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It Really Is a 120-million-member social network that is adding more than 300,000 users a day, with much more than 4.3 million every day photo and video clip uploads, and 7 billion month to month page views. It has Facebook's fastest-growing app, with 570,000 new daily users, making it the third-biggest app of all soon after FarmVille and CityVille. Hugely profitable, it can be forecast to make hundreds of thousands and thousands of dollars this year, and is being aggressively courted by venture-capital firms valuing it in the billions. And it's run from London by a secretive Russian serial entrepreneur who has steadfastly refused to be interviewed or photographed. Until Finally now.

The world's most significant social network

Badoo is the world's most significant social network that you probably have not but heard of. Operate from 800-square-metre loft-style offices in Soho, it is brilliantly effective at delivering one easy 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 photos of future close friends this sort 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 women [or guys] close to you are hunting to meet a man your age!". Clarify your intentions (the pull-down menu's ideas incorporate "to chat about sex", "to get a massage", "to flirt") and Tatyana, Oshrit or Gary may possibly just give you entry to their stash of personal photos.

Still barely registering in Britain or the US, the free-to-use network -- on the world wide web 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 instead than any advertising spend, it has cracked the internet's eternal conundrum: how to persuade customers to spend difficult hard cash in a globe drowning in free of charge electronic companies and content, by charging members each time they want to improve their visibility to other individuals searching for a date.

A yr right after Badoo's 2006 launch, when it had 12 million members, Russia's Finam Technologies Fund purchased a ten for each cent stake for $30 million, valuing it at $300 million (this year Finam will realise an choice for a even more 10 per cent at a higher valuation). Today, A-list investors this kind of as Sequoia and Accel are courting the organization and there is chat of an initial manifeste share offering. "Cracking the Anglo-Saxon marketplace will most likely give us double to triple present-day reach," says Bart Swanson, recruited as CEO final September, getting expanded Amazon into Europe and operate EMI in France. "The opportunity for men and women discovery [through Badoo] is a horrendously big marketplace -- it is a confluence of social, proximity, mobile, and it really is very local. The simple mechanism of what Andrey has developed is genius -- just like Google with its AdWords, it is people spending for self-promotion. And it works."

Mysterious Andrey Andrey is Andrey Andreev, at first from Moscow but based in London for the previous 6 years, who started Badoo on a string of other hugely profitable Russian internet 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 year referred to as him "one of the most mysterious businessmen in the West" (it also noted his original title as Andrey Ogandzhanyants, underneath which the SpyLog.net domain was registered). We ended up 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, on your own in an workplace belonging to Freud Communications, Andreev agreed to share his story. It has been a busy 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 contain 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 really is playful, it would seem consistent with offline social interaction but in this hypervirality mode that only the web has enabled. The top secret sauces in businesses like this are so nuanced, and the big difference in between getting it incorrect and right lies only with these unique individuals like Andrey. He's created something very powerful." So why has Andreev remained silent? "I love to emphasis on producing issues relatively than discovering myself," he says quietly and precisely, his 5' 8" frame continuously shifting in agitated discomfort at getting quoted on the file for the 1st time. "I will not experience that it assists to make cash or make business." And now? "I feel Badoo is all set for me to determine with. Due To The Fact it works, it grows like crazy. And people really like it."

There is one more unspoken reason: with an IPO becoming considered, the business desires to elevate consciousness to maximise the valuation being floated by traders and bankers (currently becoming discussed at "around $2 billion", in accordance to Andreev). The business is printing money: revenues and revenue are expanding by "double-digit percentages" every single month, he says. "We see bankers everywhere. We are like celebrities."

Badoo explodes Badoo introduced in late 2006 in Spain, wherever Andreev was then living, as a conventional photo-sharing website. "We assumed that the 'meet new people' concept would not function there -- Spanish women are like princesses, you couldn't contact them, you had to meet their mother and father 1st ahead of inviting them to the cinema," he says. The web site was not producing revenue, but figures have been expanding sharply: the 2007 Google Zeitgeist record of fastest-rising search terms listed "Badoo" second, just beneath "iPhone". In 2008, Andreev determined to check his assumptions of Spanish females and as an experiment refocused the web site on meeting new people. "And the women failed to leave. At that time, France was increasing fast, Italy was. Then one particular day we found we had 30,000 registrations in Turkey [that day]. What happened? Was it a hacker attack or scammers? No, a person wrote an article about us. It Can Be as if all the users jumped on the bus and went there. Bang -- in two months, all of a sudden we have a Turkish marketplace with a million members." Nowadays the general gender ratio is 45 percent female, 55 for each cent male (in Brazil and Poland girls outnumber men); 86 % of customers are aged 18 to 34.

