Biography of Pavel Durov: childhood
The future billionaire and founder of the social network was born in the Soviet Union in 1984.
Pasha in childhood
His father was a doctor of philology, and his mother was studying to be a journalist at that time.
Pasha's older brother, Nikolai, loved mathematics from early childhood, and subsequently helped a lot in the development and support of Vkontakte and Telegram.
Older brother - Nikolai Durov
Pasha started first grade in Italy. The family moved to Turin because of his father's work project.
Father - Valery Semyonovich Durov
By the way, in addition to Italian, Pavel also speaks English, German, French, Spanish and one of the dead languages - Latin.
After 2 years, the Durovs returned to the USSR, and Pasha attended a regular secondary school for several years.
In 1996 he entered the Academic Gymnasium at the State University in St. Petersburg.
There Pasha began to study several foreign languages in depth and became interested in programming.
His classmates considered him a silent, unsociable boy who always kept to himself.
An interesting biographical fact: Pasha was once punished for his trick with school computers. Durov changed the screensaver on all PCs to a photograph of a school teacher with an unflattering inscription.
As a result, the boy was deprived of access to computers, but he still managed to crack passwords.
[edit] Family
Pavel Durov's grandfather Semyon Petrovich Tulyakov participated in the Great Patriotic War. He served in the 65th Rifle Regiment, participated in battles on the Leningrad Front in Krasnoborsk, Gatchina and other directions, was wounded three times, awarded the Order of the Red Star[7], Order of the Patriotic War, II degree[8], on the day of the 40th anniversary of the Victory - Order of the Great Patriotic War, 1st degree[9]. After the war he was arrested[10].
Durov’s father Valery Semenovich Durov is a Doctor of Philology, the author of many scientific works, from 1992 to 2013 he headed the Department of Classical Philology of the Faculty of Philology of St. Petersburg State University[11].
Youth and students
In 2001, the future creator of everyone’s favorite social network graduated from the educational institution with excellent marks and entered the St. Petersburg State University.
This time can be considered golden for the development of his abilities. He excels in his studies, participates in various competitions and receives various awards (including from the government and the president).
At the university, Pasha’s other qualities also emerged: in addition to his studies, he managed to organize various events and eventually became one of the best students at St. Petersburg State University with the highest level of intelligence and leadership abilities.
While studying at the university, Pasha managed to create 2 small non-profit projects:
- Website for students durov.com.
It was a platform for the exchange of opinions and a place where one could read abstracts.
The website for St. Petersburg State University students became Pavel’s first major development
- Forum Spbgu.ru.
Here students argued, expressed their opinions about their studies, and shared their thoughts. It often happened that in order to create activity on the forum, Durov created “leftist” accounts and argued with himself.
Pavel graduated from the university in 2006, receiving the highest scores in all subjects.
An interesting biographical fact: the education document remained at the university; the future creator of VK did not take it.
Daria Bondarenko and Pavel - was there a marriage?
Durov’s relationship with one girl is confirmed by many sources, from information portals to classmates of the outstanding entrepreneur. Daria Bondarenko studied at St. Petersburg University a year older than Pavel. Her home department was history. Durov studied languages at the philological department.
In 2012, Daria came to the famous student to interview him about the history of the creation of the university forum for the faculty wall newspaper. Witnesses of this meeting remembered the girl’s beautiful neckline, which looked piquant in combination with Daria’s truly Russian village appearance. At that time, Pavel Durov had not yet developed his image as a charismatic handsome man with a perfect hairstyle, black clothes like Neo from “The Matrix” and a confident look that burned through girls’ hearts.
Frisky Daria immediately went on the offensive, bombarding the creator of amazing software products with compliments and not giving him the opportunity to show his obstinate character, refusing an interview. Even then, Durov was attracted to everything unusual. The appearance of the assertive blonde, which defies strict qualification, excited his emotions. A romance ensued.
Daria Bondarenko was born in Moscow. She is 8 years younger than Durov. While studying at the university, she and her friend earned money by participating in promotions. In 2014, Bondarenko also graduated from the acting department of GITIS and began serving in the theater on Malaya Bronnaya. Some acquaintances of Pavel Durov believe that Daria was his legal wife, others - that he was a civilian.
In contact with
The idea of this social network was born to Pasha while he was studying at the university. There, Durov realized that the forum for student communication was not entirely effective and did not cope with its task.
