It Really Is a 120-million-member social network that is including in excess of 300,000 users a day, with much more than 4.3 million everyday picture and video uploads, and 7 billion month to month web 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 make hundreds of hundreds of thousands of dollars this year, and is being aggressively courted by venture-capital companies valuing it in the billions. And it's operate from London by a secretive Russian serial entrepreneur who has steadfastly refused to be interviewed or photographed. Right Up Until now.
The world's most significant social network
Badoo is the world's biggest social network that you possibly haven't yet heard of. Run from 800-square-metre loft-style offices in Soho, it is brilliantly efficient at delivering one particular basic and universally compelling service: hooking up members in accordance to their profile photos and location. "Chat, flirt, socialise and have fun!," implores the house page, alongside images of possible friends this sort of as Terri, 21 ("Wants a candlelit dinner"), and Christopher, 25 ("Wants wake up with a girl" [sic]). Sign in, and a message declares that "204,516 ladies [or guys] around you are hunting to meet a man your age!". Make Clear your intentions (the pull-down menu's recommendations consist of "to chat about sex", "to get a massage", "to flirt") and Tatyana, Oshrit or Gary might 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 means 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 rather than any advertising and marketing spend, it has cracked the internet's eternal conundrum: how to persuade customers to pay challenging income in a globe drowning in cost-free digital solutions and content, by charging members each time they want to boost their visibility to other people looking for a date.
A yr right after Badoo's 2006 launch, when it had 12 million members, Russia's Finam Technology Fund bought a ten per cent stake for $30 million, valuing it at $300 million (this year Finam will realise an choice for a more 10 per cent at a larger valuation). Today, A-list traders this kind of as Sequoia and Accel are courting the enterprise and there is speak of an original public share offering. "Cracking the Anglo-Saxon market place will possibly give us double to triple today's reach," says Bart Swanson, recruited as CEO last September, obtaining expanded Amazon into Europe and run EMI in France. "The possibility for men and women discovery [through Badoo] is a horrendously big marketplace -- it really is a confluence of social, proximity, mobile, and it can be extremely local. The standard mechanism of what Andrey has created is genius -- just like Google with its AdWords, it really is people spending for self-promotion. And it works."
Mysterious Andrey Andrey is Andrey Andreev, originally from Moscow but based mostly in London for the prior 6 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 far eluded media attention: Russian Forbes last 12 months referred to as him "one of the most mysterious businessmen in the West" (it also documented his original identify as Andrey Ogandzhanyants, under which the SpyLog.net domain was registered). We have been launched in January by Israeli investor Yossi Vardi at Burda's DLD conference in Munich, which Vardi co-chairs, and later on fulfilled in London. (Vardi has no stake in Badoo.) And then in mid-February, by yourself in an workplace belonging to Freud Communications, Andreev agreed to share his story. It has been a occupied 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 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 is playful, it looks consistent with offline social interaction but in this hypervirality mode that only the internet has enabled. The secret sauces in firms like this are so nuanced, and the difference in between finding it incorrect and proper lies only with these particular individuals like Andrey. He's developed one thing quite powerful." So why has Andreev remained silent? "I enjoy to target on producing points instead than discovering myself," he states quietly and precisely, his 5' 8" frame constantly shifting in agitated discomfort at currently being quoted on the document for the first time. "I do not really feel that it helps to make dollars or make business." And now? "I feel Badoo is ready for me to establish with. Due To The Fact it works, it grows like crazy. And folks really like it."
There is one more unspoken reason: with an IPO currently being considered, the firm desires to boost consciousness to maximise the valuation currently being floated by investors and bankers (currently being mentioned at "around $2 billion", according to Andreev). The business is printing money: revenues and profit are increasing by "double-digit percentages" every single 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 conventional photo-sharing website. "We assumed that the 'meet new people' notion wouldn't perform there -- Spanish girls are like princesses, you couldn't touch them, you had to meet their mother and father initial before inviting them to the cinema," he says. The website wasn't creating revenue, but figures ended up expanding sharply: the 2007 Google Zeitgeist list of fastest-rising lookup terms detailed "Badoo" second, just under "iPhone". In 2008, Andreev made the decision to test his assumptions of Spanish females and as an experiment refocused the site on meeting new people. "And the ladies failed to leave. At that time, France was increasing fast, Italy was. Then one day we discovered we had 30,000 registrations in Turkey [that day]. What happened? Was it a hacker attack or scammers? No, an individual wrote an post about us. It Really Is as if all the consumers jumped on the bus and went there. Bang -- in two months, quickly we have a Turkish market with a million members." Today the all round gender ratio is 45 % female, 55 for each cent douleur (in Brazil and Poland ladies outnumber men); 86 percent of end users are aged 18 to 34.
