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It's a 120-million-member social network which is including above 300,000 end users a day, with more than 4.3 million daily picture and video clip uploads, and seven billion regular monthly web page views. It has Facebook's fastest-growing app, with 570,000 new every day users, producing it the third-biggest app of all right after FarmVille and CityVille. Hugely profitable, it really is forecast to generate 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 really is operate from London by a secretive Russian serial entrepreneur who has steadfastly refused to be interviewed or photographed. Until now.

The world's largest social network

Badoo is the world's most significant social network that you probably haven't but heard of. Operate from 800-square-metre loft-style offices in Soho, it is brilliantly efficient at supplying one particular easy and universally compelling service: hooking up members in accordance to their profile pictures and location. "Chat, flirt, socialise and have fun!," implores the property page, alongside photos of prospective friends such 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 women [or guys] near you are seeking to meet a man your age!". Clarify your intentions (the pull-down menu's recommendations incorporate "to chat about sex", "to get a massage", "to flirt") and Tatyana, Oshrit or Gary might just give you entry to their stash of non-public photos.

Still barely registering in Britain or the US, the free-to-use network -- on the internet 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 users to pay difficult money in a globe drowning in cost-free electronic solutions and content, by charging members each and every time they want to enhance their visibility to other people searching for a date.

A yr after Badoo's 2006 launch, when it had 12 million members, Russia's Finam Technology Fund bought a ten for each cent stake for $30 million, valuing it at $300 million (this 12 months Finam will realise an selection for a further ten for each cent at a increased valuation). Today, A-list traders this sort of as Sequoia and Accel are courting the company and there is chat of an first manifeste share offering. "Cracking the Anglo-Saxon marketplace will possibly give us ambigu to triple present-day reach," says Bart Swanson, recruited as CEO very last September, obtaining expanded Amazon into Europe and operate EMI in France. "The possibility for folks discovery [through Badoo] is a horrendously big market -- it 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's folks paying out for self-promotion. And it works."

Mysterious Andrey Andrey is Andrey Andreev, at first from Moscow but primarily based in London for the prior 6 years, who founded Badoo on a string of other hugely lucrative Russian web businesses: Mamba, SpyLog, Begun. Andreev, a youthful 37 with a cherubic smile beneath a floppy fringe, has so much eluded media attention: Russian Forbes previous 12 months named him "one of the most mysterious businessmen in the West" (it also noted his original identify as Andrey Ogandzhanyants, beneath which the SpyLog.net domain was registered). We ended up released 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, alone in an workplace belonging to Freud Communications, Andreev agreed to share his story. It has been a hectic number 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 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 can be playful, it seems consistent with offline social interaction but in this hypervirality mode that only the web has enabled. The key sauces in firms like this are so nuanced, and the difference between getting it wrong and proper lies only with these unique individuals like Andrey. He's developed a thing quite powerful." So why has Andreev remained silent? "I adore to concentrate on producing points instead than exploring myself," he states quietly and precisely, his 5' 8" frame continuously moving in agitated discomfort at being quoted on the document for the 1st time. "I do not feel that it assists to make funds or make business." And now? "I really feel Badoo is prepared for me to identify with. Due To The Fact it works, it grows like crazy. And men and women adore it."

There is another unspoken reason: with an IPO getting considered, the organization requirements to elevate consciousness to maximise the valuation being floated by investors and bankers (currently becoming mentioned at "around $2 billion", according to Andreev). The enterprise is printing money: revenues and gain are expanding by "double-digit percentages" every month, he says. "We see bankers everywhere. We are like celebrities."