Many site users remained anonymous and used nicknames to communicate. It turned out that two classmates might not even realize that they were arguing with each other on the forum.
At this time, Pasha’s friend, Vyacheslav Mirilashvili, came from abroad and talked about the American social network Facebook, which the students used.
Pavel found this idea interesting: users of this project indicated real names when registering and published photographs. Immediately after graduating from university, Pavel began to implement his idea. The resulting project bore the discreet but targeted name “Student.ru”, and was later renamed “Vkontakte”.
VKontakte logo
In the fall of 2006, a domain of the same name was registered and the site went live. At first, it was possible to get on the social network only by invitation, but later Durov abandoned this, and anyone could register.
VKontakte began to develop by leaps and bounds. By 2007, the number of users on the network exceeded 20 million. In the same year, the founder of VK becomes the best young entrepreneur.
Pavel began to receive offers to sell VK, but he rejected them. Instead, the businessman decided to attract investment in the project.
The first deal took place with the chairman of Digital Sky Technologies. After some time, he resold his shares to Mail.ru Group.
In 2008, the site was monetized, after which Pavel was able to afford to rent an office in the Singer house on Nevsky Prospekt.
The same Singer house
Durov himself lived in a rented apartment next to the office, in which any employee could stay overnight if necessary.
Colleagues said that Pavel did not show up at work until lunch, but he always worked until late.
Foundation and development of VKontakte
After university, 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 “Business Petersburg” about the St. Petersburg State University forum and Durov’s successes, he wrote to Pavel about the idea of creating a similar Russian-language network. Durov liked the plan, because the search for classmates was personally relevant for him and Vyacheslav: After all, 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 portal’s logo quickly, typing it in “Tahoma” font in 3 minutes. He chose colors that “don’t piss anyone off” – blue, white and grey.
The site has not become just a “Facebook clone”. Durov claimed that they “never copied without using their brains.”
The friends did not have start-up 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 share of securities.
FIRST STEPS OF THE SITE
In 2006, the number of visitors to Runet social networks grew exponentially: Odnoklassniki, launched in March 2006, had gained 1.5 million users by November. The demo version of VKontakte appeared on time - in September 2006, just a little more and it could have been late. Durov created a personal page with ID No. 1 https://vkontakte.ru/id1.
At first the site was closed, registration was available by personal invitation. After 3 months, from December 2006, the resource began to be replenished by everyone. Aspiring businessmen organized a drawing with a prize from Apple - “invite more friends and you will receive an iPod.” In a couple of days, the site attracted over 2 thousand users.
Pavel selected the right people for his team.
Remember: there are very few of you who can do something and not talk.
Actions, not words, lead a person to success.
Durov resolutely fired those who raised any doubts. His brother Nikolai worked with him. He resolved issues of server load, which 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-profit, without advertising, and thus fundamentally differed from other Internet endeavors.
VKontakte is beginning to interest potential buyers, but Pavel does not want to sell the development; instead, he attracts 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 clients. This year the site is being monetized and advertising banners are appearing.
In 2010, the company's central office moved to Nevsky Prospekt 28, in the building. Of the six floors of the house, the web developer rents the top two for the company headquarters. Later, he will buy a huge space - a squat on Nevsky 65, where his overworked employees can also spend the night. Pavel himself did not want to get attached to anything, he 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 didn’t come into the office before 12 o’clock, he worked in his own way until 3-4 o’clock in the morning.
In 2011, with already 7.9 billion rubles in his pocket, the programmer entered 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 saying that Durov “knew how to look through the eyes of a person who has an old browser and a slow Internet.”
In 2011, Durov, as the best startup creator on the Runet, was included in the Forbes TOP. However, Pavel is not limited to creating a startup, he decides to finance them. By the end of 2011, six “startups” received $25 thousand each on a competitive basis.
Pavel does not limit the VK audience and dreams of entering the European market. In 2011, the domain moved to the shortened address vk.com, which is easier to understand by residents of other countries.
In 2011, a photo of Pavel Valerievich showing an indecent gesture was published in Forbes. The eccentric hero finds himself in third place in the ranking of extravagant and eccentric businessmen, to whom the press has already included Richard Branson and Evgeny Chichvarkin.
