The history of the creation of VKontakte. Biography and success story of Pavel Durov, founder of the VKontakte social network and telegram messenger

Durov was born into a family of intellectuals-intellectuals October 10, 1984. His father is a doctor of philology at St. Petersburg State University. First school years took place in Turin, where the family moved because of the father's work. Pavel completed his secondary education at the gymnasium at state university.

After graduation the future founder of Vkontakte knew 4 languages, had six years of experience in programming. Abilities in this area began to appear in the guy at the age of 11.

Once at the gymnasium, Durov hacked into computer networks, several times he selected and changed passwords to school computers.

After the gymnasium, Durov followed in the footsteps of his father, enrolling in the Faculty of Philology at the same St. Petersburg State University. Here he achieved considerable success:

• became a scholarship holder of the Government of the Russian Federation;
• 3 times became the winner of the Potanin Prize;
• became a platoon commander at the military department "Propaganda and psychological warfare";
• received a red diploma.

A man of genius is a genius in everything, but Durov's main hobby has always been Internet projects. The very first projects of Pavel Durov: library of abstracts durov.com and forum spbgu.ru.

VKONTAKTE

Pavel Durov began with his meeting with his old friend, who returned from America. He told him something about the social network Facebook, which is rapidly gaining popularity in the United States. Durov liked the principle of posting photos and information on the site, which became the starting point on the way to creating VK.

Immediately after graduation, Durov starts a new project. It was named "Student.ru". Initially, it was supposed to make a website for graduates of different universities. Former students could use it to find their fellow students and be in touch.

In 2006, together with his brother Nikolai, Pavel registered Vkontakte LLC and bought the first domain name vkontakte.ru. At first, it was possible to join the community only by special invitations. Free registration was launched at the end of 2006. In just a few days, the number of users increased by 2,000.

Success was achieved through promotion through viral marketing and contests. In the first half of 2007, the number of registered users increased so much that the server could no longer cope. I had to expand. Already at the end of the year, Durov and his brother received several offers to purchase the project, which were rejected.

Significant dates of the site VKontakte

1. January 2007 - vkontakte entered the list of 50 fastest growing sites.
2. July 13, 2007 - registration of the participant under the number 1,000,000.
3. September 2007 - "VKontakte" is recognized as the 3rd most visited site in the Russian Federation (after Yandex and Mail.ru).
4. End of 2007 - 2nd place in the voting for the Runet award (after the bash.org quote).
5. Mid 2008 - registration of participant number 15,000,000.
6. Late 2008 - monetization social network.
7. 2009 – the site overtook Odnoklassniki in terms of the number of participants.

Sale of VK and other follies

In May 2012, VK ​​employees, headed by Durov, began to throw paper airplanes with 5000 banknotes. Fights broke out under the windows for. On average, about $2,000 was scattered around. The behavior of people amused Pavel, he filmed fights.

In 2013, the news thundered that a criminal case had been opened against Pavel. In April, Durov drove a car into a traffic police officer, injuring him. This was done on purpose, after a representative of the authorities tried to catch Durov, who violated the rules. traffic. As a result, the case was closed due to insufficient evidence of the defendant's guilt.

Other projects

The latest project was the Telegram messenger, which is positioned as safe from hacking. According to Durov, he was inspired to create Telegram by the visit of special forces in 2011. Then he realized that secure communication is now completely absent.

The application is based on encryption technology developed by Nikolai Durov. Some unique facts about the messenger:

• still not decrypted traffic;
• the source code of the application is open to everyone;
• there are Russian programmers among the developers;
• the application is not for sale;
• he is not on facebook, and twitter is run by russians.

Since the application does not allow you to transfer data even to employees public services, some officials put forward proposals to ban it on the territory of Russia.

Durov commented on this by saying that he would not give out any personal information of his users.

Durov today

Now Durov lives abroad. He constantly moves from one country to another. As the brilliant developer of VKontakte himself says, he does not recognize himself as a patriot and has already managed to obtain the citizenship of several countries. He is not going to return for permanent residence in Russia.

Together with Durov, his faithful team of programmers travels. They are improving Telegram. According to Pavel, he plans to create an equally successful mobile social network(for smartphones).

Personal life and finances

Many are interested in information about children, wives, or at least love stories from the life of the "father" VK. Metronews published an article stating that Durov is the father of two children, a boy and a girl born in 2009 and 2010.

This information came from Lifenews, which received the data at the request of information from the registry office of St. Petersburg. The publication also states that the mother of two kids is Bondarenko Daria, journalist.

Paul carefully hides his personal life. Regarding the opposite sex, he only once expressed his opinion, saying that it was not necessary to leave Russia for only one reason: we have beautiful girls much more than in any other country.

