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It Can Be a 120-million-member social network which is incorporating above 300,000 users a day, with much more than 4.3 million day-to-day picture and video clip uploads, and seven billion month to month page views. It has Facebook's fastest-growing app, with 570,000 new day-to-day users, generating it the third-biggest app of all right after FarmVille and CityVille. Hugely profitable, it really is forecast to produce hundreds of millions of dollars this year, and is becoming aggressively courted by venture-capital firms valuing it in the billions. And it is run from London by a secretive Russian serial entrepreneur who has steadfastly refused to be interviewed or photographed. Until Finally now.

The world's largest social network

Badoo is the world's largest social network that you possibly have not yet heard of. Operate from 800-square-metre loft-style offices in Soho, it is brilliantly effective at offering one particular easy and universally compelling service: hooking up members in accordance to their profile images and location. "Chat, flirt, socialise and have fun!," implores the home page, alongside photographs of possible 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] in close proximity to you are hunting to meet a man your age!". Clarify your intentions (the pull-down menu's ideas consist of "to speak about sex", "to get a massage", "to flirt") and Tatyana, Oshrit or Gary may well just give you entry to their stash of personal photos.

Still hardly registering in Britain or the US, the free-to-use network -- on the world wide web and via 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 rather than any advertising spend, it has cracked the internet's eternal conundrum: how to persuade consumers to pay out difficult money in a globe drowning in cost-free electronic services and content, by charging members each time they want to boost their visibility to other individuals browsing for a date.

A yr right after Badoo's 2006 launch, when it had 12 million members, Russia's Finam Technologies Fund acquired a 10 per cent stake for $30 million, valuing it at $300 million (this 12 months Finam will realise an choice for a further ten per cent at a increased valuation). Today, A-list investors this sort of as Sequoia and Accel are courting the organization and there is speak of an original manifeste share offering. "Cracking the Anglo-Saxon market will possibly give us ambigu to triple present day reach," states Bart Swanson, recruited as CEO final September, having expanded Amazon into Europe and run EMI in France. "The opportunity for folks discovery [through Badoo] is a horrendously significant market place -- it really is a confluence of social, proximity, mobile, and it's incredibly local. The simple mechanism of what Andrey has formulated is genius -- just like Google with its AdWords, it can be people having to pay for self-promotion. And it works."

Mysterious Andrey Andrey is Andrey Andreev, at first from Moscow but primarily based in London for the previous 6 years, who founded Badoo on a string of other hugely lucrative Russian world wide web businesses: Mamba, SpyLog, Begun. Andreev, a youthful 37 with a cherubic smile under a floppy fringe, has so significantly eluded media attention: Russian Forbes last yr called him "one of the most mysterious businessmen in the West" (it also reported his original name as Andrey Ogandzhanyants, beneath which the SpyLog.net domain was registered). We had been released in January by Israeli investor Yossi Vardi at Burda's DLD convention in Munich, which Vardi co-chairs, and afterwards satisfied in London. (Vardi has no stake in Badoo.) And then in mid-February, alone in an workplace belonging to Freud Communications, Andreev agreed to share his story. It has been a active few 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 talk 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 is playful, it would seem regular with offline social interaction but in this hypervirality mode that only the net has enabled. The secret sauces in organizations like this are so nuanced, and the variation among obtaining it wrong and right lies only with these specific people like Andrey. He Is developed one thing extremely powerful." So why has Andreev remained silent? "I adore to target on generating things instead than exploring myself," he states quietly and precisely, his 5' 8" frame constantly shifting in agitated discomfort at becoming quoted on the file for the initial time. "I don't feel that it assists to make cash or make business." And now? "I feel Badoo is all set for me to determine with. Simply Because it works, it grows like crazy. And individuals adore it."

There is an additional unspoken reason: with an IPO currently being considered, the business needs to raise consciousness to maximise the valuation becoming floated by investors and bankers (currently getting reviewed at "around $2 billion", in accordance to Andreev). The business is printing money: revenues and profit are increasing by "double-digit percentages" each month, he says. "We see bankers everywhere. We are like celebrities."

