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It Can Be a 120-million-member social network that's including in excess of 300,000 end users a day, with much more than 4.3 million daily photograph and video uploads, and seven billion monthly web page views. It has Facebook's fastest-growing app, with 570,000 new every day users, generating it the third-biggest app of all after FarmVille and CityVille. Massively profitable, it can be forecast to make hundreds of hundreds of thousands of dollars this year, and is becoming aggressively courted by venture-capital firms valuing it in the billions. And it can be operate from London by a secretive Russian serial entrepreneur who has steadfastly refused to be interviewed or photographed. Until Finally now.

The world's biggest social network

Badoo is the world's most significant social network that you possibly haven't yet heard of. Run from 800-square-metre loft-style offices in Soho, it is brilliantly successful at supplying 1 straightforward and universally persuasive service: hooking up members according to their profile photographs and location. "Chat, flirt, socialise and have fun!," implores the residence page, alongside images of prospective pals 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] near you are looking to meet a man your age!". Explain your intentions (the pull-down menu's suggestions consist of "to talk about sex", "to get a massage", "to flirt") and Tatyana, Oshrit or Gary may well just give you access to their stash of non-public photos.

Still barely registering in Britain or the US, the free-to-use network -- on the web and by way of 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 instead than any advertising spend, it has cracked the internet's eternal conundrum: how to persuade customers to pay difficult money in a globe drowning in free digital providers and content, by charging members every time they want to improve their visibility to other individuals looking for a date.

A 12 months soon after Badoo's 2006 launch, when it had 12 million members, Russia's Finam Technological Innovation Fund bought a ten per cent stake for $30 million, valuing it at $300 million (this 12 months Finam will realise an option for a even more 10 per cent at a higher valuation). Today, A-list traders this sort of as Sequoia and Accel are courting the organization and there is talk of an first public share offering. "Cracking the Anglo-Saxon market will possibly give us double to triple present day reach," states Bart Swanson, recruited as CEO final September, obtaining expanded Amazon into Europe and run EMI in France. "The opportunity for men and women discovery [through Badoo] is a horrendously large market -- it really is a confluence of social, proximity, mobile, and it's extremely local. The basic mechanism of what Andrey has created is genius -- just like Google with its AdWords, it can be individuals paying out for self-promotion. And it works."

Mysterious Andrey Andrey is Andrey Andreev, at first from Moscow but centered in London for the prior six years, who started Badoo on a string of other very worthwhile Russian web businesses: Mamba, SpyLog, Begun. Andreev, a youthful 37 with a cherubic smile under a floppy fringe, has so much eluded media attention: Russian Forbes last 12 months called him "one of the most mysterious businessmen in the West" (it also reported his unique name as Andrey Ogandzhanyants, under which the SpyLog.net domain was registered). We have been released in January by Israeli investor Yossi Vardi at Burda's DLD conference in Munich, which Vardi co-chairs, and later on met in London. (Vardi has no stake in Badoo.) And then in mid-February, by yourself in an office belonging to Freud Communications, Andreev agreed to share his story. It has been a occupied handful 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 consist of 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 appears constant with offline social interaction but in this hypervirality mode that only the net has enabled. The solution sauces in companies like this are so nuanced, and the distinction between getting it improper and proper lies only with these special folks like Andrey. He's produced something really powerful." So why has Andreev remained silent? "I adore to focus on creating issues relatively than discovering myself," he states quietly and precisely, his 5' 8" frame consistently moving in agitated pain at currently being quoted on the document for the initial time. "I will not experience that it assists to make cash or make business." And now? "I really feel Badoo is prepared for me to identify with. Since it works, it grows like crazy. And people enjoy it."

There is yet another unspoken reason: with an IPO being considered, the business desires to boost consciousness to maximise the valuation being floated by traders and bankers (currently currently being mentioned at "around $2 billion", in accordance to Andreev). The enterprise is printing money: revenues and revenue are increasing by "double-digit percentages" each month, he says. "We see bankers everywhere. We are like celebrities."

Badoo explodes Badoo released in late 2006 in Spain, exactly where Andreev was then living, as a typical photo-sharing website. "We assumed that the 'meet new people' idea wouldn't function there -- Spanish girls are like princesses, you could not contact them, you had to meet their dad and mom initial prior to inviting them to the cinema," he says. The site wasn't creating revenue, but numbers had been increasing sharply: the 2007 Google Zeitgeist record of fastest-rising research phrases outlined "Badoo" second, just under "iPhone". In 2008, Andreev decided to test his assumptions of Spanish girls and as an experiment refocused the website on meeting new people. "And the girls didn't leave. At that time, France was developing fast, Italy was. Then 1 day we discovered we had 30,000 registrations in Turkey [that day]. What happened? Was it a hacker assault or scammers? No, someone wrote an post about us. It's as if all the users jumped on the bus and went there. Bang -- in two months, quickly we have a Turkish market place with a million members." Today the all round gender ratio is 45 % female, 55 for each cent male (in Brazil and Poland ladies outnumber men); 86 % of users are aged 18 to 34.