This gesture, instead of a thousand words, became Pavel Mail.ru Group’s response to the company’s attempts to absorb the social network. Director of Mail.ru Group 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 part of VKontakte (40% and 8%, respectively) to the United Capital Partners (UCP) group of companies, without informing the other shareholders - Durov and Mail.ru Group - about the deal.
The difficult fate of VKontakte and departure abroad
In 2011, the head of Mail.ru Group, Dmitry Grishin, informs Durov that he plans to acquire 100% of the shares of the social network. Negotiations lasted almost two weeks.
Pavel conveyed his decision to Dmitry creatively: on Instagram he posted a photo with an eloquent gesture, making it clear that the deal would not happen.
This incident caused discontent among other co-owners of the company. They jointly sold their shares in UCP (this is one of the investment funds) without saying a word to Pavel. In 2014, the businessman sold the remaining 12% of his shares and sold off his personal property. The new owner of the shares was Megafon CEO Ivan Tavrin.
Subsequently, they were bought by Mail.ru Group, and this company is now the sole owner of everyone’s favorite VK.
In the same year, the first clash between the founder of the social network and the authorities occurred.
The Prosecutor General's Office demanded the closure of Navalny's anti-corruption community and open access to the data of the Euromaidan organizers. Pasha refused, and he had to pay a visit to the prosecutor's office. On April 1, the businessman announced that he was resigning from the post of general director of the social network he created. However, he later published a message saying that it was an April Fool's joke.
But the new leadership of the VK was determined, and on April 21 Durov was relieved of his post.
The same post about the mysterious dismissal
On April 22, the founder of VK left the country, saying that it was impossible to conduct an Internet business in Russia. Finally, he published a small list of the conditions under which he will return to the country.
Such conditions include open courts, abolition of VAT, simple laws and other interesting ideas.
Creation of VKontakte
The development of a youth social network was preceded by other, smaller-scale projects. He has a virtual library for humanists, where abstracts and other important materials have been collected for quick search and exchange of information. The address of this resource directly pointed to its creator - durov.com .
Next, he tried to create an online community for the university, creating a forum with the address spbgu.ru , where students from all faculties of this educational institution could communicate virtually. This network already required special registration with filling out a certain form: last name and first name, faculty, group number, list of friends, etc. Here you could both communicate with friends, share information, and write author’s blogs. Durov also thought through ways to promote his brainchild: he was the organizer of virtual intra-university beauty and design competitions with mandatory prizes and rewards.
The idea of creating the VKontakte came to Pavel Durov after communicating with an old friend Vyacheslav Mirilashvili, who was studying in the USA. Together they became interested in the Facebook , analyzed the popularity of this network and decided to create an equally grandiose and successful Russian-language analogue. The implementation of the project required both financial costs and technical development. The investments of the elder Mirilashvili helped solve the first problem, and both the friends themselves and Pavel’s brother Nikolai and their mutual friend Leviev Lev took part in the direct development of the site. As a result, the founders included Pavel Durov, Vyacheslav Mirilashvili and Lev Leviev , Pavel became the general director, and the position of technical director went to Nikolai Durov. Officially, the social network VKontakte began operating in September 2006. Its interface initially resembled the American version of Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook .
Founders of social networks “VKontakte” Pavel Durov and Facebook Mark Zuckerberg
During the operation of this social network, the names changed (from the first name “Students.ru” to the modified “VKontakte” and, finally, to the memorable abbreviation “VK” ), registration rules and commercial approaches.
Thus, in the first months it was possible to register on the site only by invitation, but since December the network has become open to all users. The success of the Russian social network is confirmed by its rapidly growing popularity - in the first year of its existence alone, the number of users of this Internet resource crossed the 3 million mark. In addition, Pavel Durov continued the tradition of holding various competitions on this website, which had a positive effect on the promotion of VK.
At the same time, the VKontakte network was not spared some financial problems. Server support required ongoing costs. Therefore, the site, as a non-profit project, required third-party investment. The first support came from the Didital Sky Technologies represented by Yuri Milner , who bought a 25% stake in the resource for 6.3 million rubles. Later, this block of shares will be transferred to their new owner - the Mail.ru group .
VKontakte logo
2007 marked the beginning of the period of commercialization of the site. First, users of the social network were able to use the virtual currency “votes” to give gifts to friends or influence the rating of their page. In 2008, financial revenues were also provided through contextual advertising. At this stage, the site already had more than 20 million users and was one of the leaders among Russian-language Internet sites.