Badoo explodes Badoo introduced 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 would not function there -- Spanish women are like princesses, you couldn't contact them, you had to meet their parents very first just before inviting them to the cinema," he says. The website wasn't making revenue, but numbers were expanding sharply: the 2007 Google Zeitgeist record of fastest-rising lookup terms outlined "Badoo" second, just beneath "iPhone". In 2008, Andreev decided to test his assumptions of Spanish ladies and as an experiment refocused the website on meeting new people. "And the ladies didn't leave. At that time, France was expanding fast, Italy was. Then a single day we uncovered we had 30,000 registrations in Turkey [that day]. What happened? Was it a hacker attack or scammers? No, somebody wrote an write-up about us. It Is as if all the end users jumped on the bus and went there. Bang -- in two months, all of a sudden we have a Turkish industry with a million members." Right Now the overall gender ratio is 45 % female, 55 for each cent male (in Brazil and Poland ladies outnumber men); 86 percent of consumers are aged 18 to 34.

Andreev released some basic top quality services. You could shell out a greenback or a euro to "rise up" the lookup results, and so entice better attention. You could pay yet again to have your profile photograph far more extensively visible throughout the site. He introduced virtual gifts to buy for your future date. "No one's pushing you to spend money, but if you want to draw in a lot more users, you have to pay," he explains. "You spend to promote yourself. If you want one thing to go faster, you pay. And some men and women pay tens of occasions each day to rise up." By the conclude of 2009, the website had 48 million registered consumers -- a fifth of whom, then CEO Neil Bryant explained at the time, had been having to pay to improve their profile.

Badoo mobile "Then we had the concept of mobile -- how to meet folks nearby," Andreev says. "We understood that folks could meet every other in a huge town, but how considerably much more exciting to see who's sitting following to you in a café? Or you can just walk previous a nightclub and see who you can choose up ahead of you get in. It Is another opportunity to hook up random individuals for adventure. We're speaking about real life, actual time. We know this lady is 500 metres from right here now."

Badoo Mobile launched previous summertime on the iPhone, and in March on Android. In weeks, with barely 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 crucial to the business's future. Even desktop laptop or computer users can share their place by downloading an app that accesses Wi-Fi networks, IP addresses and other data points. "If you are sitting at house and someone's strolling with an iPhone nearby, we know the length between you. We can also demonstrate the iPhone consumer that you might be nearby. So it works for everyone."

Mamba Before Badoo there was Mamba, a Russian online-dating enterprise that Andreev released in 2004 as "an interface for offline relationships, for all kind of adventures". It was, he says, rewarding in month two. He provided it as a white-label service to current dating sites, letting them keep their ad income and deepening their subscribers' pool of potential dates. As Soon As it had a million members, a comparable model emerged: a cost-free site, it let end users shell out by means of top quality SMS to be far more effortlessly discovered. "You register, add a profile picture, and we put you at the top of the lookup list," Andreev explains. "Then you slowly shift down the hill -- if we have 50,000 new consumers a day, you can quickly understand how a lot of minutes of consideration you have. When you eliminate attention, like a Google research result, no one finds you.

"The initial day [of this paid service] we created $5,000, the 2nd $6,000, the third much more -- I was not expecting this. But folks love promoting themselves. Lots of people use this purpose many instances a day. They turn into addicted."

A couple of weeks later, the website additional the opportunity to be briefly noticeable on each and every page, for a fee. "This was even far more successful. Some men and women spent hundred of bucks each day. People complained they couldn't create SMS messages quickly enough, and a great deal on pay-as-you-go had to preserve likely to kiosks to acquire new scratchcards to cost another $50." So Mamba began taking credit cards, on the web currencies, Yandex money. Revenues climbed ever far more steeply.

"We just sat back, relaxed, and additional a lot more providers every single day," Andreev says. "There were virtual gifts -- before Zynga. You could send a gift, make a virtual mobile phone get in touch with at 50 cents for each minute. It was Mamba time. You can not imagine how cool it is to operate points that are increasing fast, finding revenue, observing the charts as the cash 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. Right After 18 months, Andreev had sold a fast-growing and hugely profitable business, retaining no equity for himself. "I leap from undertaking to task when I have new inspiration," he says. "I wanted the freedom to do what ever I wanted."

And he realized that the restricted Russian market would not keep him energized 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 in search of reactions to the soup he created. L'oignon doux -- "Sweet onion soup 'Andreï style'", according to the two-Michelin-starred menu -- is a thing he devised when doing work in the kitchen as a weekend pastime alongside head chef Olivier Limousin. "I'm not certain if it was a joke, but when they received their second Michelin star," he states matter-of-factly, "Olivier stated it was because of my soup."