Badoo explodes Badoo introduced in late 2006 in Spain, in which Andreev was then living, as a conventional photo-sharing website. "We assumed that the 'meet new people' idea would not work there -- Spanish ladies are like princesses, you could not touch them, you had to meet their parents first before inviting them to the cinema," he says. The internet site wasn't generating revenue, but figures ended up expanding sharply: the 2007 Google Zeitgeist listing of fastest-rising lookup phrases detailed "Badoo" second, just below "iPhone". In 2008, Andreev determined to check his assumptions of Spanish girls and as an experiment refocused the site on meeting new people. "And the ladies didn't leave. At that time, France was developing fast, Italy was. Then one particular day we found 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 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 market place with a million members." Today the overall gender ratio is 45 percent female, 55 per cent male (in Brazil and Poland females outnumber men); 86 % of customers are aged 18 to 34.

Andreev released some easy top quality services. You could pay out a dollar or a euro to "rise up" the search results, and so draw in larger attention. You could pay once more to have your profile photograph much more widely visible across the site. He launched virtual presents to acquire for your possible date. "No one's pushing you to spend money, but if you want to appeal to a lot more users, you have to pay," he explains. "You pay to market yourself. If you want some thing to go faster, you pay. And some individuals spend tens of occasions each day to rise up." By the finish of 2009, the site had 48 million registered consumers -- a fifth of whom, then CEO Neil Bryant explained at the time, had been paying to increase their profile.

Badoo in Smartphones "Then we had the idea of cellular -- how to meet people nearby," Andreev says. "We understood that individuals could meet every other in a huge town, but how a lot more exhilarating to see who's sitting next to you in a café? Or you can just stroll previous a nightclub and see who you can decide on up prior to you get in. It Can Be an additional possibility to hook up random individuals for adventure. We're talking about true life, real time. We know this lady is five hundred metres from here now."

Badoo Mobile introduced last summer season 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; after 8 months, it had been downloaded 1.5 million times. Andreev sees proximity as essential to the business's future. Even desktop personal computer customers can share their place by downloading an app that accesses Wi-Fi networks, IP addresses and other data points. "If you are sitting at home and someone's strolling with an iPhone nearby, we know the distance in between you. We can also present the iPhone user that you are nearby. So it works for everyone."

Mamba Before Badoo there was Mamba, a Russian online-dating company that Andreev introduced in 2004 as "an interface for offline relationships, for all type of adventures". It was, he says, lucrative in month two. He supplied it as a white-label services to current dating sites, allowing them hold their ad income and deepening their subscribers' pool of potential dates. When it had a million members, a comparable design emerged: a totally free site, it permit customers pay via premium SMS to be a lot more effortlessly discovered. "You register, upload a profile picture, and we place you at the leading of the lookup list," Andreev explains. "Then you slowly transfer down the hill -- if we have 50,000 new clients a day, you can speedily comprehend how several minutes of consideration you have. When you eliminate attention, like a Google lookup result, no one particular finds you.

"The initial day [of this paid service] we manufactured $5,000, the second $6,000, the third more -- I was not expecting this. But men and women love marketing themselves. Lots of folks use this perform a number of situations a day. They turn out to be addicted."

A few weeks later, the website additional the opportunity to be briefly noticeable on each page, for a fee. "This was even more successful. Some individuals invested hundred of pounds each and every day. Men And Women complained they couldn't publish SMS messages rapidly enough, and a great deal on pay-as-you-go had to keep likely to kiosks to purchase new scratchcards to charge another $50." So Mamba started using credit cards, on the internet currencies, Yandex money. Revenues climbed at any time more steeply.

"We just sat back, relaxed, and added much more solutions every day," Andreev says. "There were virtual presents -- ahead of Zynga. You could deliver a gift, make a virtual mobile phone contact at 50 cents per minute. It was Mamba time. You are unable to visualize how neat it is to operate things that are developing fast, finding revenue, observing the charts as the funds grows -- it really is a sport." He grins.

Finam invested a noted $20 million in 2005 for a bulk stake; Mail.ru took a minority stake. Right After 18 months, Andreev had offered a fast-growing and highly worthwhile business, retaining no equity for himself. "I jump from undertaking to venture when I have new inspiration," he says. "I needed the flexibility to do whatever I wanted."

