FORBES RUSSIA – Mar 6 – The founder of Mamba and Badoo, Andrey Andreev enters the global Forbes richest list with a fortune of $1.5B. Andrey Andreev (43) is not at all like a billionaire. "Such an eclectic, quirky, creative, that the industry needs very much. I hope he does not sell his company in the near future," says Brooks, senior consultant at Courtland Brooks. He recalls the first meeting with Andreev: the businessman appeared in his white T-shirt, asked the necessary questions and left without losing a minute. But on another occasion, after going to Brooks for a meeting of heads of dating Internet services, Andreev spent half a night in the kitchen, preparing his famous soup, which was served in a Michelin star London restaurant.
In 1999 Andreev launched the web analytics service SpyLog, and in 2002, the contextual ad service "Begun". Andreev created the Russian dating service "Mamba" a year later. The service made its first revenues through SMS. In Oct. 2005, with 4.5M members, Finam bought it for $20M, enough to launch Badoo in 2006, a service combining the dating and social networking. At the end of 2017 there were 370M members.
Andreev lived for many years in Spain, and his knowledge of the Spanish mentality helped him promote Badoo in Europe and Latin America. But to conquer more competitive markets in the US and English-speaking countries, this was not enough. In order to enter the American market, Andreev bought Hot Or Not in 2014. He then introduced swiping.
He now launches new companies only if there's a manager able to deal with operations, while he deals with the financing, product support and monetization. Andreev helped Huggle in exchange for a stake, and also in Chappy.
Bumble launched Dec. 2014 and had 100k downloads the first month. The idea of a dating service where women take the initiative turned out to be a godsend for the American market. He invested $10M for a 78.21% stake. Herd became CEO and took a 20% stake. $100M revenue is expected in 2017, and double this year.
"The service is significantly different from Badoo. Guys will go where there are a lot of girls, and are attracted to proactive girls who think in a modern way and are ready to take the first step," explains Mark Brooks about the secret of Bumble's success. Tinder has 50M active users and worth is estimated at $3B. Bumble has 23M users. This year, Herd refused to sell it for $450M to Match Group. In the autumn Match reportedly upped its offer to over $1B. In the past, Andreev was offered to sell Badoo for several hundred million dollars, says Mark Brooks, and now the company, "But it seems to me that Andreev is not ready to retire," the expert concludes.
by Alexandr Baulin & Clare O'Connor
See full article at Forbes
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Summarized by the IDEA team
CELEBRITY NET WORTH – Aug 27 – Russian entrepreneur Andrey Andreev is the king of dating apps. He's the man behind five successful online dating apps – Badoo, Chappy, Huggle, Mamba and Bumble. He was born Andrey Ogandzhantyants in Moscow but changed his name to his mother's maiden name because it was easier to spell. He's always been passionate about technology. He briefly attended the University of Moscow but dropped out at age 18 to move to Spain. In 1995, he founded Virus, an e-commerce site that sold computers and accessories to internet users in Russia. In 1997, he sold it for a few hundred thousand dollars. In 1999, he founded SpyLog, which was software that tracked visitors to websites. It was basically Google Analytics before that lunched in 2005. Andreev left SpyLog in December 2001. In 2002, he built Begun, a contextual ads company. Google almost bought Begun in 2008 for $140M but the deal never went through. Begun still exists, but Andreev left in early 2004. Andreev founded Badoo in Spain in 2006 and launched it in 2009. The company's headquarters are in London and there is a Moscow office. Badoo employs 300 people. Andreev will not disclose Badoo's revenue but said that Match Group is a good comparison for Badoo.