Andreev released some easy top quality services. You could spend a greenback or a euro to "rise up" the search results, and so entice better attention. You could pay out once again to have your profile image a lot more commonly visible across the site. He launched virtual gifts to buy for your potential date. "No one's pushing you to spend money, but if you want to entice a lot more users, you have to pay," he explains. "You pay to market yourself. If you want something to go faster, you pay. And some individuals shell out tens of times every single day to rise up." By the end of 2009, the site had 48 million registered consumers -- a fifth of whom, then CEO Neil Bryant explained at the time, ended up paying to enhance their profile.
Badoo mobile "Then we had the thought of cellular -- how to meet folks nearby," Andreev says. "We recognized that individuals could meet each other in a massive town, but how much more exciting to see who's sitting following to you in a café? Or you can just walk past a nightclub and see who you can choose up just before you get in. It's an additional opportunity to hook up random people for adventure. We're speaking about genuine life, real time. We know this woman is 500 metres from here now."
Badoo Cellular released previous summertime 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; following 8 months, it had been downloaded 1.5 million times. Andreev sees proximity as key to the business's future. Even desktop laptop or computer customers can share their area by downloading an app that accesses Wi-Fi networks, IP addresses and other data points. "If you might be sitting at residence and someone's walking with an iPhone nearby, we know the length amongst you. We can also show the iPhone user that you might be 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 form of adventures". It was, he says, lucrative in month two. He presented it as a white-label provider to existing dating sites, allowing them maintain their ad revenue and deepening their subscribers' pool of potential dates. As Soon As it had a million members, a related design emerged: a free site, it let customers pay by way of premium SMS to be far more effortlessly discovered. "You register, upload a profile picture, and we place you at the top of the search list," Andreev explains. "Then you slowly and gradually move down the hill -- if we have 50,000 new consumers a day, you can quickly understand how many minutes of interest you have. When you eliminate attention, like a Google research result, no 1 finds you.
"The first day [of this paid service] we made $5,000, the second $6,000, the 3rd more -- I wasn't expecting this. But individuals adore advertising and marketing themselves. Lots of individuals use this function many instances a day. They turn into addicted."
A number of weeks later, the website extra the chance to be briefly visible on every page, for a fee. "This was even more successful. Some folks invested hundred of dollars every day. Individuals complained they couldn't write SMS messages rapidly enough, and a lot on pay-as-you-go had to preserve likely to kiosks to buy new scratchcards to charge another $50." So Mamba began using credit score cards, online currencies, Yandex money. Revenues climbed ever before more steeply.
"We just sat back, relaxed, and additional far more solutions every day," Andreev says. "There were virtual presents -- prior to Zynga. You could send a gift, make a virtual phone phone at 50 cents for each minute. It was Mamba time. You are unable to visualize how cool it is to run items that are developing fast, getting revenue, seeing the charts as the money grows -- it's a sport." He grins.
Finam invested a documented $20 million in 2005 for a majority stake; Mail.ru took a minority stake. Right After 18 months, Andreev had sold a fast-growing and extremely lucrative business, retaining no equity for himself. "I leap from task to venture when I have new inspiration," he says. "I wanted the freedom to do no matter what I wanted."
And he understood that the minimal Russian industry would not keep him energized for long. It was time to go global.
Meeting Andrey It's 8.55pm on the last Saturday in February and, at the open up ground-floor kitchen area 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 area as a weekend hobby alongside head chef Olivier Limousin. "I'm not sure if it was a joke, but when they obtained their second Michelin star," he says matter-of-factly, "Olivier explained it was because of my soup."