And he realized that the limited Russian market place 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 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 something he devised when doing work in the kitchen area as a weekend pastime alongside head chef Olivier Limousin. "I'm not certain if it was a joke, but when they received their 2nd Michelin star," he says matter-of-factly, "Olivier mentioned it was since of my soup."

Andreev slips unobtrusively into chefs' whites in this and other London kitchens as "sometimes you want a distinct sort of adventure". He provides with a grin: "And I Am not conversing about employing Badoo." He discovered cookery in Spain, in which he lived before coming to London in 2005. "Street education. If you try 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 states rapidly and a minor anxiously. But with all around 65 of its 120 staff, including its conduite and government teams, centered in Soho, this is successfully a British business. "London's the worldwide hub, exactly where you can locate nearly anything you want," he says. "Crazy town. I experience at residence here." He owns a house in central London -- but winces at the suggestion of naming the neighbourhood -- and spends weekends choosing luxurious vehicles to investigate England's countryside. "I've been everywhere, stayed in manors, castles, quite cool." His social circle is a combine of lieu and Russians, and he is single. "I never know why. No time." Marriage could happen one day, he says, "but I Am frightened to develop a loved ones now. I Am not sure I am able to give enough time." Does he use Badoo? "I use any option to meet new people, not only Badoo. But I do play with Badoo, yeah." And...he has liked enjoyable experiences? He pauses, then smiles. "Yeah. I believe most of the guys and girls in the office are using it, they all have very good experiences. And it assists them improve the features." Considering That hiring Swanson as CEO, Andreev has stepped back again from day-to-day administration to emphasis on item development. And, yes, he is considering about his next project. "Always -- I have a black box of points to do, but it's not simple to jump from one particular to another." What form of business? "Look at my experience -- it won't necessarily be a dating or hook-up service. But it will be internet. The cell net is the biggest possibility in the world. Smartphones outsold PCs very last quarter. The possibilities will consist of meeting new people. Hook-up on cellular is a multibillion business. And on tablets."

Childhood Andreev grew up in Moscow. He exhibits his identification card: born in February 1974. "You see my problem? I'm old," he says. "Normal family, mothers and fathers in education, youthful sister, mother teaching, father a professor of mathematics. They inspired me to learn." But he became distracted by an earlier international communications network: beginner radio. "I was 14, and with a team of friends created a bunch of huge black containers and set a large antenna on the rooftop. It was not probable in Russia at that time to obtain something from Europe, so it was a whole lot of enjoyable to create a thing that could deliver 1kW of power to the antenna on the roof. I spent years on this."

At 18 he started learning conduite at university in Moscow even though holding down a job, but dropped out soon after 18 months and moved to Spain, exactly where his mother and father had relocated. He had saved dollars by means of the occupation and had time to assume about what to do next.

A businessman was born In 1999, he and some Russian pals -- "technical men extremely into the internet" -- set up a web-tracking business, SpyLog, primarily based in Moscow. It helped site owners track not only visits to their sites, but users' routines on the broader internet. "It was large enjoyable to make a lot more and much more statistics," Andreev states in his often hesitant English. "We provided data about how much time they spent on other sites, what time they woke up and went to sleep, research requests. Most webmasters have been extremely happy to pay out for this information." The information allow SpyLog serve specific ads. The company grew rapidly -- the principal Russian portals used it -- but 18 months later, he became restless. "I had the concept for my next project. I was dreaming about advertising and marketing money. I understood you could make a good deal from adverts -- and if the marketplace wants a thing that no a single provides, you move."

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

As for SpyLog, "I just left. I kept some men working it. It was growing, it was good." He retains no ownership. Why not market his stake? "I just gave it to people," he says detachedly. "I was concerned with my new venture, and I did not experience I could be useful to SpyLog any more." So he was not determined 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 began "playing" with dating as "it just felt there was money". At the end of 2003, Finam acquired 80 percent of Begun. "I can not discuss about the price," Andreev states when pressed. "I can inform you that very last year Finam experimented with to promote it to Google for $140 million, but the Russian government stopped the deal." He no extended has a stake.