Pavel Durov's fortune in 2011 totaled 7.9 billion rubles, which allowed him to take the 350th position in the ranking Russian billionaires.

There are only a few such successful people, you say. Yes, it was a different time. In fact, all the barriers are in our heads.

Get inspired, because nothing is impossible!

Biography of Pavel Durov

In this article I will talk about a businessman, one of the founders of the social. networks "Vkontakte", messenger for smartphones "Telegram". Pavel Valerievich Durov was released on October 10, 1984 in a family of mental workers.

Valery Durov - Pavel's father

From childhood, he studied in Italy because of the work of his father, who is a professor of science studying ancient times. Later he returned to his homeland in Leningrad, where he began to study at the gymnasium.

Pasha Durov in childhood (about 8 years old)

Already with early age Pavel was smart and quick-witted compared to his classmates. From the age of eleven, he began to engage in coding in machine language. Due to Durov's constant jokes, the most famous, when he put an image of a teacher with the inscription "Must die", which translates as "Must die", was deprived of access to a PC on the screen saver of all computers at school. However, the programmer still managed to bypass the protection system.

The future creator of VK in his school years (in striped)

After graduating from the gymnasium with a straight honors student, Pavel studied at St. Petersburg State University as a philologist. While studying at the university, Durov was considered a respectable student who took part in various olympiads and took first place there. Moreover, he actively used and honed his managerial qualities. In his free time, he did his own web projects, one of which was a student forum, which vaguely resembled Vkontakte, where people could chat, add friends, and so on.

After graduating from the university with honors, the programmer thought about a site that would be interesting not only to students, but to all people in the future. Pavel was introduced to Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook project, and he thought that it would be nice to make a similar social network in Russia.

Early photo of Pavel

Initially, vkontakte.ru was closed, where you could get only by invitation. After the opening of the resource in a few days, the site gathered about a couple of thousand new users. After the sponsors appeared at the project, "Vkontakte" began to develop actively.

The first avatars of Durov

Pavel Durov left a big mark in the history of the Russian Internet, his brainchild vk.com is known to almost every resident of the country and more and more people learn about it abroad.

In Belarus, this is the second most visited site, in Ukraine and Kazakhstan - the third.

The founders of the site are Russian programmer Pavel Durov and his brother Nikolai Durov.

Pavel is also the creator and co-owner of such well-known student projects as Durov.com (the site is aimed at humanities students) and SPBGU.RU (a forum for students of St. Petersburg State University).

The beginning of a large-scale project

On the Durov.com website in the summer of 2006, many users saw the following news message:

"After long period development, my new project for students was opened, about which many people asked - "In Kontakte.ru". The project will allow students and graduates from various universities and faculties to always stay in touch.

This is a technologically sophisticated database of student and alumni profiles, where we will be grouped based on places of study, friendships, interests, etc.

The picture is my page.
Yours sincerely,
Pavel Durov".

This was the "first sign" of "VKontakte", and shortly after that the site was assigned the domain name vkontakte.ru (October 1, 2006), and this date is considered to be the date of foundation.

But the real "Birthday" was October 10 of the same year - it was on this day that the first functions of the site began to work.

Why VKontakte?

The site was conceived as a way to support communication between students, former graduates of different universities in the country.

It could be called "Student.ru", but sooner or later students finish their studies and lose contact with those with whom they studied for many years.

And it was decided that everyone should be "in contact", that is, in touch. Everyone liked the name (except Durov himself, oddly enough), and now it has almost become a brand.

Website history in facts and figures

In November 2006, free registration of users was opened. Before that, it was possible to get here only by invitation of already registered participants.

January 2007 - "VKontakte" is one of the 50 fastest growing sites on the Internet.

September 27 of the same year - "VKontakte" took third place among the most visited sites in Russia (it was not possible to overtake only Mail.ru and Yandex).

In the same 2007, the site took second place in the popular vote for the Runet award (losing the championship to the entertainment site bash.org.ru).

February 2008 - "VKontakte" became available in Ukrainian, and at the end of March of the same year, the site's audience exceeded 10 million people.

July 2008 - 15 millionth member registered.

In 2009, the number of users is growing rapidly, and VKontakte is overtaking its main competitor, the Odnoklassniki website.

2010 is full of innovations. In April: a new design style "Pre-revolutionary" was introduced (with the ability to disable); it becomes possible to change the status "In Contact" by SMS; On April 17, the site launched its own payment system; two days later, VKontakte launches testing of the OpenID service.

May brings such innovations as the ability to attach audio and video files to private messages, the "Fans" feature becomes available again.