Andreev launched some basic premium services. You could pay a greenback or a euro to "rise up" the lookup results, and so attract higher attention. You could pay out once more to have your profile photograph a lot more broadly noticeable across the site. He introduced virtual presents to acquire for your potential 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 market yourself. If you want some thing to go faster, you pay. And some men and women pay tens of situations every day to rise up." By the finish of 2009, the site had 48 million registered end users -- a fifth of whom, then CEO Neil Bryant explained at the time, were spending to increase their profile.

Badoo in Smartphones "Then we had the notion of mobile -- how to meet men and women nearby," Andreev says. "We recognized that people could meet each and every other in a huge town, but how significantly far more exciting to see who's sitting up coming to you in a café? Or you can just walk past a nightclub and see who you can decide on up ahead of you get in. It Is another chance to hook up random men and women for adventure. We're chatting about actual life, true time. We know this woman is 500 metres from here now."

Badoo Cellular launched final summertime on the iPhone, and in March on Android. Inside Of weeks, with barely any marketing, the iPhone app was the number-one social-networking app in France; right after 8 months, it had been downloaded 1.5 million times. Andreev sees proximity as crucial to the business's future. Even desktop laptop or computer end users can share their area by downloading an app that accesses Wi-Fi networks, IP addresses and other knowledge points. "If you might be sitting at home and someone's strolling with an iPhone nearby, we know the distance among you. We can also present the iPhone user that you might be nearby. So it performs for everyone."

Mamba Before Badoo there was Mamba, a Russian online-dating enterprise that Andreev launched in 2004 as "an interface for offline relationships, for all type of adventures". It was, he says, rewarding in month two. He supplied it as a white-label service to present dating sites, letting them keep their ad profits and deepening their subscribers' pool of potential dates. When it had a million members, a related design emerged: a free site, it allow users pay via premium SMS to be a lot more easily discovered. "You register, upload a profile picture, and we set you at the top of the lookup list," Andreev explains. "Then you little by little shift down the hill -- if we have 50,000 new buyers a day, you can quickly recognize how many minutes of focus you have. When you drop attention, like a Google lookup result, no one finds you.

"The very first day [of this compensated service] we produced $5,000, the 2nd $6,000, the third more -- I was not expecting this. But men and women adore advertising themselves. A Lot of folks use this operate many instances a day. They grow to be addicted."

A few weeks later, the web site added the chance to be briefly noticeable on each and every page, for a fee. "This was even a lot more successful. Some people spent hundred of pounds each and every day. Men And Women complained they could not write SMS messages quick enough, and a great deal on pay-as-you-go had to hold likely to kiosks to get new scratchcards to charge yet another $50." So Mamba started taking credit cards, online currencies, Yandex money. Revenues climbed at any time much more steeply.

"We just sat back, relaxed, and added a lot more services every day," Andreev says. "There were virtual presents -- before Zynga. You could send a gift, make a virtual cellphone contact at 50 cents per minute. It was Mamba time. You cannot envision how cool it is to run points that are expanding fast, acquiring revenue, watching the charts as the cash grows -- it's a sport." He grins.

Finam invested a documented $20 million in 2005 for a bulk stake; Mail.ru took a minority stake. Soon After 18 months, Andreev had marketed a fast-growing and hugely profitable business, retaining no equity for himself. "I jump from venture to undertaking when I have new inspiration," he says. "I wished the independence to do no matter what I wanted."

And he understood that the constrained Russian marketplace would not hold him fired up for long. It was time to go global.

Meeting Andrey It's 8.55pm on the final 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'", in accordance to the two-Michelin-starred menu -- is a thing he devised when functioning in the kitchen area as a weekend pastime alongside head chef Olivier Limousin. "I'm not sure if it was a joke, but when they got their 2nd Michelin star," he states matter-of-factly, "Olivier mentioned it was because of my soup."