So he is not 1 to search back. "No, I just swim to what's next." He is easily bored then? "Maybe." And has he at any time failed? "In phrases of the large 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 be part of Badoo so we could create an thrilling feature. He refused, so we developed our very own [webcam] section. A week afterwards we just removed it. Huge businesses commit months on marketing research. We go a lot quicker -- prototype, build, see if it works, kill."

The 2003 transaction made him a millionaire, but his life style barely altered -- 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 plans to stay in the UK. "I love this country. I'd adore to stay here."

The Badoo impact Some be a part of Badoo to discover a relationship. Lucy, 19, told Wired she produced an account after moving from Liverpool to London for university. "I had split up with my boyfriend because of to distance," she says. "But it is difficult to meet up with boys my type on my uni course. My buddy Josh stated he utilizes Badoo to appear for men and that I must try it, so he came over armed with some alcohol and I signed up."

A range of consumers sent Lucy "weird and inappropriate messages" (an supply to star in a porn movie; concerns about her feet), but there were two guys with whom she liked chatting regularly. "Then the 3rd one, I fulfilled up with. He's 20. I felt at ease meeting up with him as it was in public, and he told me everywhere he was taking me. We Have been on 4 dates and it's likely well."

Others are open up to much more casual encounters. Edita, 35, from Madrid, says she makes 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 up coming day he arrived to my property in the morning. I was alone. Within an hour we ended up in my mattress naked."

Hooking up The site's hook-up operate -- accounting for four-fifths of usage, according to Swanson -- at times surprises new users. Mary, 19, from London, states she joined to make new friends, and did not anticipate becoming approached for sex. "It's transpired fairly a bit and they normally request for far more than just one partner, which is in fact producing me want to leave. They are generally late 20s, 30s, even a 47-year-old." And though membership is limited to over-18s, one member Wired spoke to unveiled that she was only 16.

Some members are clearly there for skilled sexual purposes. We identified accounts that heavily hinted at offline transactions for solutions rendered; users such as Silina -- 19 and in France -- began 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 risk -- when you have millions of end users on a site, lots of things can happen. We have moderation, and when we see that happening, we delete those accounts." He adds that underage accounts are deleted when discovered.

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

Is Andreev bothered by his website becoming accused, at the extremely least, of merely marketing 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 option to uncover a girl or a boy -- but it can be not always for sex, it could be to appreciate five mojitos and nothing at all else.

"Badoo merely proceeds 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 function faster."

Badoo's future So what's next? These Days Badoo is in 24 languages, and normally requires payment in one hundred currencies, but the business eyes huge expansion potential -- not minimum in markets these kinds of as the UK, exactly where Swanson states there are 150,000 users. And mobile: "If nowadays 90-95 percent [of engagement] is via the web, in a 12 months 50 percent will be mobile," Swanson says. Badoo has barely acquired commenced on helping folks hook up via their cell devices. "Meeting men and women is the basis of evolution," Swanson says. "It's not like the particular person who's effective 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 friends in an completely virtual life," he says. "Badoo is far 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 created up the mousetrap, he is involved in the strategic issues, but he's not that concerned on the facts and he is phasing himself out. My challenge is to maintain him here as extended as possible."

Andreev interrupts. "You want to preserve me? I require freedom, so I can develop much 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 best 30 productive businessmen in Russia and they're inviting me to their party. I will not think I should be best 30, but leading ten." He laughs. "Bart, what really should I do with this?"

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

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

Does he concern turning into much more public? "For now, it's not a big problem," Andreev replies, "as now we have a firm that's successful." He pauses. "It's a human thing. You have a thing cool. This is mine -- I created it. It's like a kid. Ahead Of you have this, what's there to speak about? That I'm cool?"