In my opinion, the most memorable events of the past year were the celebration fourth day the birth of the creation of Pavel Durov (October 10), and the resonance due to the transfer of all user pages to the microblog mode without the possibility of turning it off.

As I recall, this happened on October 20 in the evening, and literally by the morning of October 21, a riot was ripe, many users in the blink of an eye created protest groups and threatened to boycott the site. After a few days, microblogging could be turned off at will or left as is.

February 2011 - the daily audience of "VKontakte" "passed" over 23 million visitors. Further - more, today it is already 25 million.

Site Owners

For a long time there was no word about it. The Vesti newspaper conveyed the following information to readers: the founders of VKontakte LLC are Vyacheslav Mirilashvili (60%), Mikhail Mirilashvili (10%), Pavel Durov (20%) and Lev Leviev (10%).

Pavel Durov denied this information, and the press service of the site stated that the investors of Vkontakte are the Digital Sky Technologies fund.

Not without criticism

He is accused of allegedly creating a clone of the equally famous social network Facebook.

To such statements, Pavel Durov only replies that he got acquainted with the principles of the work of social networks on the example of Facebook, but adapted his own website to domestic system education.

14 min. reading

Updated: 21/01/2019

One of the biggest challenges is being yourself in a world that tries to make you like everyone else.

Pavel Valerievich Durov (born October 10, 1984, Leningrad) - Russian businessman, programmer, developer and co-founder of the VKontakte social network, managed VKontakte as CEO from 2006 to 2014, currently the founder and head (CEO) of the Telegram messenger.

At the age of 31, Mr. Durov entered the "200 richest businessmen Russia" edition of Forbes. They like to call him a "ruble billionaire", but these data are practically outdated: Mr. Durov is approaching a new title - " dollar billionaire". From 2016 to 2017, his capital increased from $600 million to $950 million. Now he is in the TOP-100 "richest people in Russia-2017" at the 100th position (Forbes).

Pavel turns millions, but it's not just about millions of rubles and dollars. He created a digital country with a multi-million population (over 100 million users), giving life to the VKontakte resource.

How many smart boys from intelligent families become millionaires? What helped Paul to put his mind right, start his own business, and succeed? The biography of Pavel Durov will tell us about this.

Family and childhood of Pavel Durov

Durov Pavel Valerievich was born on 10/10/84 in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad).

One of his great-grandfathers was a nobleman, the other a farmer, both subsequently lost their property.

The head of the family Durov Valery Semenovich, Doctor of Philology, headed the department at St. Petersburg State University. Mother, Albina Alexandrovna, grew up in Omsk, where she learned their language from German settlers. Having moved to Leningrad, she easily entered the faculty of journalism. The grown-up Pasha admits that he is grateful to his father and mother for their upbringing, parents " set an example of optimism and diligence even in difficult times for our family.”

Pavel was the youngest in the family, his mother had two more sons: Mikhail (from his first marriage, he was an adult and lived separately) and Nikolai (born in 1980). It was Nikolai who set a worthy example for little Pavlik. The older brother grew up as a smart little boy, at the age of 3 he read Popular Astronomy, and at 7 he “clicked” cubic equations. Pasha was gifted in a different way, often drawing guests at home and deftly capturing the similarities.

In 2015, on Twitter, congratulating his father on his anniversary, Durov Jr. will note:

My father taught me and my brother the value of perseverance, honesty and hard work.

Hard work and dedication are important qualities successful person.

Education in primary schools

Pavel Durov changed four schools. When his father was offered to teach Russian in Turin, the family moved to Italy. Pasha was taken away a few months later, and before that, his grandmother took him to an ordinary Leningrad school.

From 1990 to 1992, Pasha studied at the Coppino-Falletti di Barolo school (Turin), and upon his return to St. Petersburg he attended a comprehensive school (1992-1996). There was a conflict with the teachers. In Italy, children were taught differently, without coercion, and the authority of the teachers was not hammered into the head of the elementary school student. Pavlik could make a remark to the English teacher, blaming him for the wrong pronunciation. In the 4th grade, Pasha is fond of programming, together with Nikolai he creates programs on his first IBM PC XT computer. In the computer class, instead of a screensaver, he installed a photo of a computer science teacher on school machines, signing it with the benevolent “must die” (English “must die”).

In 1996, the young rebel was transferred to the Academic Gymnasium of St. Petersburg State University, where lessons, including 4 languages, are taught in depth. Pavel appreciates the knowledge gained, according to the millionaire, knowledge of languages ​​expands the worldview, contributes to career growth. In Durov's piggy bank - 9 foreign languages, he will easily hold a conversation in international English, exotic Persian, Latin, as well as Français, Deutsch, Español, italiano.