Such popularity of the VKontakte and some mystery artificially created around the personality of its general director Pavel Valeryevich Durov required an appropriate location, the same extraordinary decisions and actions. For the VK office, luxurious premises were rented - the top 2 floors of the Singer House , which adorned Nevsky Prospekt. It was from the windows of this office that Durov threw banknotes for the city day. He and his team that day littered the street with money “airplanes” totaling about $2,000. Thus, the young businessman, according to him, wanted to cheer people up on a holiday.
Office of the social network VKontakte in the Singer House in St. Petersburg
Along with the development of his brainchild, Pavel Durov did not forget about organizing competitions with the support of creative and imaginative ideas. Since 2011, he has been actively financing startups that won the professional selection. As a reward, he gives the winners 25 thousand dollars. Pavel also takes a big part in the development of the virtual information platform Wikipedia - in 2012 he transferred $1 million to the account of this site.
Office in the Singer building for the VKontakte development team
Telegram
In 2011, Durov begins work on creating a messenger.
They say that the idea of secure correspondence occurred to him at the moment when special forces soldiers were standing at his door. They came to search his apartment when a wave of protests against the government swept across Russia. In 2013, Telegram became available for download in the AppStore. This messenger is gradually becoming more and more popular not only in the world, but also in Russia. According to preliminary data, in 2021 there are already about 200 million users.
Despite its universal popularity, Telegram also cannot boast of a simple fate. The government drew attention to the messenger back in 2015, and since then has been trying in every possible way to prevent its distribution and operation.
The official version of the State Duma’s dislike for the messenger is that the application is allegedly used by terrorists. However, the developers and team did not previously refuse to block groups and chats related to the Islamic State group banned in the Russian Federation.
The only thing Durov does not want to do is provide data on user correspondence to third parties. And this only benefits us.
“Threats to block Telegram if it does not agree to give up the personal data of its users will not bear any fruit. Telegram will support freedom and privacy"
In 2021, Russia adopted the Yarovaya Law, which obliges instant messengers to hand over keys to decrypt user correspondence to intelligence agencies. Telegram did not transmit any data, so in 2021 he was fined 800 thousand rubles.
In 2021, the story of Durov’s confrontation with the Russian special services received a new development. Roskomnadzor warned the owner of the messenger that if he does not hand over the encryption keys, the messenger will be blocked in Russia.
Pasha again refused, and as a result, on April 16, Internet providers stopped providing access to the application. But a solution was found. Telegram developers began to introduce built-in proxies, and users learned about VPN.
On April 22, an action of opposition to Roskomnadzor took place: everyone who disagreed with the blocking decision launched paper airplanes from the windows. And on April 30, a rally in defense of the free Internet was held in Moscow, which was attended by more than 12 thousand people.
Telegram support campaign
The platform is currently being actively debugged, which should ultimately become a powerful tool with a built-in payment system and various cloud services.
Life abroad
Paul's biography now continues in Europe. Having invested several hundred thousand dollars in the economy of the country of Saint Kitts and Nevis, one becomes its full citizen.
Passport of Pavel Durov
Now Pavel travels to different cities and countries, never staying anywhere for long. Together with him is his team of developers who are working to support and improve Telegram.
The founder of a popular social network calls himself a citizen of the world. At the same time, Durov understands that his way to Russia is barred due to disagreement with the policies of the authorities.
The real whereabouts of Pavel Durov are unknown, but you can follow his life on Instagram.
One of the photos on Durov’s Instagram account
Shareholder conflict between Pavel Durov and UCP
The wild success could not help but provoke the emergence of conflict situations, especially in the field of commercial programming. The first sign in 2011 was the statement by Dmitry Grishin , the new director of Mail.Ru Group (DST) , which included the Odnoklassniki , about his intentions regarding the VK site. At first, he planned to buy out a 100% stake in this social network, then merge it with Odnoklassniki, and then put up VK shares for an IPO. The planned deal was expected to bring in more than $2 billion. Confident and true to his principles, Pavel Durov reflected for only a week. After this, an official response to the Mail.ru holding appeared on Instagram in the form of a scandalous photo with an eloquently protruding middle finger. True, the failure of this deal led to a split in the founding team - Leviev and Mirilashvili did not share Durov’s opinion. Subsequently, they nevertheless sold their shares (48%) to the United Capital Partners (UCP) , without informing either Pavel Durov or representatives of Mail.ru Group, who were so interested in acquiring the site. Such a rash decision by the co-founders forced Durov to go to court. He demanded that the transaction be declared illegal, since according to the rules of Russian legislation, the priority right to repurchase shares is given to other shareholders.