Andreev introduced some simple top quality services. You could spend a greenback or a euro to "rise up" the lookup results, and so attract better attention. You could pay once again to have your profile image more broadly visible throughout the site. He launched virtual presents to purchase for your prospective date. "No one's pushing you to devote money, but if you want to attract a lot more users, you have to pay," he explains. "You spend to advertise yourself. If you want one thing to go faster, you pay. And some men and women shell out tens of times every day to rise up." By the stop of 2009, the internet site had 48 million registered end users -- a fifth of whom, then CEO Neil Bryant stated at the time, have been paying to boost their profile.

Badoo mobile "Then we had the concept of cellular -- how to meet folks nearby," Andreev says. "We comprehended that individuals could meet each and every other in a huge town, but how a lot far more fascinating to see who's sitting next to you in a café? Or you can just stroll past a nightclub and see who you can decide on up just before you get in. It Is one more opportunity to hook up random folks for adventure. We're chatting about genuine life, true time. We know this lady is five hundred metres from here now."

Badoo Cellular released previous summer on the iPhone, and in March on Android. Inside Of weeks, with hardly any marketing, the iPhone app was the number-one social-networking app in France; soon after 8 months, it had been downloaded 1.5 million times. Andreev sees proximity as key to the business's future. Even desktop personal computer consumers can share their place by downloading an app that accesses Wi-Fi networks, IP addresses and other information points. "If you happen to be sitting at property and someone's strolling with an iPhone nearby, we know the length amongst you. We can also display the iPhone consumer that you are nearby. So it performs for everyone."

Mamba Before Badoo there was Mamba, a Russian online-dating organization that Andreev released in 2004 as "an interface for offline relationships, for all kind of adventures". It was, he says, worthwhile in month two. He supplied it as a white-label support to current dating sites, allowing them preserve their ad earnings and deepening their subscribers' pool of prospective dates. As Soon As it had a million members, a related model emerged: a free site, it let users pay by way of top quality SMS to be far more effortlessly discovered. "You register, add a profile picture, and we set you at the leading of the lookup list," Andreev explains. "Then you slowly and gradually shift down the hill -- if we have 50,000 new consumers a day, you can speedily comprehend how many minutes of interest you have. When you drop attention, like a Google lookup result, no one finds you.

"The very first day [of this compensated service] we made $5,000, the second $6,000, the third much more -- I was not expecting this. But men and women adore advertising themselves. A Lot of men and women use this purpose many instances a day. They become addicted."

A couple of weeks later, the website added the possibility to be briefly noticeable on each page, for a fee. "This was even more successful. Some people put in hundred of bucks every day. Folks complained they couldn't compose SMS messages quickly enough, and a lot on pay-as-you-go had to preserve likely to kiosks to acquire new scratchcards to charge another $50." So Mamba commenced using credit cards, on-line currencies, Yandex money. Revenues climbed actually much more steeply.

"We just sat back, relaxed, and additional a lot more providers every day," Andreev says. "There ended up virtual gifts -- prior to Zynga. You could deliver a gift, make a virtual telephone get in touch with at 50 cents per minute. It was Mamba time. You can not imagine how neat it is to operate points that are increasing fast, obtaining revenue, viewing the charts as the funds grows -- it is a sport." He grins.

Finam invested a noted $20 million in 2005 for a greater part stake; Mail.ru took a minority stake. After 18 months, Andreev had marketed a fast-growing and highly lucrative business, retaining no equity for himself. "I jump from undertaking to task when I have new inspiration," he says. "I wished the freedom to do whatever I wanted."

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

Meeting Andrey It's 8.55pm on the last Saturday in February and, at the open ground-floor kitchen of L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon in Covent Garden, Andreev is seeking reactions to the soup he created. L'oignon doux -- "Sweet onion soup 'Andreï style'", according to the two-Michelin-starred menu -- is one thing he devised when functioning in the kitchen as a weekend pastime alongside head chef Olivier Limousin. "I'm not certain if it was a joke, but when they got their second Michelin star," he states matter-of-factly, "Olivier explained it was since of my soup."

