5 INTERESTING FACTS

ABOUT PAVEL DUROV

Pavel Valeryevich Durov (born in
1984) is a Russian entrepreneur,
programmer, dollar billionaire, one
of the founders of the VKontakte
social network and the company of
the same name, the Telegram cross–
platform messenger and other
projects.
■ Before VKontakte, he developed two more well—known projects on the
Internet - durov.com and spbgu.ru. Both projects were designed to communicate
with St. Petersburg State University students and exchange the necessary
information and had no commercial basis and purpose.
■ Pavel created the VKontakte logo in three minutes.
■ He came up with Telegram after the
FSB conducted a search of his
apartment in 2011 — this led Durov to
the idea that there is no simple means
of communicating with family and
friends that would be inaccessible to
the special services.
■ He was a laureate of the Potanin Scholarship three times.
■ In 2016, he took 35th place in the ranking of the richest businessmen in
Russia with a fortune of $ 600 million.