Andreev slips unobtrusively into chefs' whites in this and other London kitchens as "sometimes you need to have a different type of adventure". He provides with a grin: "And I'm not speaking about utilizing Badoo." He discovered cookery in Spain, where he lived prior to coming to London in 2005. "Street education. If you attempt to understand 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 states rapidly and a tiny anxiously. But with around 65 of its 120 staff, which includes its administration and government teams, centered in Soho, this is proficiently a British business. "London's the international hub, exactly where you can locate something you want," he says. "Crazy town. I really feel at home here." He owns a house in central London -- but winces at the suggestion of naming the neighbourhood -- and spends weekends choosing luxurious automobiles to explore England's countryside. "I've been everywhere, stayed in manors, castles, very cool." His social circle is a blend of lieu and Russians, and he is single. "I do not know why. No time." Marriage could occur one particular day, he says, "but I'm scared to create a family members now. I Am not sure 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 pleasant experiences? He pauses, then smiles. "Yeah. I think most of the guys and girls in the workplace are using it, they all have good experiences. And it allows them enhance the features." Considering That choosing Swanson as CEO, Andreev has stepped back from day-to-day management to concentrate on merchandise development. And, yes, he is considering about his subsequent project. "Always -- I have a black box of points to do, but it can be not straightforward to jump from one particular to another." What type of business? "Look at my experience -- it would not essentially be a dating or hook-up service. But it will be internet. The cellular web is the biggest opportunity in the world. Smartphones outsold PCs previous quarter. The possibilities will incorporate meeting new people. Hook-up on cell is a multibillion business. And on tablets."

Childhood Andreev grew up in Moscow. He reveals his identification card: born in February 1974. "You see my problem? I Am old," he says. "Normal family, dad and mom in education, youthful sister, mom teaching, father a professor of mathematics. They inspired me to learn." But he became distracted by an earlier worldwide communications network: novice radio. "I was 14, and with a team of pals created a bunch of big black containers and put a massive antenna on the rooftop. It was not possible in Russia at that time to acquire nearly anything from Europe, so it was a good deal of fun to develop a thing that could send 1kW of power to the antenna on the roof. I expended decades on this."

At 18 he began studying administration at university in Moscow whilst keeping down a job, but dropped out after 18 months and moved to Spain, wherever his mothers and fathers had relocated. He had saved dollars via the work and had time to think about what to do next.

A businessman was born In 1999, he and some Russian pals -- "technical guys quite into the internet" -- set up a web-tracking business, SpyLog, centered in Moscow. It assisted site owners track not only visits to their sites, but users' routines on the wider internet. "It was massive enjoyable to make far more and far more statistics," Andreev says in his occasionally hesitant English. "We furnished data about how a lot time they spent on other sites, what time they woke up and went to sleep, research requests. Most site owners were extremely joyful to pay for this information." The information let SpyLog serve targeted ads. The enterprise grew swiftly -- the major Russian portals employed it -- but 18 months later, he grew to become restless. "I had the notion for my next project. I was dreaming about advertising and marketing money. I knew you could make a whole lot from ads -- and if the market place would like something that no one provides, you move."

The ad company was Begun -- again, based mostly in Moscow -- which released in 2002 offering contextual promoting by auctioning keywords. "It's like Google AdWords, but we started a little bit earlier," Andreev says. (Google released AdWords in 2000 but began keyword auctions in 2002.) "The advertising communication was that for a single cent you could get one particular client. Soon, most search phrases started to be very expensive." Andreev individually negotiated with the large research engines. Arkady Volozh of Yandex "never thought me about the opportunities"; rival site Rambler "proved very difficult". But he convinced Aport, then Mail.ru, and did a offer with Google. "We released in April 2002, and 10 weeks later had been at breakeven. In month three, we returned every thing that had been invested. We had a big success, so it was simple to converse to Rambler again. With money, you can converse with the huge guys. It grew like crazy."

As for SpyLog, "I just left. I stored some men operating it. It was growing, it was good." He retains no ownership. Why not promote 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 wasn't inspired by producing money? He smiles. "No. I just walked away."

First date Begun, meanwhile, had run its 18-month cycle for Andreev. By mid-2003, he began "playing" with dating as "it just felt there was money". At the end of 2003, Finam acquired 80 percent of Begun. "I cannot speak about the price," Andreev states when pressed. "I can inform you that previous yr Finam attempted to market it to Google for $140 million, but the Russian government stopped the deal." He no lengthier has a stake.

So he is not 1 to look back. "No, I just swim to what is next." He is easily bored then? "Maybe." And has he ever failed? "In phrases of the massive projects, never. In terms of small experiments, of training course -- some work, some don't. I spoke with Andrey [Ternovskiy], the creator of Chatroulette, to see if he wished to be part of Badoo so we could produce an thrilling feature. He refused, so we created our own [webcam] section. A week later on we just eliminated it. Large organizations devote months on advertising and marketing research. We go a lot faster -- prototype, build, see if it works, kill."