Durov with slicked hair
This was followed by a series of mutual lawsuits between Durov and UCP, the cause of which was Pavel’s new development - the Telegram messenger . The claims were later withdrawn by the accusers themselves.
This unhealthy situation forced Durov to sell his shares (12%) to VK, the new owner of which was his friend, Megafon CEO Ivan Tavrin . According to experts, the transaction amount was up to 400 million dollars. As a result, this share nevertheless went to the Mail Group and ensured that Tavrin sold his acquisition a few months after the purchase.
In 2014, on April 1, April Fool's Day, Pavel Durov announced on social networks his departure from VK, where until recently he always held the post of general director. Among the reasons that prompted him to write a statement of his own free will, he named a change in the shareholder composition. He later withdrew his statement and explained to his followers on social networks that the previous information was a common hoax, and assured them of his intentions to continue working as CEO of VKontakte .
Birthday of Pavel Durov
In the same year, just 15 days later (April 16), Durov was already talking about new problems in his business. This time it was more serious and the opponent of the entrepreneur-programmer was the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation . They demanded information from Pavel about the organizers of the Euromaidan and the blocking of Navalny’s anti-corruption movement “Rospil” . True to his principles of non-disclosure of user data, Durov refused to cooperate with law enforcement agencies.
Durov with girls on Palace Square
Immediately after this, Pavel Durov’s official dismissal from his position at VK follows, which he learns about from media publications on April 21. At the same time, he was dismissed according to the first application submitted in his own hand, since the board of directors recognized his application to withdraw the previous application as unlawful. From that moment, according to Durov, the social network came under the control of Alisher Usmanov and Igor Sechin .
Girls on Palace Square during the VKontakte event
After officially leaving VK, Durov and his team of programmers left Russia. He chose the country of his future citizenship for a long time and carefully, studying the conditions for obtaining it. As a result, his choice fell on the Caribbean islands of Saint Kitts and Nevis, whose citizenship he received after financial investments in the development of their economy. The new passport did not bind Durov to the new country; moreover, he stated on social networks that he had not been there even once. This document simply gave the businessman the opportunity to freely travel around the world - together with his team, he moves from country to country, trying not to stay in one for long.
He does not see his return to Russia because he does not consider it possible to satisfy its fundamental conditions, including: deregulation of laws, open courts and elections, economic sovereignty of each region, implementation of educational reforms, abolition of military service and compulsory registration, etc.
Personal life
Pavel does not illuminate this point in his biography. According to him, he has never been married and is in no hurry to start a family, as he considers it a tool for suppressing personality.
Only one of Durov’s relationships is known for certain - a long time ago he met with Daria Bondarenko, at that time a journalism student. Some yellow newspapers write that this particular woman may be the carefully hidden wife of the former owner of the social network VK and the mother of their two children.
It is also known that when he was the general director of VK, Pasha celebrated his birthdays on a grand scale. They usually invited dozens of top models.
Much and often is written about the founder of the social network’s predilections for beautiful women, but how much of this is true is unknown.
Personal life of a billionaire
Durov is secretive in personal matters and has gained fame as a mysterious person. Despite the careful search of fans in this direction, there is no exact information about Pavel’s personal life. Therefore, there are many rumors regarding who exactly the entrepreneur is dating.
Durov is credited with an affair with Alena Shishkova.
Due to his constant employment, Pavel prefers not to spend a lot of time on women, which he has repeatedly said in interviews. However, there are photos online from events where he is surrounded by models. The entrepreneur characterizes such situations as experiments, when future software innovations are tested on girls.
For a long time, news about Durov’s “common-law wife” Daria Bondarenko and their children was promoted. This information, as it turned out later, was not confirmed by anything.
The entrepreneur himself answers questions about marriage in the spirit that marriage suppresses the individual and artificially integrates him into the system.
There are no clues about his personal life on Pavel’s Instagram. It shows his impressions from numerous trips to the most beautiful places in the world, as well as himself against the backdrop of all sorts of attractions.
Criticism of Durov
Many are grateful to the creator of a safe and super secure messenger. But there are also those who are ready to criticize. Let us recall several controversial moments in Paul’s biography.