In the experimental classes of the gymnasium, Durov meets the same smart people as himself. However, classmates referred to him as a non-team student, claiming that he "always found a way to be separate." Journalist Nikolai Kononov, who wrote Durov's biography, will come to the conclusion that Pavel "became known as a sociopath because few wanted to talk to anyone at school."

In 2001, Pavel Durov graduated from the gymnasium with honors, he did not reach the “gold”, he was awarded silver medal. To the question “who do you want to become”, the graduate laughed it off - “Internet totem”. In principle, he became one - an idol, a symbol, a totem of the most popular Russian-language social network.

University years

In 2001, Pavel became a student at the same university as Kolya. The elder brother is studying mathematics and programming at St. Petersburg State University, and Pasha chose the specialty "English Philology and Translation".

Philology student becomes a university activist. " Pavel spoke quietly, but for some reason everyone fell silent and began to listen.”, - this is how the businessman and scientist Yuri Lifshitz, also a student at St. Petersburg State University, will speak about Durov’s leadership charisma. Pavel is included in the rating of students with the highest level intellect. He is honored for outstanding achievement government scholarship, are awarded a scholarship of the President of the Russian Federation. Durov has been a scholarship holder of the V. Potanin program for 3 years in a row.

As a student, Durov acted as a web developer for two Internet projects:

• Resource Durov.com - a platform for exchange students useful information, electronic database of essays, term papers, etc.
• The site spbgu.ru is a forum for students of St. Petersburg State University. Here, Durov intuitively "felt" the future concept of VKontakte - he modeled a real communication scheme: when creating a profile, students indicated their real name, surname, department. “I tried to kindle a fire,” admits Pavel, who threw hot topics into the forum for discussion. “It was necessary to create the illusion of a critical mass.”

While working on these non-commercial projects, Pavel saw that power is given not only by money, but also by control of information. Maintaining websites taught him to think about the absence of superiors . He strives to work for himself, and not for "uncle."

In 2005, with the rank of reserve lieutenant, Durov graduated from the military commissar with a specialization in propaganda and psychological warfare. In 2006 - leaves the "alma mater", having earned a diploma with honors.

Foundation and development of VKontakte

After uni, Pavel took up the creation of VKontakte. It all started with friendly advice. His classmate Vyacheslav Mirilashvili, a student at Tufts University (USA), observed the growing popularity of the social network Facebook, the creation of Mark Zuckerberg, in America. Having learned from Delovoy Peterburg about the St Petersburg University forum and Durov's success, he wrote to Pavel about the idea of ​​creating a similar Russian-language network. Durov liked the plan, because the search for classmates was relevant personally for him and Vyacheslav: Because we might never meet again.

At first, the site was called "Student.ru", but then Pavel changed the name to a more comprehensive one. Durov created the brand name of the portal quickly, typing “Tahoma” in 3 minutes. He chose colors that don't bother anyone"- blue, white and grey.

The site did not become just a “Facebook clone”. Durov claimed that they "never copied without using the brain."

The friends did not have starting capital, Vyacheslav turned to his father, Mikhail Mirilashvili, for help. Thanks to his support, VKontakte LLC was established and the project was launched. There were three founders of the company: Vyacheslav Mirilashvili with a controlling stake, and co-owners Lev Leviev and Pavel Durov with a non-controlling stake in securities.

FIRST STEPS OF THE SITE

In 2006, the number of visitors to the social networks of Runet grew exponentially: Odnoklassniki, launched in March 2006, had 1.5 million users by November. The demo version of VKontakte appeared on time - in September 2006, a little more, and it could have been late. Durov started a personal page with "ID" under No. 1 http://vkontakte.ru/id1.

At first, the site was closed, registration was available by personal invitation. After 3 months, since December 2006, the resource began to be replenished by everyone. Aspiring businessmen organized a drawing with a prize from - "invite more friends and you will get an iPod player." Within a couple of days, the site attracted over 2,000 users.

Pavel chose the right people for his team.

Remember: you - those who can do something, and not talk, are very few.

Actions, not words, lead a person to success.

Durov resolutely dismissed those who caused some doubts. His brother Nicholas worked with him. He solved server load issues that were very relevant: from 2006 to 2007, the VK audience increased to 3 million.

Durov was awarded the title of "Best Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2007" by the publication "Business Petersburg", and in the same year the popular vote of the Runet Prize put the portal in 2nd place. The resource of that time was non-commercial, without advertising, and in this way it was fundamentally different from other Internet endeavors.

