Sure, we got started in 2006, originally as a social network, so very similar to how everyone talks about social networks today. But very quickly, Facebook came along and like with many other social networks, we realized we needed to either change things up or basically get quashed. So what we did was we looked at what we thought was missing.

Facebook is very, very, good for people you already know and for sharing information with them, but what isn’t out there, or wasn’t certainly at the time, was a network where you could meet people that you don’t know, which we think is something that actually a lot of people want to do is meeting new people…

whether it’s in the online or offline world.

Great and so how large is the network now?

So right now, we’ve actually just hit 130 million users spread really globally, but primarily through southern Europe and Latin America.

Great, and so how do you guys handle monetization? And what is your strategy there?

So today there’s two things that we do. We have micropayments that help you rise up in search results, get more visibility, and things like that. We also have subscriptions so you can check out who’s looked at your profile and so forth. But the core of the site is free to use. And the interesting thing is we feel very very fortunate to have hit well over a hundred million in our terms of run rate and so forth.

But really what we’re actually focused on is the product. So we spend most of our time looking at how do we improve the product for users? We haven’t even started to do anything on advertising other than a couple of tests. So that’s a whole untapped area for us that we actually think one day if we chose to turn it on can be really lucrative.

Cool. And so what do you think is like the most interesting feature of the service?

What I like about it is just the flexibility ability it gives you, right. It’s not prescriptive in the sense that, we’re just saying, meet new people in the broadest sense, so in the same way that you walk into a club with your friends, perhaps it’s to go dancing, maybe it’s just to hang out, but during the course of the evening you meet certain people that may become your friends, other people that, you know, you might end up flirting with, someone that you may end up, you know, dating, maybe just hooking up with, who knows what happens.

And what I love about Bedoo is the flexibility that you have, in the moment that you’re meeting someone, to decide what that person means to you. And I think, compared to a lot of the other sites out there, that’s really something a bit unique. It’s a lot more realistic, in terms of how we actually meet people in real life.

Now, I know some start-ups have been trying to tackle a similar space from actually a 3D perspective. A company called The Shaker won the TechCrunch Disrupt award this year. Could you tell me, how are you guys doing with more people moving into the space? I mean, I think competition is always a good thing, so I don’t see that as being a problem.

I think what is powerful about Badoo of course is, it’s a hundred and thirty million people which… that means a lot of people you can connect with. I also think Shaker is really interesting because it is a different approach which is refreshing. From our perspective, we want to give you something that brings you into the offline world, right .

We’re not trying to get you to sit at a computer for four hours hitting refresh or meeting people that are never going to mean anything to you in real life. And so what we want… we are a lot more visually driven perhaps than Shaker in the sense of its not avatars and so forth. It’s really your photo… you and I are chatting.

Or we’re chatting via IM or over video and then maybe we meet offline because over 50% of the conversation that start on Badoo end with an offline meetup.

Okay, now I know you guys took a big funding round a few years ago. Have you guys… do you still need more money or is the monetization of the service funding itself now.

No, I think we are in a very nice position in that we can entirely fund our own expansion with the profits that we made.

That’s great. Now in terms of getting new users, I know you’ve had a Facebook application which has previously been very popular and at times it looked like it ran into enforcement issues with Facebook and dropped quite quickly in terms of monthly and daily active users. Could you tell me a little bit about the experience of trying to, to gain new users from Facebook.

Yeah, I mean I think it has been interesting to watch both in terms of Badoo… I wasn’t working there at the time, but then also other companies that have experienced… whether it’s Facebook dependency or what that actually means to their individual companies… I think in the case of Badoo, when that happened, at one point they went from being the second most popular app on Facebook and then they dropped to, I think what today is, somewhere in the top 15, top 20.

And in fact, the fact that I can’t even tell you what our ranking is today, to a certain degree reflects the fact that we don’t really pay that much attention to it. It’s actually had no critical impact on our business at all, because we have an app and it’s great, it drives awareness, people and the name and so forth.

But those aren’t ultimately the users that engage most in the site, that register and stay active for a long period of time. So, even when the drop initially happens, I think there certainly was worry internally, what does this mean. But it actually gave us the opportunity to really go in and do analysis of what did those Facebook app users mean to the business.

And great for us, it has turned out to actually not have an effect, we’ve continued to grow. We’ve had over 60% year on year growth.

That’s awesome to hear that you guys are just doing it yourself at this point. Could you tell me, now, in terms of the features of the site, when people come and first use it, and how quickly do you move towards trying to monetize new users, cause I think a lot of services right now are worrying, it’s like, oh just get user growth first and worry about monetization later.

That only goes so far, at some point you have to start making money. How did you guys tackle that issue. Figuring out when to start really pushing monetization. And how early in the user experience do you sort of edge them urge them to make a purchase.

Well, all of the core elements of the site are free to use which I think is the key factor in why the site’s grown so fast. So you can check people’s profiles out, talk to them, interact with them, message them, all of that is free. And I think that’s really important because if you start throwing ads at people or you start giving them all these kinds of distractions, that can be a turn-off.

In some cases, you could even end up making ultimately less money off of them, than if you’d taken a different and perhaps less aggressive approach. The monetization features of the site are there from the start, in the sense that when you come in on the website or mobile, there is for example a sponsored slot, where if you’ve done a small micropayment, you can jump up and be featured in a slot, in the first spot…it ’s very clear that it’s sponsored.

