and ladies in the business office are employing it, they all have excellent experiences. And it assists them boost the features." Since hiring Swanson as CEO, Andreev has stepped again from day-to-day administration to target on merchandise development. And, yes, he is pondering about his following project. "Always -- I have a black box of points to do, but it's not straightforward to jump from 1 to another." What sort of business? "Look at my knowledge -- it will not necessarily be a dating or hook-up service. But it will be internet. The cellular web is the greatest possibility in the world. Smartphones outsold PCs previous quarter. The options will incorporate meeting new people. Hook-up on mobile is a multibillion business. And on tablets."

Childhood Andreev grew up in Moscow. He exhibits his identity card: born in February 1974. "You see my problem? I'm old," he says. "Normal family, dad and mom in education, younger sister, mom teaching, father a professor of mathematics. They inspired me to learn." But he grew to become distracted by an earlier global communications network: newbie radio. "I was 14, and with a team of friends developed a bunch of big black containers and place a big antenna on the rooftop. It was not feasible in Russia at that time to obtain nearly anything from Europe, so it was a whole lot of enjoyable to produce one thing that could send 1kW of vitality to the antenna on the roof. I spent years on this."

At 18 he began learning administration at college in Moscow although keeping down a job, but dropped out following 18 months and moved to Spain, exactly where his mothers and fathers had relocated. He had saved cash by means of the occupation and had time to think about what to do next.

A businessman was born In 1999, he and some Russian buddies -- "technical men very into the internet" -- set up a web-tracking business, SpyLog, centered in Moscow. It served site owners track not only visits to their sites, but users' routines on the wider internet. "It was large fun to make much more and more statistics," Andreev states in his sometimes hesitant English. "We furnished information about how significantly time they spent on other sites, what time they woke up and went to sleep, lookup requests. Most site owners were extremely happy to pay out for this information." The info let SpyLog serve focused ads. The company grew swiftly -- the principal Russian portals utilised it -- but 18 months later, he grew to become restless. "I had the notion for my following project. I was dreaming about promoting money. I knew you could make a whole lot from advertisements -- and if the market place wishes some thing that no a single provides, you move."

The ad business was Begun -- again, based mostly in Moscow -- which released in 2002 marketing contextual marketing by auctioning keywords. "It's like Google AdWords, but we started out a little bit earlier," Andreev says. (Google introduced AdWords in 2000 but started key phrase auctions in 2002.) "The advertising message was that for 1 cent you could get one client. Soon, most key phrases started to be really expensive." Andreev personally negotiated with the huge research engines. Arkady Volozh of Yandex "never believed me about the opportunities"; rival website Rambler "proved extremely difficult". But he convinced Aport, then Mail.ru, and did a deal with Google. "We released in April 2002, and 10 weeks later had been at breakeven. In month three, we returned everything that had been invested. We had a huge success, so it was simple to communicate to Rambler again. With money, you can speak with the massive guys. It grew like crazy."

As for SpyLog, "I just left. I kept some guys running it. It was growing, it was good." He retains no ownership. Why not promote his stake? "I just gave it to people," he states detachedly. "I was involved with my new venture, and I failed to experience I could be valuable to SpyLog any more." So he wasn't inspired by generating money? He smiles. "No. I just walked away."

First date Begun, meanwhile, had run its 18-month cycle for Andreev. By mid-2003, he commenced "playing" with dating as "it just felt there was money". At the end of 2003, Finam acquired 80 percent of Begun. "I cannot talk about the price," Andreev says when pressed. "I can inform you that last year Finam tried to offer it to Google for $140 million, but the Russian govt stopped the deal." He no longer has a stake.

So he is not 1 to appear back. "No, I just swim to what's next." He is effortlessly bored then? "Maybe." And has he ever before failed? "In phrases of the big projects, never. In terms of small experiments, of course -- some work, some don't. I spoke with Andrey [Ternovskiy], the creator of Chatroulette, to see if he wanted to be a part of Badoo so we could develop an thrilling feature. He refused, so we designed our very own [webcam] section. A week later on we just taken out it. Huge companies spend months on marketing and advertising research. We go a lot more quickly -- prototype, build, see if it works, kill."

The 2003 transaction produced him a millionaire, but his way of life hardly transformed -- aside from establishing a liking for German cars. In London, he does not individual a car, but prefers to lease Jaguars or Aston Martins. "New experience, new fun, new feeling," he says. And although he has two passports, he strategies to continue being in the UK. "I adore this country. I'd enjoy to remain here."