VKontakte is beginning to interest potential buyers, but Pavel does not want to sell the development, instead attracting investors. The first financial sponsor was Yuri Milner, chairman of the board of the Digital Sky Technologies investment fund. The Internet investor was remembered by the VKontakte team for the fact that he himself took the initiative and personally came to them.

The investor acquired 24.99% of the shares, and later resold them to Mail.ru Group.

In 2008, the network's audience amounted to more than 20 million registered customers. This year the site is being monetized, there are advertising banners.

In 2010, the company's central office moved to Nevsky Prospekt 28, in the building of the Singer company. Of the six floors of the house, the web developer rents the top two for the headquarters of the company. Later, he will buy a huge space - a squat on Nevsky 65, where his hard-working employees can also spend the night. Pavel himself did not want to become attached to anything, rented an apartment nearby, lived here and there, but mostly in a squat. Later, he will give the keys to these square meters to Vasily Babich, an employee of the company. Durov did not visit the office earlier than 12 o'clock, he worked in his own mode, until 3-4 o'clock in the morning.

In 2011, having already 7.9 billion rubles in his pocket, the programmer enters the TOP of the richest businessmen in Russia (350th place). One of his colleagues, Oleg Andreev, explained the results of a newcomer to the IT industry by the fact that Durov " able to see through the eyes of a man who old browser and slow internet.

In 2011, Durov, as the best creator of a Runet startup, gets into the Forbes TOPs. However, Pavel is not limited to creating a startup, he decides to finance them. By the end of 2011, six startups received $25,000 on a competitive basis.

Pavel does not limit the VK audience and dreams of entering the European market. In 2011, the domain moves to the abbreviated address vk.com, which is more easily perceived by residents of other countries.

In 2011, a photo of Pavel Valeryevich showing a fak indecent gesture is posted in Forbes. The eccentric hero is in 3rd place in the ranking of extravagant and eccentric businessmen, to whom the press has already attributed and.

This gesture, instead of a thousand words, was Pavel Mail.ru Group's response to the company's attempts to absorb the social network. Mail.ru Group director Dmitry Grishin already owned Odnoklassniki and wanted to merge the resources together.

The founders of the company Mirilashvili and Leviev did not approve of the actions of the freedom-loving co-founder. In April '12, they sold their stake in VKontakte (40% and 8%, respectively) to the United Capital Partners (UCP) group of companies, without informing other shareholders, Durov and Mail.ru Group, about the deal.

Life in exile

In December 2011, after protests against the falsification of the results of the elections to the State Duma, FSB officers recommended that Durov block opposition communities and meetings on the resource. The general director of the VK rejected the proposal, after which he was invited to the prosecutor's office to testify.

In 2011, special forces visited Durov. With correspondents The New York Times Durov shared that the idea to create Telegram ( next product Durova after "VK") dawned on him at the very moment when these trained guys approached his apartment.

They had weapons and looked very serious. Seemed like they wanted to break down the door

Durov advocates free access to information on the Internet. For the convenience of users (free music tracks, videos), he had to pay more than once: content owners filed statements of claim for copyright infringement. In 2010, the State Television and Radio Company VGTRK was the first to sue VK for unlawful placement of its content on the site. After 2 years, singer Sergey Lazarev warned that he would sue for pirated content on VK. Durov informed him on Twitter that Lazarev's compositions had been removed from the site and quipped that now the cultural value of VKontakte had increased. Durov himself did this check for pirated content:

On January 12th, during the Digital Life Design conference, Pavel stated Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, about his intention to sponsor the encyclopedia. After 3 months, the programmer donated $1,000,000 to the Wikipedia project. The philanthropist believes that money " overrated because creation is so much more interesting than consumption.”

Pavel Durov became the initiator of the championship for programmers VK Cup. In 2017, this open youth tournament (from 14 to 23 years old) is held for the fourth time.

1 of his Twitter post, dated May 9, read: “People are walking. Still - 67 years ago, Stalin defended Hitler's right to repress the population of the USSR. A company spokesman said that the head of VK is honoring the Victory Day. And the comment arose from the fact that Pavel's grandfather (WWII participant Semyon Tulyakov), having received three wounds and the Order Patriotic War II degree, in peacetime he was repressed without trial or investigation.

On May 27, on the day of the city, VK managers, together with the boss, launched paper airplanes from the windows of the central office with 5,000 banknotes attached to them. Citizens gathered under the head office of the VK, arranging a brawl for banknotes. Angry comments rained down on Durov, accusing him of snobbery. The head of Vkontakte explained that he only wanted to maintain a cheerful mood on the occasion of the founding day of St. Petersburg, but " I had to quickly stop - the people began to rage».