Andreev slips unobtrusively into chefs' whites in this and other London kitchens as "sometimes you want a different sort of adventure". He provides with a grin: "And I Am not conversing about making use of Badoo." He learned cookery in Spain, in which he lived just before coming to London in 2005. "Street education. If you try out to find out 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 speedily and a little anxiously. But with close to 65 of its 120 staff, like its administration and govt teams, primarily based in Soho, this is successfully a British business. "London's the worldwide hub, where you can uncover anything at all 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 vehicles to discover England's countryside. "I've been everywhere, stayed in manors, castles, quite cool." His social circle is a blend of lieu and Russians, and he is single. "I do not know why. No time." Marriage could transpire 1 day, he says, "but I'm frightened to construct a family now. I Am not sure I am in a position to give adequate time." Does he use Badoo? "I use any choice to meet new people, not only Badoo. But I do play with Badoo, yeah." And...he has appreciated nice experiences? He pauses, then smiles. "Yeah. I think most of the men and ladies in the office environment are using it, they all have great experiences. And it assists them increase the features." Considering That selecting Swanson as CEO, Andreev has stepped back again from day-to-day management to emphasis on solution development. And, yes, he is thinking about his following project. "Always -- I have a black box of points to do, but it really is not effortless to leap from one particular to another." What kind of business? "Look at my expertise -- it would not essentially be a dating or hook-up service. But it will be internet. The mobile world wide web is the biggest possibility in the world. Smartphones outsold PCs last quarter. The chances 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 identification card: born in February 1974. "You see my problem? I Am old," he says. "Normal family, mother and father in education, younger sister, mom teaching, father a professor of mathematics. They inspired me to learn." But he grew to become distracted by an before worldwide communications network: novice radio. "I was 14, and with a team of friends developed a bunch of massive black bins and place a massive antenna on the rooftop. It was not probable in Russia at that time to buy nearly anything from Europe, so it was a good deal of entertaining to create something that could deliver 1kW of electricity to the antenna on the roof. I put in many years on this."
At 18 he began learning administration at college in Moscow even though holding down a job, but dropped out following 18 months and moved to Spain, in which his parents had relocated. He had saved funds by way of the task and had time to think about what to do next.
A businessman was born In 1999, he and some Russian close friends -- "technical men very into the internet" -- set up a web-tracking business, SpyLog, based mostly in Moscow. It served site owners monitor not only visits to their sites, but users' habits on the wider internet. "It was big fun to make much more and more statistics," Andreev says in his sometimes hesitant English. "We offered info about how much time they expended on other sites, what time they woke up and went to sleep, research requests. Most site owners have been quite joyful to spend for this information." The data allow SpyLog serve specific ads. The company grew swiftly -- the primary Russian portals utilised it -- but 18 months later, he grew to become restless. "I had the notion for my up coming project. I was dreaming about promoting money. I understood you could make a good deal from ads -- and if the marketplace wishes something that no one provides, you move."
The ad enterprise 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 little bit earlier," Andreev says. (Google released AdWords in 2000 but began key phrase auctions in 2002.) "The marketing and advertising message was that for one cent you could purchase one client. Soon, most keywords and phrases began to be very expensive." Andreev individually negotiated with the large research engines. Arkady Volozh of Yandex "never believed me about the opportunities"; rival web site 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 afterwards ended up at breakeven. In month three, we returned every little thing that had been invested. We had a massive success, so it was simple to talk to Rambler again. With money, you can speak with the large guys. It grew like crazy."
As for SpyLog, "I just left. I kept 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 states detachedly. "I was concerned with my new venture, and I failed to come to feel I could be useful to SpyLog any more." So he wasn't determined 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 began "playing" with dating as "it just felt there was money". At the stop of 2003, Finam acquired 80 percent of Begun. "I are unable to talk about the price," Andreev states when pressed. "I can notify you that final yr Finam attempted to offer it to Google for $140 million, but the Russian govt stopped the deal." He no extended has a stake.
So he is not one to appear back. "No, I just swim to what's next." He is very easily bored then? "Maybe." And has he ever failed? "In phrases of the massive projects, never. In terms of modest 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 a part of Badoo so we could produce an fascinating feature. He refused, so we designed our own [webcam] section. A week later we just removed it. Huge firms devote months on advertising research. We go a lot quicker -- prototype, build, see if it works, kill."