The Badoo impact Some be a part of Badoo to find a relationship. Lucy, 19, informed Wired she produced an account soon after moving from Liverpool to London for university. "I had split up with my boyfriend because of to distance," she says. "But it is difficult to meet up with boys my form on my uni course. My buddy Josh stated he makes use of Badoo to appear for guys and that I must check out it, so he arrived over armed with some alcohol and I signed up."

A quantity of consumers sent Lucy "weird and inappropriate messages" (an supply to star in a porn movie; issues about her feet), but there had been two males with whom she enjoyed chatting regularly. "Then the third one, I achieved up with. He's 20. I felt comfortable meeting up with him as it was in public, and he advised me all over the place he was taking me. We Have been on four dates and it's likely well."

Others are open up to far more casual encounters. Edita, 35, from Madrid, states she tends to make friends, but "you can find a weekend roll" too. Rafe, also from Madrid, has done just that. "After nine months I began chatting with a guy. We talked for a month and 1 day he gave me his number. The following day he came to my home in the morning. I was alone. Inside Of an hour we were in my bed naked."

Hooking up The site's hook-up function -- accounting for four-fifths of usage, in accordance to Swanson -- sometimes surprises new users. Mary, 19, from London, states she joined to make new friends, and failed to anticipate being approached for sex. "It's took place very a bit and they normally ask for more than just one partner, which is actually producing me want to leave. They are typically late 20s, 30s, even a 47-year-old." And despite the fact that membership is restricted to over-18s, one member Wired spoke to unveiled that she was only 16.

Some members are plainly there for specialist sexual purposes. We discovered accounts that seriously hinted at offline transactions for providers rendered; users these kinds of as Silina -- 19 and in France -- commenced a conversation by proposing "a striptease for just 6 SMS codes".

Swanson states prostitution "hasn't surfaced as an concern given that I've been here". Still, he accepts that "it's a threat -- when you have millions of customers on a site, a lot of things can happen. We have moderation, and when we see that happening, we delete individuals accounts." He provides that underage accounts are deleted when discovered.

Controversy A network with Badoo's targets and scale naturally attracts controversy. Last July, the News of the Environment reported that a convicted sex offender had outlined himself as "looking for adore with women aged between 18 and 25" and posted a photo of himself taken in a children's park. In January, the Finnish newspaper Iltalehti ran the headline: "Beware this Facebook application", accusing Badoo of accumulating profiles without permission. And an analysis of 45 social-networking sites by Joseph Bonneau and Sören Preibusch of Cambridge University gave Badoo the lowest score for privacy.

Is Andreev bothered by his web site currently being accused, at the quite least, of simply selling promiscuity? "OK, which is bad?" he replies neutrally. "Badoo is not for sex, it really is for adventure. If you go to a nightclub, of training course you've received the chance to uncover a lady or a boy -- but it's not necessarily for sex, it could be to appreciate five mojitos and nothing at all else.

"Badoo just carries on the offline lifestyle. Badoo is just a informal way to hook up with people, as you do in the street or nightclub. But we make the globe perform faster."

Badoo's future So what is next? Nowadays Badoo is in 24 languages, and requires payment in one hundred currencies, but the organization eyes massive development possible -- not minimum in markets such as the UK, exactly where Swanson says there are 150,000 users. And mobile: "If right now 90-95 % [of engagement] is by way of the web, in a year 50 percent will be mobile," Swanson says. Badoo has barely received began on aiding individuals hook up by means of their cellular devices. "Meeting people is the foundation of evolution," Swanson says. "It's not like the particular person who's profitable leaves, as with a dating site."

Does Andreev have Facebook in his sights? "Badoo is much more of a social network than Facebook, as on Facebook you interact with your present pals in an completely virtual life," he says. "Badoo is more social: it provokes you to go down on the street and meet these people."

As for Andreev's next move, in Swanson's words, "he's developed up the mousetrap, he is involved in the strategic issues, but he's not that concerned on the details and he's phasing himself out. My challenge is to preserve him right here as prolonged as possible."

Andreev interrupts. "You want to maintain me? I require freedom, so I can build much more things." He then notices an email on his iPhone and jumps up excitedly. "Forbes Russia just sent me an invitation," he says. "They've put me in the best 30 profitable businessmen in Russia and they're inviting me to their party. I never assume I must be leading 30, but best ten." He laughs. "Bart, what must I do with this?"

"Say thank you," says Swanson. "You are not flying to Moscow."

Andreev smiles. "But it really is cocktails for free…before they catch me, consider photo shoots. I don't want that."

Does he dread getting to be far more public? "For now, it really is not a large problem," Andreev replies, "as now we have a business which is successful." He pauses. "It's a human thing. You have some thing cool. This is mine -- I created it. It Can Be like a kid. Ahead Of you have this, what is there to speak about? That I Am cool?"