Pavel Durov's condition. Creator of the social network "VKontakte"

2024 Author: Howard Calhoun | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:16

VK founder Pavel Durov, whose biography is full of rumors and contradictions, is one of the youngest Russian billionaires and a very extraordinary person. Like any other story of great success, the life of a young man is characterized by a very active professional position, bold decisions and confident steps towards achieving goals. Now VK is a social network that has become an integral part of the lifestyle of most Russians, and Pavel Durov's fortune is estimated at $0.6 billion.

Childhood and youth

Durov Pavel Valerievich was born on October 10, 1984, the birthplace is Leningrad. The Durov family was distinguished by intelligence and education.

Pavel's father Valery Semenovich is the head of the Department of Classical Philology at St. Petersburg University, his mother has two higher educations. The brother is a candidate of physical and mathematical sciences. According to Pavel Durov, the family had a serious influence on the formationhis personality, thanks to hard work and the right attitude, even in difficult times.

Pavel went to school for the first time in Turin. At this time the family lived in Italy. A few years later, the Durovs again moved to St. Petersburg, and the boy was forced to continue his studies at an ordinary school, but this did not last long.

After a short period of time, it became clear to both parents and teachers that this child had no place among ordinary schoolchildren and teachers, whom he often reproached for being unprofessional. As a result, Pavel Durov was transferred to the Academic Gymnasium, where he was surrounded by the same gifted children. He studied well, constantly sitting at the first desk due to poor eyesight.

Ever since his early teens, Durov gained a reputation as a rather cruel joker and aroused a wary attitude from his peers. After learning how to program, he hacked into school computers and installed screen savers on them that made fun of the teacher.

University studies and first projects

Programming has become a common hobby for both brothers. But after graduating from high school, when they entered St. Petersburg University, Pavel unexpectedly chose the Faculty of Philology for everyone, while his brother Nikolai continued his education in physics and mathematics.

As a student, Pavel made the most of this time. He did not just study, but tried to create something new, constantly experimenting andreferring to their abilities in the field of programming. At the same time, he successfully mastered linguistics and design, constantly winning competitions in these disciplines.

The first attempt to create an online community was the creation of the site durov.com, where students could share educational materials with each other, so that it would be very convenient and appreciated by classmates. Having reached the goal, Pavel left this resource unattended and took up other projects.

The next brainchild of Durov was the website of the university spbgu.ru. The future billionaire paid special attention to the possibilities of communication on the site's forum, trying to enrich it as much as possible and bring it closer to communications in real life. So, groups of friends, communities and other first signs of social networks began to appear on the site's forum. Users noted the fundamental differences between this resource and similar ones: students could indicate their real names, belonging to departments, etc., which at that time was an unusual, but very convenient innovation.

Like Durov's other projects, spbgu.ru was not intended to make a profit. And despite the enormous popularity of the resource among students, the site did not contain advertising banners, with the exception of those related to education.

The birth of the Vkontakte idea

Even then, Pavel realized that he wanted to continue to engage in similar projects, invent and create something new, but definitely not go to routine work every day on a schedule. Routine, monotony and bureaucracy were alien to him to such an extent thathe even refused to withdraw his linguist diploma from the university.

Study was easy for him, and already as a student, the future ruble billionaire demonstrated pronounced leadership qualities, which allowed him to become a three-time winner of the Potanin scholarship, as well as to be a scholarship holder of the President of the Russian Federation and the Government of the Russian Federation.

Despite the impressive success of the university website, Durov did not stop thinking about the idea of creating a larger community that would unite not only students, but also graduates, because it was assumed that the connection between people after graduation should not be lost. During this period, his classmate Vyacheslav Mirilashvili contacted him, who at that time was studying at one of the American universities. From St. Petersburg newspapers, he learned about Durov's success in creating and promoting the site spbgu.ru, and told a gifted classmate about the rapidly gaining popularity of the social network facebook.com.

Launch "VKontakte"

Childhood friends and other Russian programmers joined forces and ideas, and on October 1, 2006, the vkontakte.ru domain was officially registered. Initially, the ideas of the name were associated with attracting students, but in the end, in order not to be limited only to the student environment, the more general phrase “in contact” was chosen as the name. The money for the launch was borrowed from one of the firms owned by Vyacheslav Mirilashvili's father.

The rapid development of the social network, the first investors

Initially, registration was possible only by invitation and was carried out only by name and surname. Since December 2006, the VKontakte social network has been fully operational. At first, users were attracted through contests, according to which the one who attracted the most registrants would receive a gift. Then, when free registration was opened, the number of visitors began to grow rapidly, and Durov had to take care of the stable operation of the servers. After the first year of operation of the social network, it became clear that it required multimillion-dollar investments, and there was no place to take funds from. Ideas about advertising and other monetization were cut off, a search for investments was started. Thus, 24.99% of the company was acquired by the largest Internet investor Yuri Milner. He extolled Durov's business idea, his abilities and was inclined not to interfere in the matter, which suited the founder of Vkontakte LLC quite well.