A CASE WITH A COLLISION

On April 5, 2013, an accident occurred near the VK office. The investigation concluded that the car that hit the traffic police officer was driven by the founder of VK. But in October 2013, due to the “lack of a crime event,” the case was closed, then re-opened, and in 2014 it was closed again.

On December 13th, the FSB of the Russian Federation requested from the head of VKontakte the personal data of the organizers of the Euromaidan communities. The CEO of the social network refused to provide information. He appreciated the trust of millions of Ukrainian clients of the resource, and considered the issuance of information about the user base illegal.

UCP vs. MAIL.RU

What you own will sooner or later own you. Durov's quote claims to be included in the collection of classical aphorisms.

He quickly sells material "anchors": furniture, property, shares. In 2014, he parted with 12% of VK, selling them to his friend Tavrin (media manager, former head"Megaphone"). Securities, in turn, were bought from Ivan Tavrin by the Mail.ru group, which eventually acquired a controlling 52 percent. The holder of 48% of the securities, the UCP association, stated that the policy of Mail.ru Group harms the interests of VK and began legal claims.

The “X” hour struck on March 21, 2014, when Pavel made a statement “on his own”. It was signed a month later: Probably, in Russian conditions, something like this was inevitable, but I am glad that we lasted 7.5 years.”

On April 22, 2014, information appeared that Pavel Valerievich had left his homeland. Former CEO considers his departure final. He commented to TechCrunch reporters that there was no turning back for him: Especially after I publicly refused to cooperate with the authorities.

The founder of the portal calls VKontakte the best that has been created in the field of communication on the Russian market, and it is difficult for him to argue. The facts speak for themselves: the growth of the startup's popularity has broken all Runet records. The site, conceived as a means of finding friends, has transformed into the largest social network in the Russian Federation, in terms of the number of “users”, VKontakte is ahead of the Russian-language segment of Facebook and Odnoklassniki. The resource is visited monthly by more than 97 million people (April 2017 data).

PILGRIM'S LIFE

The programmer named 7 conditions under which he could return: these are the reforms of the courts and education, the simplification of laws, the economic autonomy of the regions, etc.

1 Elected judges and open courts. Durov believes that only judges chosen by ordinary people, not officials, as well as jurors, can ensure the most honest and independent outcome of the proceedings. This, in turn, will help develop entrepreneurial initiative.

2 Deregulation (simple laws). Paul is against the abundance of laws that contradict each other. They stimulate the development of corruption in the country and slow down economic growth.

3 Open competitions for government positions. Officials, fearing for their homes, form their teams through established friendly and family ties As a result, significant positions can be occupied by illiterate and inefficient employees. It also affects corruption in the country and economic development. It is necessary to introduce transparent mechanisms and direct elections for public office.

4 Tax haven due to income from the export of raw materials. Russia is rich in natural resources. It is necessary to free the underdeveloped sectors of the economy from taxes and shift their burden to well-developed resource industries. This will help attract investment, even out the balance of development and give impetus to economic development the entire state.

5 Economic autonomy of regions. It is necessary to change the structure of taxation in such a way that the main part of regional taxes remains on the ground, and is not redistributed, as it is now, to the capital.

6 The abolition of feudal vestiges. The freedom of consciousness of the population is the basis of the progress and economic development of Russia, which is currently hindered by the slavish consciousness formed through military service, the institution of registration, the need to issue a separate travel passport.

7 Destandardization of the education system. Modern system education limits the consciousness of the younger generation, forms stereotyped views. We need flexibility, non-standard training programs that will educate free and creative individuals.

In his VK profile, in the column "political beliefs" is "libertarianism" (a trend that prohibits "aggressive violence").

Now I am very happy living without any property and considering myself a citizen of the world

Pavel has the citizenship of Saint Kitts and Nevis, he received it for investing in the country's economy. The passport of this state in the Caribbean with a population of 50 thousand allows you to freely travel around the world. Durov can't sit still, he changes locations a couple of times a month. Together with him different cities and countries are driven around by programmers developing Telegram.

Telegram is a new project of Pavel Durov

August 14, 2013 launched Telegram, an application for smartphones and other mobile devices, where you can exchange text messages and files of different formats. The messenger is designed with an emphasis on speed and security.

Telegram allows you to supplement posts with funny pictures - stickers. A feature of the stickers in the application is the absence of a background, which creates the illusion of a sticker.

The messenger for users is free, but Durov is expensive. Pavel - "2 in 1", is both the founder and sponsor of Telegram. Every year, Durov finances approximately $12 million for it. He warns against being overly fond of money: “ boring work with dull cowards, the need to lie and betray your world - that's just part of the price you pay for an excessive desire for paper.