The 2003 transaction manufactured him a millionaire, but his lifestyle hardly modified -- aside from establishing a liking for German cars. In London, he does not own a car, but prefers to lease Jaguars or Aston Martins. "New experience, new fun, new feeling," he says. And even though he has two passports, he strategies to continue to be in the UK. "I enjoy this country. I Would enjoy to stay here."
The Badoo impact Some join Badoo to discover a relationship. Lucy, 19, informed Wired she developed an account right after relocating from Liverpool to London for university. "I had split up with my boyfriend due to distance," she says. "But it is challenging to meet up with boys my form on my uni course. My good friend Josh said he utilizes Badoo to look for guys and that I must attempt it, so he arrived over armed with some alcohol and I signed up."
A range of consumers sent Lucy "weird and inappropriate messages" (an offer you to star in a porn movie; queries about her feet), but there had been two men with whom she enjoyed chatting regularly. "Then the 3rd one, I met up with. He's 20. I felt cozy meeting up with him as it was in public, and he instructed me all over the place he was using me. We Have been on 4 dates and it is heading well."
Others are open to more informal encounters. Edita, 35, from Madrid, says she helps make friends, but "you can discover a weekend roll" too. Rafe, also from Madrid, has accomplished just that. "After 9 months I started out 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. Inside an hour we were in my bed naked."
Hooking up The site's hook-up operate -- accounting for four-fifths of usage, in accordance to Swanson -- occasionally surprises new users. Mary, 19, from London, states she joined to make new friends, and failed to anticipate being approached for sex. "It's happened really a bit and they usually inquire for far more than just one particular partner, which is truly creating me want to leave. They are usually 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 specialist sexual purposes. We found accounts that seriously hinted at offline transactions for companies rendered; consumers this kind of as Silina -- 19 and in France -- commenced a conversation by proposing "a striptease for just 6 SMS codes".
Swanson says prostitution "hasn't surfaced as an concern since I've been here". Still, he accepts that "it's a chance -- when you have thousands and thousands of users on a site, a lot of points 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 goals and scale by natural means draws in controversy. Last July, the Information of the Environment reported that a convicted sex offender had listed himself as "looking for enjoy with ladies aged between 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 accumulating profiles without having permission. And an analysis of 45 social-networking web sites by Joseph Bonneau and Sören Preibusch of Cambridge College gave Badoo the lowest score for privacy.
Is Andreev bothered by his web site currently being accused, at the very least, of just advertising promiscuity? "OK, which is bad?" he replies neutrally. "Badoo is not for sex, it's for adventure. If you go to a nightclub, of course you have got the opportunity to locate a woman or a boy -- but it can be not automatically for sex, it could be to enjoy five mojitos and practically nothing else.
"Badoo just proceeds the offline lifestyle. Badoo is just a informal way to hook up with people, as you do in the road or nightclub. But we make the planet perform faster."
Badoo's future So what is next? These Days Badoo is in 24 languages, and takes payment in 100 currencies, but the firm eyes massive expansion potential -- not least in markets this kind of as the UK, exactly where Swanson states there are 150,000 users. And mobile: "If right now 90-95 percent [of engagement] is through the web, in a yr 50 % will be mobile," Swanson says. Badoo has barely obtained commenced on supporting individuals hook up by means of their cell devices. "Meeting men and women is the foundation of evolution," Swanson says. "It's not like the man or woman who's productive leaves, as with a dating site."
Does Andreev have Facebook in his sights? "Badoo is far more of a social network than Facebook, as on Facebook you interact with your existing friends in an definitely virtual life," he says. "Badoo is far more social: it provokes you to go down on the street and meet these people."
As for Andreev's subsequent 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 particulars and he is phasing himself out. My problem is to keep him right here as prolonged as possible."
Andreev interrupts. "You want to maintain me? I need to have 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 set me in the best 30 profitable businessmen in Russia and they are inviting me to their party. I do not feel I should be top 30, but top rated 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 can be cocktails for free…before they catch me, consider photograph shoots. I don't want that."
Does he dread getting to be much more public? "For now, it can be not a large problem," Andreev replies, "as now we have a firm that's successful." He pauses. "It's a human thing. You have one 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?"