Andreev slips unobtrusively into chefs' whites in this and other London kitchens as "sometimes you want a various kind of adventure". He adds with a grin: "And I'm not conversing about using Badoo." He discovered cookery in Spain, in which he lived before coming to London in 2005. "Street education. If you try out to discover something, you just get it." Why did he transfer to London? "Badoo is not only in London -- we have offices in Prague, Miami, Malta, Cyprus and Moscow too," he says swiftly and a minor anxiously. But with close to 65 of its 120 staff, which includes its management and government teams, centered in Soho, this is successfully a British business. "London's the global hub, where you can locate anything at all you want," he says. "Crazy town. I come to feel at residence here." He owns a residence in central London -- but winces at the suggestion of naming the neighbourhood -- and spends weekends employing luxurious vehicles to examine 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 don't know why. No time." Marriage could happen one particular day, he says, "but I Am frightened to construct a family members now. I Am not certain I am in a position to give adequate time." Does he use Badoo? "I use any option to meet new people, not only Badoo. But I do perform with Badoo, yeah." And...he has liked enjoyable experiences? He pauses, then smiles. "Yeah. I assume most of the men and girls in the workplace are using it, they all have excellent experiences. And it assists them enhance the features." Considering That hiring Swanson as CEO, Andreev has stepped back again from day-to-day administration to focus on item development. And, yes, he is thinking about his up coming project. "Always -- I have a black box of issues to do, but it is not straightforward to leap from 1 to another." What form of business? "Look at my experience -- it will not likely automatically be a dating or hook-up service. But it will be internet. The cell net is the largest chance in the world. Smartphones outsold PCs last 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 reveals his id card: born in February 1974. "You see my problem? I Am old," he says. "Normal family, mothers and fathers in education, youthful sister, mom teaching, father a professor of mathematics. They encouraged me to learn." But he grew to become distracted by an before world wide communications network: newbie radio. "I was 14, and with a team of pals constructed a bunch of huge black containers and place a big antenna on the rooftop. It was not probable in Russia at that time to purchase anything at all from Europe, so it was a lot of exciting to produce something that could deliver 1kW of power to the antenna on the roof. I expended a long time on this."

At 18 he commenced learning administration at college in Moscow whilst holding down a job, but dropped out following 18 months and moved to Spain, where his parents had relocated. He had saved funds by way of the job and had time to think about what to do next.

A businessman was born In 1999, he and some Russian buddies -- "technical guys 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' habits on the broader internet. "It was massive exciting to make a lot more and much more statistics," Andreev states in his sometimes hesitant English. "We offered details about how much time they invested on other sites, what time they woke up and went to sleep, research requests. Most site owners were very pleased to spend for this information." The data permit SpyLog serve targeted ads. The business grew rapidly -- the principal Russian portals used it -- but 18 months later, he grew to become restless. "I had the thought for my following project. I was dreaming about advertising and marketing money. I knew you could make a lot from advertisements -- and if the industry desires one thing that no a single provides, you move."

The ad organization was Started -- again, centered in Moscow -- which introduced in 2002 marketing contextual marketing by auctioning keywords. "It's like Google AdWords, but we started out a little bit earlier," Andreev says. (Google released AdWords in 2000 but started keyword auctions in 2002.) "The marketing communication was that for one cent you could acquire one particular client. Soon, most search phrases commenced to be very expensive." Andreev personally negotiated with the huge lookup engines. Arkady Volozh of Yandex "never considered me about the opportunities"; rival internet site Rambler "proved quite difficult". But he convinced Aport, then Mail.ru, and did a offer with Google. "We launched in April 2002, and ten weeks later on had been at breakeven. In month three, we returned every little thing that had been invested. We had a large success, so it was simple to speak to Rambler again. With money, you can communicate with the massive guys. It grew like crazy."

As for SpyLog, "I just left. I stored some guys working it. It was growing, it was good." He retains no ownership. Why not offer his stake? "I just gave it to people," he states detachedly. "I was concerned with my new venture, and I didn't 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 conclude of 2003, Finam acquired 80 % of Begun. "I can't speak about the price," Andreev says when pressed. "I can inform you that very last year Finam tried to sell it to Google for $140 million, but the Russian govt stopped the deal." He no lengthier has a stake.

So he is not one to look back. "No, I just swim to what is next." He is easily bored then? "Maybe." And has he actually failed? "In terms of the huge projects, never. In phrases of little experiments, of program -- some work, some don't. I spoke with Andrey [Ternovskiy], the creator of Chatroulette, to see if he wished to join Badoo so we could produce an exhilarating feature. He refused, so we developed our own [webcam] section. A week later we just removed it. Large organizations commit months on advertising and marketing research. We go significantly more quickly -- prototype, build, see if it works, kill."