Telegram applies special method message encoding developed by Nikolai Durov. The server part uses the capacities of US and German companies. Durov's project was developed on the assumption that "all communication channels are tapped." “Even our system administrators cannot access the user's chats,” the creator of the system assures.

In June 2014, Telegram received a prestigious award in Berlin - it was named the fastest growing startup of the year at the Europas competition. The Europas Award was established in 2009 and selects the most progressive and innovative technological start-ups in Europe.

In November 2014, the application had about 1 million installations (TJournal data), after a couple of months - already 35 million.

In 2014, The New York Times called the entrepreneur Russian. The programmer admits: My dream is to break the national inferiority complex by proving that products from Russia can be massively in demand all over the world.

In 2015, there was talk of selling Telegram to Google (for $1 billion), but Durov denied the information about the deal.

In February 2016, there was another reason to celebrate: Telegram reached the mark of 100 million subscribers. active users per month.

Representatives of the Russian government warned of blocking Telegram if Durov does not change the policy of anonymity. But the fundamental concept of Telegram implies the security of correspondence, Pavel refused to give out information about users.

FSB officials said that when planning the explosion in the St. Petersburg metro on April 3, 2017, Telegram was used as a communication channel. The messenger was called a way of communication of terrorists.

“Privacy is ultimately more important than our fear of bad things like terrorism,” the Telegram creator told TechCrunch. “ISIS will always find other ways to communicate.”

On the request of Roskomnazdor in May 2017 to provide information for registering the messenger, its founder refused. In June, Durov nevertheless sent information, warning that further issuance of personal data of clients was out of the question.

Pavel Durov encrypts his personal life no less carefully than his correspondence in Telegram. Little more is known about her than a donut hole. On pages on the Internet, he does not post a photo with his beloved, and it is not known whether there is one. The cordial connections attributed to him (with Alena Shishkova, Vika Odintsova, Daria Bondarenko) are unverified. Pavel does not post images of his favorites, instead he shares photos of the beautiful places he visits.

Personal life and worldview of Pavel Durov

Pavel's love for the black color in the wardrobe, to which he has been indifferent since his university days, is also noted by the European media: "all-black wardrobe" - they laconically comment. offered “a car of any color if this color is black”, we can say that Durov wears clothes of any color if this color is black.

Indeed, with a height of 178 cm and a weight of 75 kg, Pavel can afford to show off a little. This image of a figure in black scored over half a million likes on VK!

The image of a figure in black scored over half a million likes on VK

Pavel is a member of the Mensa community, which includes people with an IQ that exceeds the level of intelligence of 98% of the world's inhabitants. Psychological studies show that "smarts" do not need a lot of communication to feel happy, the higher the intelligence, the less the need for in large numbers friendly ties. Maybe that's why in 2017 Durov "cleaned up" his friends in social networks and subscribers of the Youtube channel? “One should not be afraid to get rid of obsolete ideas, connections, places of work.

Pavel does not speak on his mobile ("it's outdated, it's too intrusive"), admires Che Guevara and. He is a vegetarian and does not care for alcohol. Pavel is an active supporter of a healthy lifestyle (healthy lifestyle), during his work in VK advertising of alcohol and cigarettes was banned, because he considers them to be the strongest drugs. He also classifies love as a drug, so he prefers not to fall in love.

His favorite film is the black-and-white drama 12 Angry Men (1957), and the most important thing for him is self-development. Network authority says this about his main aspiration:

I would describe my life's work more broadly: helping people and improving the world around us

Pavel Durov's Rules for Success

On November 19, 2012, the biography of the "totem" "Durov's Code" was presented. Real story"VKontakte" and its creator" by Nikolai Kononov, editor-in-chief of Hopes & Fears. The film rights to the book about Durov were bought by AR Films. It was previously reported (2012) about the release of the film at the end of 2017, but since that moment circumstances have changed a lot. In the preface to the publication, the writer Yuri Saprykin noted: "The hero of this book does not fight for freedom - but asserts it by the very fact of his existence."

Pavel Durov is a representative of a new generation of motivated businessmen.

Not only native publications write about him, but also BBC News, The Guardian, Silicon Allee, Fortune.

He belongs to the global "digital elite", which unites brave and talented programmers. Pavel has a subtle entrepreneurial vision. He is hardworking, determined, true to his principles and values ​​freedom very much. He, of course, is not a sociopath or a totem, but a person who has a lot to learn from. He has more than 20 tips for achieving success, some of them are philosophical, some are mundane and applied. His "golden recommendation" is as follows:

Do what gives you real pleasure, and then you will become much happier

Millions of people know the name of the brilliant and at the same time mysterious representative of a new generation of purposeful and inventive people, Pavel Durov. Without exaggeration, the creator of the global Vkontakte project can be called a man of the era, whose achievements are only admirable.