Forced monetization

VK - a social network designed to expand the possibilities of communication, make it more convenient and accessible, and not a means of deriving benefits - such was Durov's initial point of view on his offspring. However, the sixteen million dollars that the Milner deal brought in was not enough to cover all the expenses that the growing social network demanded.

And the problem of overloaded servers and security became more and more urgent. Then, in 2008, Pavel Durov took the first steps to monetize the resource - there were paid "votes", giftsand contextual advertising. Then the social network "Vkontakte" already had more than twenty million users.

Upgrading and empowering

In 2011, the site changed functionally and visually, which at first was perceived by users as very contradictory. The usual wall turned into a microblog, likes appeared, viewing photos became more convenient and functional, it became possible to add videos from other resources. Despite the indignation of some of the regular visitors to Vkontakte, everyone quickly got used to the new look and content, and the talented programmer once again confirmed his reputation as a person who is constantly working to improve the quality of the product offered. At that time, Pavel Durov's fortune was estimated at 8 billion rubles.

Copyright Conflicts

The confrontation between the popular social network and copyright defenders was inevitable. Very quickly, Vkontakte was flooded with numerous films, videos, music, the number of which became the subject of endless disputes about the legality of such content.

The All-Russian State Television and Radio Company even sued the social network, the key was the demand to remove the content that belonged to it from Vkontakte. Despite the fact that most of the Internet resources that faced such a requirement went along with the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, Durov responded with a decisive refusal, and won this court case. His position was and remains the conviction that the meaning and essence of the Internet is in the freedom of information dissemination. However, in somedisputes with the copyright holders, he still had to go to a meeting. Currently, illegally placed films and music are being removed from VK, which in general does not reduce the high information content that the resource has achieved over the years of its existence.

Ambitious development plans

Pavel Durov's fortune grew rapidly with the number of users. But despite the colossal success of the social network created by the Corporation of Excellent Students, Durov always realized that Vkontakte, being a Russian-language resource, cannot develop indefinitely, while Western analogues with a predominant English language have much wider opportunities in this direction. In this regard, Durov began to actively strive for international benchmarks in development. The first step was to rename the domain, which has acquired a shorter and more convenient sound for users from different countries - vk.com.

How Durov turned out to be “out of contact”

The purchase of a quarter of the corporation's shares in 2008 marked the beginning of the gradual transition of Vkontakte LLC into other hands. Durov invariably clashed with law enforcement agencies and courts, which weakened his position as CEO of the company. After refusing to block the page of one of the oppositionists, he even had to deal with representatives of the FSB, who visited his office with machine guns, despite the fact that he gave quite intelligible explanations for his decision - he was afraid of an outflow of regular visitors to other resources, and believed that prohibiting something on one site does not prevent users from finding the same thing onother.

The claims of Mail.ru Group for the company's shares did not stop. In 2013, Vyacheslav Mirilashvili and Lev Leviev, who founded VK together with Durov, sold their stake to the UCP fund without agreeing this decision with the main founder, who remained at the helm, but with only 12% of the company's shares.

In 2014, the corporation underwent serious personnel changes initiated by new shareholders. The positions of Durov, who continued to be subjected to various kinds of accusations (including the unreasonable waste of the company's funds, the development of new projects competing with VK, etc.), became even more unreliable. On April 1, he filed a letter of resignation from the post of CEO, due to the fact that it became increasingly difficult for him to uphold the principles of the functioning of the social network, which were laid down at the time of its creation. Later, he also sold his stake in the company. The state of Pavel Durov, however, is still the subject of discussion of well-wishers and envious people.

Interesting facts

It is known that the founder of VK Pavel Durov, whose biography is full of various rumors, adheres to libertarian views, is a vegetarian and does not drink alcohol. In addition to his enthusiastic work on the creation and development of various kinds of projects, he loves to travel very much, and can visit dozens of countries a year. At the same time, he is not an adherent of luxury, and despite the fact that a year after the launch of Vkontakte he became one of the richest Internet entrepreneurs, he got to work by public transport and lived in a tiny rented apartment.apartment.

Often Pavel Durov found himself in the center of high-profile scandals. One of them broke out in St. Petersburg on City Day in 2012, when Pavel, leaning out of the window of his office, threw five-thousand-dollar bills attached to paper airplanes into the crowd. A seemingly innocent joke turned into an action that was condemned in all circles. However, Pavel himself explained this by the desire to hold a festive action. According to him, he did not expect such a violent reaction from the people.

Support for science and programming

The name of Pavel Durov is associated not only with the most popular social network in Russia, but also with active charitable activities. He organized many competitions for young programmers from all over the world. A distinctive feature of his sponsorship has always been the lack of material interest. Unlike other sponsors of similar events, he did not seek further benefits from the young professionals he supported.

At present, Pavel Durov, whose fortune ("Forbes") is 0.6 billion dollars, is among the 200 richest Russian businessmen, ranking 135th in this rating.