The Founder Who Runs A Billion User Company With 40 People (And No Phone)

Most tech billionaires can’t characteristic without their telephones. Pavel Durov constructed a thousand million-particular person messaging app without one.

Pavel Durov, the 41-365 days-frail founder and CEO of Telegram, runs indubitably one of many area’s most precious tech firms with ethical 40 engineers. His obtain price is $17.1 billion and his messaging platform serves over 1 billion customers and generates a complete bunch of hundreds of hundreds in income. In a most contemporary interview on the Lex Fridman podcast, Durov revealed the extraordinary standard of living decisions and contrarian alternate systems that energy his success.

Silicon Valley tells you to hire immediate and gallop faster. They hiss you wish hundreds of workers to scale. They impart constant connectivity drives innovation. Each indubitably this form of “guidelines” holds you aid. Durov proves it day to day by doing the different.

I’ve studied a complete bunch of founders who wreck vulnerable wisdom. Most tinker across the sides. Durov obliterates all of the playbook. His ability displays what happens while you mix physical discipline with ruthless alternate constraints.

Omit every thing you think you uncover out about building a tech empire. The categorical leverage comes from what you refuse to form.

Coarse discipline: How this billionaire runs a thousand million-particular person platform

Open with physical discipline, now not your inbox

Durov begins every morning with 300 push-usaand 300 squats. No cell phone. No notifications. True raw physical effort earlier than the relaxation touches his mind. “The major muscle it is possible you’ll well also express is this muscle, the muscle of energy of mind,” he suggested Fridman. “As soon as you occur to procure to coach that one, every thing else ethical comes by itself.”

This matters bigger than you think. Most founders wake up and real now drown in folks’s priorities. Electronic mail, Slack, info feeds, all screaming for consideration. Durov refuses. He builds his energy of mind first, then decides what deserves his focal point. Strive it the next day. Attain 50 push-usabefore you contact any machine. Look how differently your brain operates while you bear already gained the first war of the day.

Why constraints beat resources

Durov realized early that scarcity drives genius. Increasing up in Soviet Russia, he would perchance well now not afford video games. So he constructed them. Restricted procure entry to compelled creativity. “Scarcity results in creativity,” he explained. It’s “indubitably one of many reasons you’re going to bear so many folk who like to code coming from the Soviet Union or other areas which didn’t bear powerful procure entry to to trendy skills.”

Now he applies the same principle to Telegram. Those 40 engineers living up 100,000 servers across a pair of continents. How? Durov refuses to let them hire aid. “As soon as you occur to intentionally form now not enable a pair of of your team contributors to hire extra folks to support them, they’ll be compelled to automate issues,” he acknowledged. Force your team to form programs, now not empires. Give them constraints that question innovation. Perchance you think you wish five builders for that venture. What while you only had one?

Automate every thing or undergo

Telegram’s infrastructure would require tens of hundreds of workers if managed manually. As an alternative, algorithms take care of every thing. Durov constructed this philosophy into the firm’s DNA from day one. When servers fail, code fixes them. When online page online traffic spikes, programs adapt robotically. No human intervention wanted.

This obsession with efficiency runs deeper than saving cash. “If your code executes faster, it way you wish fewer computational resources to bustle it,” Durov accepted. Every millisecond matters when a thousand million folks open your app dozens of times day to day. He calculated it: a half of-second prolong multiplied by billions of interactions equals centuries of wasted human time. Take into legend your have programs. What handbook processes seize hours every week? Form the automation as soon as, put these hours eternally.

The anti-addiction alternate mannequin

WhatsApp and every other messaging app uses centered promoting. They mine your files, tune your behavior, promote your consideration. Durov leaves 80% of that income untouched. No centered adverts on Telegram. No invasive tracking. True context-primarily primarily based adverts that appreciate privacy.

As an alternative, 15 million customers pay for Telegram Top rate. They resolve to support a platform that respects them. “Money has by no way been the major purpose,” Durov acknowledged. The subscription mannequin regarded impossible for a messaging app. Now it generates over half of a thousand million dollars every 365 days. Form something folks price, now not something that exploits them. The cash follows.

Competition as a hiring technique

Omit LinkedIn. Omit recruiters. Durov finds engineers through coding competitions. Contestants resolve staunch Telegram problems. Winners procure employed. “What can even be better than a contest?” he requested. “A coding contest where all americans who needs to hitch your firm can repeat their abilities, and then we ethical pick out the single.”

This filters for precisely what matters. No longer resume padding. No longer interview abilities. Pure ability to resolve exciting problems. One engineer Durov tracked competed in ten contests starting at age 14. By 21, he’d gained eight. Obviously employed. Carry out your have filter. Form challenges that reproduction staunch work. Let efficiency talk louder than credentials.

The categorical price of every feature

Durov in my conception opinions every pixel, every animation, every microsecond of prolong. The message deletion salvage (where texts evaporate into particles) took months to ultimate. “No one in actuality cares,” he admitted. “Nonetheless there would possibly perchance be something about it that feels nasty when such issues aren’t accepted.”

This perfectionism scales. A poorly optimized feature running on a thousand million gadgets burns cash and time. One careless developer introducing inefficiencies costs hundreds of hundreds. “As soon as you occur to hire any person that’s per chance a diminutive bit distracted, inexperienced, it is possible you’ll well also find yourself with inefficiencies to your code nasty that results in tens of hundreds of hundreds of dollars of losses,” Durov warned. Excellence in diminutive particulars creates massive advantages at scale.

form a thousand million-particular person firm by saying no

Durov’s ability flips every assumption about success. No cell phone. No bloated team. No surveillance capitalism. True excessive focal point utilized to what in actuality matters. Whereas Silicon Valley burns cash on hundreds of workers, he builds the future with 40. The question remains: what pointless complexity are you accepting as customary?