Andreev slips unobtrusively into chefs' whites in this and other London kitchens as "sometimes you need a diverse form of adventure". He provides with a grin: "And I Am not talking about making use of Badoo." He realized cookery in Spain, where he lived prior to coming to London in 2005. "Street education. If you try out to find out something, you just get it." Why did he shift to London? "Badoo is not only in London -- we have offices in Prague, Miami, Malta, Cyprus and Moscow too," he says quickly and a little anxiously. But with about 65 of its 120 staff, like its management and executive teams, based in Soho, this is successfully a British business. "London's the international hub, exactly where you can discover anything at all you want," he says. "Crazy town. I experience at property here." He owns a house in central London -- but winces at the suggestion of naming the neighbourhood -- and spends weekends choosing luxurious autos to investigate England's countryside. "I've been everywhere, stayed in manors, castles, very cool." His social circle is a blend of locals and Russians, and he is single. "I will not know why. No time." Marriage could transpire a single day, he says, "but I Am frightened to construct a household now. I Am not positive I am ready to give adequate time." Does he use Badoo? "I use any selection to meet new people, not only Badoo. But I do play with Badoo, yeah." And...he has loved pleasurable experiences? He pauses, then smiles. "Yeah. I feel most of the men and ladies in the office environment are employing it, they all have excellent experiences. And it aids them enhance the features." Since employing Swanson as CEO, Andreev has stepped again from day-to-day conduite to concentrate on item development. And, yes, he is considering about his next project. "Always -- I have a black box of points to do, but it really is not effortless to jump from one particular to another." What form of business? "Look at my expertise -- it would not essentially be a dating or hook-up service. But it will be internet. The cellular world wide web is the largest possibility in the world. Smartphones outsold PCs very last quarter. The options will contain meeting new people. Hook-up on cellular is a multibillion business. And on tablets."

Childhood Andreev grew up in Moscow. He shows his identification card: born in February 1974. "You see my problem? I'm old," he says. "Normal family, dad and mom in education, more youthful sister, mother teaching, father a professor of mathematics. They encouraged me to learn." But he became distracted by an earlier worldwide communications network: amateur radio. "I was 14, and with a team of buddies developed a bunch of large black boxes and place a massive antenna on the rooftop. It was not possible in Russia at that time to buy something from Europe, so it was a lot of entertaining to develop something that could send 1kW of power to the antenna on the roof. I spent years on this."

At 18 he commenced studying conduite at university in Moscow whilst holding down a job, but dropped out after 18 months and moved to Spain, where his parents had relocated. He had saved cash by means of the task and had time to assume about what to do next.

A businessman was born In 1999, he and some Russian buddies -- "technical guys really into the internet" -- set up a web-tracking business, SpyLog, based in Moscow. It assisted site owners track not only visits to their sites, but users' routines on the broader internet. "It was massive entertaining to make more and much more statistics," Andreev says in his often hesitant English. "We supplied data about how a lot time they put in on other sites, what time they woke up and went to sleep, lookup requests. Most webmasters had been extremely pleased to spend for this information." The data allow SpyLog serve targeted ads. The organization grew swiftly -- the principal Russian portals employed it -- but 18 months later, he grew to become restless. "I had the concept for my up coming project. I was dreaming about marketing money. I realized you could make a lot from adverts -- and if the market place wishes one thing that no a single provides, you move."

The ad company was Begun -- again, based in Moscow -- which introduced in 2002 selling contextual marketing by auctioning keywords. "It's like Google AdWords, but we commenced a bit earlier," Andreev says. (Google launched AdWords in 2000 but commenced keyword auctions in 2002.) "The marketing and advertising concept was that for one particular cent you could purchase one particular client. Soon, most keywords commenced to be very expensive." Andreev personally negotiated with the large search engines. Arkady Volozh of Yandex "never considered me about the opportunities"; rival website Rambler "proved quite difficult". But he convinced Aport, then Mail.ru, and did a deal with Google. "We launched in April 2002, and ten weeks afterwards had been at breakeven. In month three, we returned every little thing that had been invested. We had a huge success, so it was straightforward to talk to Rambler again. With money, you can speak with the big guys. It grew like crazy."

As for SpyLog, "I just left. I kept some guys operating it. It was growing, it was good." He retains no ownership. Why not offer his stake? "I just gave it to people," he says detachedly. "I was involved with my new venture, and I did not experience I could be beneficial to SpyLog any more." So he was not motivated by creating money? He smiles. "No. I just walked away."

First date Begun, meanwhile, had run its 18-month cycle for Andreev. By mid-2003, he started "playing" with dating as "it just felt there was money". At the stop of 2003, Finam acquired 80 % of Begun. "I can not talk about the price," Andreev states when pressed. "I can tell you that final 12 months Finam tried to offer it to Google for $140 million, but the Russian government stopped the deal." He no extended has a stake.