The 2003 transaction made him a millionaire, but his life style hardly transformed -- apart from developing 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 ideas to continue to be in the UK. "I love this country. I Would adore to keep here."

The Badoo impact Some join Badoo to find a relationship. Lucy, 19, advised Wired she created an account following shifting from Liverpool to London for university. "I had split up with my boyfriend because of to distance," she says. "But it is hard to meet up with boys my sort on my uni course. My friend Josh mentioned he employs Badoo to seem for men and that I ought to attempt it, so he came above armed with some alcohol and I signed up."

A range of users sent Lucy "weird and inappropriate messages" (an supply to star in a porn movie; queries about her feet), but there ended up two guys with whom she enjoyed chatting regularly. "Then the third one, I met up with. He's 20. I felt comfortable meeting up with him as it was in public, and he told me all over the place he was taking me. We Have been on four dates and it is heading well."

Others are open to a lot more casual encounters. Edita, 35, from Madrid, says she makes friends, but "you can uncover a weekend roll" too. Rafe, also from Madrid, has done just that. "After 9 months I began chatting with a guy. We talked for a month and 1 day he gave me his number. The next day he came to my residence in the morning. I was alone. In an hour we were in my bed naked."

Hooking up The site's hook-up purpose -- accounting for four-fifths of usage, according to Swanson -- sometimes surprises new users. Mary, 19, from London, states she joined to make new friends, and didn't anticipate currently being approached for sex. "It's happened really a little bit and they typically consult for much more than just a single partner, which is really producing me want to leave. They are generally late 20s, 30s, even a 47-year-old." And although membership is limited to over-18s, one member Wired spoke to uncovered that she was only 16.

Some members are obviously there for skilled sexual purposes. We identified accounts that greatly hinted at offline transactions for solutions rendered; users this kind of as Silina -- 19 and in France -- commenced a conversation by proposing "a striptease for just six SMS codes".

Swanson says prostitution "hasn't surfaced as an situation since I've been here". Still, he accepts that "it's a chance -- when you have thousands and thousands of customers on a site, plenty of things can happen. We have moderation, and when we see that happening, we delete people accounts." He adds that underage accounts are deleted when discovered.

Controversy A network with Badoo's objectives and scale obviously attracts controversy. Previous July, the Information of the World documented that a convicted intercourse offender had listed himself as "looking for adore with women aged amongst 18 and 25" and posted a photograph 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 having 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 website being accused, at the very least, of just advertising promiscuity? "OK, which is bad?" he replies neutrally. "Badoo is not for sex, it can be for adventure. If you go to a nightclub, of program you have obtained the chance to find a girl or a boy -- but it is not always for sex, it could be to appreciate five mojitos and practically nothing else.

"Badoo basically 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 planet perform faster."

Badoo's future So what's next? Today Badoo is in 24 languages, and requires payment in one hundred currencies, but the company eyes huge development possible -- not minimum in markets such as the UK, exactly where Swanson states there are 150,000 users. And mobile: "If nowadays 90-95 percent [of engagement] is through the web, in a yr 50 percent will be mobile," Swanson says. Badoo has barely obtained started on assisting men and women hook up through their mobile devices. "Meeting people is the foundation of evolution," Swanson says. "It's not like the individual who's profitable leaves, as with a dating site."

Does Andreev have Facebook in his sights? "Badoo is a lot more of a social network than Facebook, as on Facebook you interact with your present buddies in an definitely 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 up coming move, in Swanson's words, "he's constructed up the mousetrap, he is involved in the strategic issues, but he's not that involved on the particulars and he's phasing himself out. My challenge is to hold him right here as prolonged as possible."

Andreev interrupts. "You want to preserve me? I need freedom, so I can construct a lot 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 set me in the leading 30 productive businessmen in Russia and they're inviting me to their party. I do not think I should be leading 30, but best ten." He laughs. "Bart, what must I do with this?"

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

Andreev smiles. "But it really is cocktails for free…before they catch me, just take photograph shoots. I will not want that."

Does he fear turning out to be more public? "For now, it is not a big problem," Andreev replies, "as now we have a company that is successful." He pauses. "It's a human thing. You have a thing cool. This is mine -- I produced it. It Really Is like a kid. Before you have this, what's there to speak about? That I Am cool?"