And you get more visibility, you’re more likely to have people message you. That’s right there, and I think people who would like a feature like that, it’s immediately obvious to them what the benefits props are. So all the monetization elements are woven throughout the site…. though we have really taken a lot of care to not make you constantly feel like you’re having to pay for things or to be throwing really crazy ads.

A lot of things that are done today and particularly on mobile apps, to me are really surprising because they strike me in some ways as almost back to punch the monkey style. We’re going to throw this in here and if you download this, then you get x number of credits and you can do this and that. And from a user experience that is actually taking you at least for a few moments outside of that app and outside of that experience and is that necessarily a good thing at the end of the day.

So I think monetization is there, but if you don’t want to monetize, fine. Keep using the site as you’re using it now.

So one of the components of the site is definitely for dating, or at least for meeting new people. If somebody is lonely and they want to meet new people, Badoo can be a great place for them to go to do that. But what er… did you guys experience the same problem of of churn that most dating sites have.

Where, you know, when they succeed, when they solve the user’s problem, the user leaves and they don’t come back. Yeah, I suppose a successful client, so to speak, on a dating site, isn’t likely to return. No, I think that’s actually what’s interesting about badoo. It’s that while it makes it a bit more difficult to describe it to someone, when someone asks you what Badoo is, because it does have a dating element.

It also has a whole bunch of other things that happen, and I think that’s why we always talk about it really mirroring real life, because, again, you walk into that bar, that cafe, may be you walked in there thinking you are gonna meet someone, but what happens along the way during that evening or afternoon, could be entirely different.

And maybe you end up meeting someone who is a friend. Maybe you end up meeting someone who has something in common with you. Maybe one of those people is someone that doesn’t appeal to you at all, but would appeal to one of your friends. And so on and so forth. And because of that, we think that no matter where you are in the life cycle, to use a rather jargony term, you’re a whole lot more likely to return.

Because you are not necessarily, its not a prescriptive model, where you’re coming onto our site and you absolutely want to date or you absolutely want to get married. It really is, what is it that you want at the given point in time that you are interacting with someone. So it kind of can be all things to all people.

There’s the dating, but there’s also people who are using it to make friends some are using it to throw parties. We’ve really heard everything you could imagine in terms of these cases.

Awesome. Now, we’ve heard be difficult for European start ups, you know, they’re far from the money of Silicon Valley and some of the connections of New York City How has it been being a start up, and now it’s really quite a big company over in Europe, and what do you think the scene is like there for start ups?

I think, you know, I’m not going to lie and say its easy. Just look at the number of European pop bands that have crossed over the US. Right, like how many can you name, off the top of your head. Start ups might be a bit different, but I think there is something a bit similar in that most of the tech stories that you hear here are coming out of the U.S., even if in terms of the numbers, that doesn’t necessarily match up, right.

I think Baidu from a, to the degree that I can be objective, from a numbers perspective in terms of the number of users or the profitability and so forth. I think Pretty interesting story. But not having feet on the ground in the U.S. absolutely is a factor. But, you know, hey, we’re talking to you today, so hopefully that’ll help.

And we are obviously the actual product itself in terms of users in the US, we’re seeing that grow. In terms of your second question about the startup scene in London and in Europe, I think some people would be really surprised to see actually how vibrant it is. There really is quite a bit that’s going on, there are some really interesting startups, not just in London, but in Berlin and elsewhere.

And I think there is a lot of optimism as well, that perhaps you wouldn’t have seen 5 or 10 years ago, and this idea that perhaps something big could come out of Europe.

I heard you mention Silicon roundabout before Could you tell me a little bit more about the scene in London, specifically.

Sure. Silicon Roundabout is I guess the U.K.’s version of Silicon Alley, named of course, after the roundabout, which is the far more efficient, in my opinion, way to drive, when you get to an intersection. But there is a lot of interesting things happening there, and not just in terms of home grown UK companies, but also american companies are coming and choosing to base operations there.

Instead of other places that are perhaps in the past. I mean Dublin is still, I think for tax purposes and so forth, is still a pretty attractive place for a lot of people. Also so finally, if you had any advice to startups that were looking to build a service that really requires a huge user base to really get going, what would you say to them what would you say is, like, a great tip or strategy?

I, you know, I think what, I can’t take any credit for Badoo. Early success and so forth, I wasn’t around then. But I think that what the guys did really, really well was that they looked at A, and I think this is a no-brainer what wasn’t out there. And what was the problem that needed to be solved.

And B, what was something that was so local, that it could be very, very successful initially, on a small scale, but had the drivers behind it to make it appealing globally. And I think with Badoo, the idea that people really want to meet other people, and that everything, I think so much that happened in technology and in this space, is a whole bunch of people sitting behind computers, looking at all this data.

And on some level almost assuming that humans behave in this rational way, and that we can predict the way people are going to interact. And predict exactly how they need to be matched up, and so forth. And what I found very refreshing about Badoo, and I think it’s very much part of the company’s DNA, we there think, we must actually go back to really basic human desires and then look at the offline world, not at data, look at the offline world for how people interact and how they have been interacting and what they’ve been looking for, for centuries, and how do we bring that and replicate that, just a certain degree on line.