The 2003 transaction created him a millionaire, but his life style barely altered -- aside from developing a liking for German cars. In London, he does not very own a car, but prefers to hire Jaguars or Aston Martins. "New experience, new fun, new feeling," he says. And although he has two passports, he options to continue to be in the UK. "I enjoy this country. I Would adore to stay here."

The Badoo impact Some join Badoo to uncover a relationship. Lucy, 19, advised Wired she created an account after relocating from Liverpool to London for university. "I had split up with my boyfriend because of to distance," she says. "But it is challenging to meet up with boys my kind on my uni course. My buddy Josh mentioned he uses Badoo to search for guys and that I really should check out it, so he arrived above armed with some alcohol and I signed up."

A amount of end users sent Lucy "weird and inappropriate messages" (an offer to star in a porn movie; concerns about her feet), but there have been two guys with whom she enjoyed chatting regularly. "Then the third one, I met up with. He's 20. I felt comfy meeting up with him as it was in public, and he advised me almost everywhere he was taking me. We've been on four dates and it is likely well."

Others are open up to far more casual encounters. Edita, 35, from Madrid, states she can make friends, but "you can find a weekend roll" too. Rafe, also from Madrid, has accomplished just that. "After 9 months I began chatting with a guy. We talked for a month and one day he gave me his number. The next day he arrived to my residence in the morning. I was alone. Within an hour we were in my mattress 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 didn't anticipate being approached for sex. "It's happened really a bit and they generally request for far more than just one particular partner, which is really making me want to leave. They are usually late 20s, 30s, even a 47-year-old." And despite the fact that membership is limited to over-18s, one member Wired spoke to unveiled that she was only 16.

Some members are plainly there for specialist sexual purposes. We located accounts that heavily hinted at offline transactions for solutions rendered; consumers this kind of as Silina -- 19 and in France -- began a conversation by proposing "a striptease for just six SMS codes".

Swanson states prostitution "hasn't surfaced as an concern because I've been here". Still, he accepts that "it's a threat -- when you have thousands and thousands of users on a site, lots of things 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 targets and scale by natural means attracts controversy. Very Last July, the Information of the Planet reported that a convicted sex offender had detailed himself as "looking for love with ladies aged among 18 and 25" and posted a image of himself taken in a children's park. In January, the Finnish newspaper Iltalehti ran the headline: "Beware this Facebook application", accusing Badoo of amassing profiles without permission. And an evaluation of 45 social-networking websites by Joseph Bonneau and Sören Preibusch of Cambridge University gave Badoo the lowest score for privacy.

Is Andreev bothered by his site becoming accused, at the extremely least, of basically promoting 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 program you have got the opportunity to uncover a girl or a boy -- but it can be not always for sex, it could be to enjoy five mojitos and absolutely nothing else.

"Badoo basically continues the offline lifestyle. Badoo is just a casual way to hook up with people, as you do in the street or nightclub. But we make the planet function faster."

Badoo's future So what is next? These Days Badoo is in 24 languages, and normally requires payment in one hundred currencies, but the company eyes enormous progress possible -- not minimum in markets this sort of as the UK, wherever Swanson states there are 150,000 users. And mobile: "If these days 90-95 percent [of engagement] is by means of the web, in a 12 months 50 % will be mobile," Swanson says. Badoo has barely obtained began on supporting people hook up by way of their mobile devices. "Meeting individuals is the foundation of evolution," Swanson says. "It's not like the individual who's effective 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 buddies in an absolutely virtual life," he says. "Badoo is a lot more social: it provokes you to go down on the street 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's not that concerned on the specifics and he is phasing himself out. My challenge is to maintain him right here as lengthy as possible."

Andreev interrupts. "You want to hold me? I require freedom, so I can develop more things." He then notices an e mail on his iPhone and jumps up excitedly. "Forbes Russia just sent me an invitation," he says. "They've place me in the top 30 successful businessmen in Russia and they're inviting me to their party. I do not feel I must be top 30, but best ten." He laughs. "Bart, what really should 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 image shoots. I do not want that."

Does he worry turning into much more public? "For now, it can be not a large problem," Andreev replies, "as now we have a company that's successful." He pauses. "It's a human thing. You have a thing cool. This is mine -- I made it. It Can Be like a kid. Prior To you have this, what's there to talk about? That I Am cool?"