So he is not one particular to search back. "No, I just swim to what's next." He is simply bored then? "Maybe." And has he ever before failed? "In terms of the huge projects, never. In terms of little experiments, of training course -- some work, some don't. I spoke with Andrey [Ternovskiy], the creator of Chatroulette, to see if he needed to join Badoo so we could produce an exhilarating feature. He refused, so we produced our own [webcam] section. A week later on we just taken out it. Big organizations commit months on marketing research. We go considerably more quickly -- prototype, build, see if it works, kill."

The 2003 transaction manufactured him a millionaire, but his life-style barely transformed -- aside from building a liking for German cars. In London, he does not own a car, but prefers to hire Jaguars or Aston Martins. "New experience, new fun, new feeling," he says. And however he has two passports, he plans to continue being in the UK. "I love this country. I'd love to stay here."

The Badoo impact Some be part of Badoo to find a relationship. Lucy, 19, instructed Wired she created an account soon after relocating from Liverpool to London for university. "I had split up with my boyfriend because of to distance," she says. "But it is tough to meet up with boys my sort on my uni course. My buddy Josh said he uses Badoo to look for men and that I really should check out it, so he came in excess of armed with some alcohol and I signed up."

A quantity of end users sent Lucy "weird and inappropriate messages" (an offer to star in a porn movie; questions about her feet), but there have been two males with whom she appreciated chatting regularly. "Then the 3rd one, I fulfilled up with. He's 20. I felt comfortable meeting up with him as it was in public, and he told me almost everywhere he was using me. We've been on 4 dates and it is heading well."

Others are open up to more informal encounters. Edita, 35, from Madrid, says she tends to make friends, but "you can uncover a weekend roll" too. Rafe, also from Madrid, has completed just that. "After nine months I started out chatting with a guy. We talked for a month and 1 day he gave me his number. The up coming day he came to my home in the morning. I was alone. Inside an hour we have been in my bed naked."

Hooking up The site's hook-up purpose -- accounting for four-fifths of usage, in accordance to Swanson -- often surprises new users. Mary, 19, from London, states she joined to make new friends, and did not anticipate getting approached for sex. "It's happened quite a little bit and they usually request for much more than just a single partner, which is really creating me want to leave. They are usually late 20s, 30s, even a 47-year-old." And although membership is restricted to over-18s, a single member Wired spoke to revealed that she was only 16.

Some members are evidently there for professional sexual purposes. We discovered accounts that heavily hinted at offline transactions for companies rendered; users this sort of as Silina -- 19 and in France -- started a conversation by proposing "a striptease for just 6 SMS codes".

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

Controversy A network with Badoo's objectives and scale by natural means draws in controversy. Previous July, the News of the Globe reported that a convicted intercourse offender had listed himself as "looking for really like with women aged amongst 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 with out permission. And an analysis of 45 social-networking web sites by Joseph Bonneau and Sören Preibusch of Cambridge University gave Badoo the lowest score for privacy.

Is Andreev bothered by his web site being accused, at the very least, of basically selling promiscuity? "OK, which is bad?" he replies neutrally. "Badoo is not for sex, it is for adventure. If you go to a nightclub, of course you've acquired the option to uncover a woman or a boy -- but it really is not automatically for sex, it could be to take pleasure in five mojitos and nothing at all else.

"Badoo simply continues 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 environment perform faster."

Badoo's future So what is next? Nowadays Badoo is in 24 languages, and will take payment in 100 currencies, but the organization eyes enormous development potential -- not minimum in markets such as the UK, in which Swanson says there are 150,000 users. And mobile: "If these days 90-95 % [of engagement] is through the web, in a year 50 percent will be mobile," Swanson says. Badoo has barely got started out on helping folks hook up by way of their mobile devices. "Meeting men and women is the basis of evolution," Swanson says. "It's not like the person who's profitable leaves, as with a dating site."

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

As for Andreev's following move, in Swanson's words, "he's constructed up the mousetrap, he's involved in the strategic issues, but he is not that involved on the details and he is phasing himself out. My challenge is to maintain him here as lengthy as possible."

Andreev interrupts. "You want to keep me? I require freedom, so I can build more things." He then notices an electronic mail on his iPhone and jumps up excitedly. "Forbes Russia just sent me an invitation," he says. "They've put me in the top rated 30 effective businessmen in Russia and they're inviting me to their party. I will not feel I ought to be top 30, but leading ten." He laughs. "Bart, what really should I do with this?"

"Say thank you," states Swanson. "You're not flying to Moscow."

Andreev smiles. "But it's cocktails for free…before they catch me, take photograph shoots. I never want that."

Does he dread becoming more public? "For now, it can be not a massive problem," Andreev replies, "as now we have a firm which is successful." He pauses. "It's a human thing. You have some thing cool. This is mine -- I produced it. It Is like a kid. Prior To you have this, what's there to discuss about? That I'm cool?"