Russian billionaire Andrey Andreev, the world’s top online dating tycoon, has a reputation as mysterious and reclusive. Here's a look at how his dating apps stack up against the rest: by AngelAuYeung
, the world’s top online dating tycoon, dresses like he’s headed to a nightclub: black jeans, a black bomber jacket and his signature custom-made Prada white T-shirt. “I have hundreds, the world’s biggest collection of Prada white T-shirts,” the 45-year-old says.
“I understood and I see that we needed to attract women to be on the platform, but how?” Andreev says. “We needed to make a safe place, a place where every woman on the planet [would] feel very comfortable.” Whitney Wolfe Herd and Andrey Andreev came up with Bumble’s signature feature–of letting women make the first move–over drinks in Mykonos, Greece.Then in 2002, he created Begun, a company that helped advertisers target ads online, which caught the attention of Finam Holdings, a Russian investment firm. “At the time, Andreev was not some sort of unknown youngster,” says Finam analyst Leonid Delitsin. “He was already among Russia’s internet heavyweights.
From the beginning, Andreev rooted Badoo’s corporate structure in numerous offshore entities. In October 2007, he established Worldwide Vision Ltd., the parent company, in Bermuda, presumably to reduce its tax bill . Worldwide Vision and Andreev then created a dozen subsidiaries in the U.S., U.K. and Cyprus, the majority of which control his four dating apps: Badoo, Bumble, Chappy and Lumen . In June he created Magic Lab as a holding company for the dating apps.
“It looks like a mess, but it’s on purpose,” says a former high-ranking executive. “The company does this to evade taxes.” Andreev denies this. More concerning, several former employees say office behavior was hostile and discriminatory toward women. “In order to progress in that company, employees were expected to see their jobs as primarily massaging the egos of the founder and senior managers who held influence with him,” adds employee Alice Bonasio, Badoo’s director of communications and public relations manager from 2011 to 2012, by email. She says she was fired because she did not fit well with Badoo’s “patriarchal” environment. “The culture meant that for female employees to get ahead, they needed to heavily ‘play the game.
While many of the most egregious stories stem from the company’s early, hypergrowth period, a string of incidents last year point to ongoing issues. According to two employees who left recently, Andreev wanted to hire only young, attractive women for marketing and administrative roles. “I remember there was one [job] candidate, and Andrey said, ‘No, she’s fat. Can you imagine her speaking to the press and being the face of Badoo?’ ” says a former employee. Again, Andreev denies this.
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