1) Many people still did not understand the act of the creator of VK and Telegram, which he and his top managers performed on the city’s birthday in 2012. Then Durov launched paper airplanes with five thousand dollar bills attached to them out the window.
Photos from the scene
Soon a crowd gathered under the windows, and things even came to a fight. As Pavel later admitted, he did this to create a festive mood for people. About two thousand dollars were thrown out the window.
This event was immediately followed by a reaction from bloggers and media personalities. Many did not understand what Paul's true goal was and perceived his act as a mockery of people.
2) The second controversial act was committed by the founder of VK also in 2012, on May 9. Pavel published a tweet in which he said that on this significant day, “Stalin defended Hitler’s right to repress the population.”
A wave of negativity and criticism arose again. And Nikolai Valuev even announced the closure of his VKontakte account as a sign of protest. Later, the VK press secretary explained Pavel’s words by saying that Durov’s grandfather was undeservedly repressed, having honestly gone through the entire war.
3) In 2013, a new scandalous event occurred. The creator of a popular social network violated traffic rules and hit a traffic police officer who intended to stop him.
Operational footage
As a result, the policeman received abrasions and bruises, and a criminal case was opened against the creator of VK under Article 318. A little later, however, it was closed due to insufficient evidence to prove intentional harm.
Worldview
The founder of VK reflected all his views in his farewell message before leaving Russia and becoming a citizen of Saint Kitts and Nevis.
On his VKontakte page, Pavel wrote that he would return to the country only if:
- courts will become fair, and judges themselves will be able to be appointed by people, not officials;
- the laws will be fair and correct, and not excessive and contradictory;
- elections will become open, and it will be possible to get a job in government positions through a competition;
- VAT will be abolished using export revenues;
- regions will stop sending cash flows to Moscow and will become autonomous and self-sufficient;
- the education system will cease to be formulaic and give way to experimental programs.
The creator of VK himself calls his views libertarian. The most important thing in life is freedom, the businessman believes. This is probably why Telegram exists, where you can communicate without worrying about security or paying for tariffs, stickers and bots.
Screenshot from the official page of Pavel Durov on VKontakte
The former owner of VK completely gave up meat and is a vegetarian.
In 2021, on his next birthday, Durov told the world about those things that can negatively affect a person. He included all types of drugs (including tobacco and alcohol), sugar, coffee, tea and carbonated and tonic drinks.
Pasha has completely given up these substances and does not watch TV, as it has a negative effect on consciousness.
If we talk about philosophical and religious views, the founder of the social network is more inclined towards Taoism and Buddhism.
Although sometimes he jokingly calls himself a Pastafarian (this is a parody religion, whose followers jokingly worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster).
Pavel Durov now
In 2021, Pavel reset his lists of friends and subscribers on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. Social networks, according to the founder of VKontakte, are an outdated way of communication. The information in the news feed is superfluous, “junk”. Don't be afraid to make room for something new. That’s why everyone who really wants to be in the know and stay relevant is switching to instant messengers.
By the end of the year, rumors appeared about Durov creating his own gram cryptocurrency and the Telegram Open Network blockchain. Former colleague Anton Rosenberg, who was fired in scandal, was the first to say this. In this way, Pavel raises funds for the development of the messenger, which “has been unprofitable for the last 5 years.”
The main difference between TON and other blockchains is its high speed (millions of transactions will be confirmed per second), as well as integration into other social networks, instant messengers and support for 4 billion digital money.
In February 2018, Durov reported to the US authorities about attracting $850 million in investments through a secret pre-sale of tokens. According to the Telegram monetization plan, called the Whitepaper, an electronic wallet is expected to be launched by the end of the year, and databases and servers will be operational in the first half of 2019.
After the second closed pre-sale, Telegram, according to The Wall Street Journal, received $1.7 billion and refused to go public. At the same time, Pavel never officially commented on raising money for the project.
In the spring of 2021, Roskomnadzor began blocking Telegram in Russia. However, university websites, Google services, and Viber came under attack, and the number of messenger users only grew. As representatives of AFK Sistema and VimpelCom later noted at the international economic forum, such steps by the state are throwing Russia back decades in digital technologies. The creator of the messenger himself still considers the FSB requirements unconstitutional, and “the history of our ancestors teaches us to fight to the bitter end.”