Despite the fame that his brainchild brought to Paul, he was never a public person. That is why one can only guess about the history of the personal life of a genius, his interests and hobbies. Although Paul tries to hide the details of his life, fortunately, it is simply impossible to hide them.

So, how did the life path of the famous Internet businessman Pavel Durov begin?

Pasha was born on October 10, 1984 in the city of Leningrad, in an intelligent family. As a teenager, he showed heightened interest to programming, the study of which occupied almost all free time guy. His success in this industry did not go unnoticed, as evidenced by the number of awards received by Durov during his student years.

The ambition and talent of the young genius did not allow him to go with the flow like most students, but, on the contrary, pushed him to improve his skills and achieve success in the field of computer programming, logistics and design. Pavel took part in competitions with pleasure, was awarded a presidential scholarship, and became a three-time winner of the Potatin scholarship.

In 2006, Durov came up with the idea to create a website closed type for their fellow students, the embodiment of which was the Vkontakte project, which blew up the entire Internet. A year earlier, a similar social network Facebook appeared, but the success rate of the domestic prototype was much higher.

What does Pavel own and where does he spend his money?

In 2014, Pavel Durov was fired from the post of CEO of Vkontakte, which, as the developer himself admitted on his page on the social network, he learned from the newspapers. The creator of VK did not challenge his dismissal in court, but only argued the inevitability of this event.

According to data from official sources Durov's share in statutory fund society accounted for 12%, which is equal to 360-480 million dollars. But in 2013, in order to be able to resist the authorities who demanded the closure of the group of the Russian opposition leader A. Navalny, Pavel had to sell his share in the VK fund. Now the capital of Pavel Durov exceeds 7.9 billion rubles.

Achievements of an IT businessman:

1. In the list of Russian billionaires computer genius occupies the 350 position.
2. AT Forbes ranking in Russia - seventh place.
3. In the ranking of the most successful entrepreneurs under 40 with Russian citizenship 31-year-old Durov took the first line according to the publication "The Secret of the Firm".

The Internet business shark transfers a significant part of its funds to charitable foundations who sponsor Russian programmers at computer programming championships different levels. The IT businessman donated one million dollars to the Wikimedia Foundation in 2012.

Quirks and oddities of Pavel Durov

In 2011, Durov gave an obscene gesture to representatives of the Mail.ru holding when they tried to implement the company's takeover of the social network VKontakte. It was not possible to avoid the takeover, which did happen three years later. On the this moment 100% of the social network belongs to Mail.ru Group.

In 2012, on the day of the celebration of the City Day, Pavel decided to arrange an "attraction of unprecedented generosity", which made passers-by very happy. The essence of the performance was to launch airplanes from 5,000th banknotes.

As a student of the Academic Gymnasium, the excellent student Pasha Durov performed a number of outstanding deeds, among which the most original was the replacement of existing screensavers on all computers educational institution on a photo of a computer science teacher with the not flattering caption "Must die". After this trick, the negligent student was deprived of access to the computer, but this did not become an obstacle, since cracking the password for the young genius was not difficult.

Pavel Durov has never been known for his love of luxury. In 2011, being the owner of a multi-million dollar fortune, he lived in rented apartment, which is located near the main office of the Vkontakte company. The office of the creator of VK was not particularly pretentious, the room had only the necessary things: a chair, a table, a couple of cabinets, an ordinary chandelier and a mirror vase.

Negatively refers to tobacco and alcohol. This was the reason why the building was non-smoking during his time at the company. Moreover, the hookah bar located in the office was not used for its intended purpose. Corporate developers were held without alcohol.

Living in Russia, the computer genius and multimillionaire Durov preferred to travel around the city by metro, arguing his choice by the fact that it was faster. Although, according to some sources, he has a car in his arsenal and more than one. Pavel prefers sedans, Nissan and Lexus branded car brands.

Life today

Now the Internet businessman lives far outside of Russia and is working on other Internet projects, the success of which should not even be doubted, since such a talented programmer as Pavel Durov is working on their creation.

In 2014, having made a donation of 250 thousand dollars to one of the enterprises of the island state of Saint Kitts and Nevis, he automatically received citizenship there, thanks to which he now has the opportunity to visa-free entry to 231 countries, including the Schengen countries.

Together with the team of developers working on the Telegram project, he constantly moves from one country to another, the duration of residence in which does not exceed 2-3 weeks.