Speech by Pavel Durov at the GMIC conference in San Francisco - the first public speech by the founder of VK and Telegram in Silicon Valley / AmBAR Business Association's blog

On October 22, at the GMIC conference, the first public appearance of Pavel Durov, the founder of VKontakte and Telegram, took place in San Francisco, in the Silicon Valley region. Asked questions to Pavel Alexia Tsotsis , editor of TechCrunch - one of the most popular resources about technology and startups.

Contrary to popular belief, Paul does not consider Mark Zuckerberg as an example to follow, but Edward Snowden, who “showed courage and sacrificed a large part of his life so that people would learn the truth about being spied on”. Among these people, Paul considers himself, as one of the possible objects for espionage, along with others. When asked whether he met Snowden, he replied that he had not met (however, offered him a job), but would consider it an honor to talk with him personally, because he considers Snowden a “hero”. Regarding the similarities between Facebook and VK, Pavel noted: “Mark underestimates VK. He does not use it often enough. VK is faster, more convenient and more functional. ”

There were some questions about the pirated content on VKontakte, to which Pavel answered with a blank (clearly expecting this question) that they were actively deleting illegal content and were agreeing with copyright holders to replace it with legal one.

At the GMIC, Paul presented the Telegram platform . It is the platform, not the product, where third-party developers are actively invited. Specially or not, but a few hours before his performance, Telegram itself was updated in the App Store, which was replenished with the following innovations:
- optimization for iOS 7,
- “secret” chats,
- countdown of “self-destruction of messages” after the recipient read them (so that private information “does not reach the enemy”, is not stored on Telegram servers and is not accessible for “wiretapping”). The “impossibility to listen” Telegram stands out among its competitors, because the protection of private information is a very sore point now in the US.

Who is familiar with Snapchat (a super popular messaging service with photos and videos, where the main "trick" is just the countdown of "self-destruction" of messages, more photos and videos are uploaded to Snapchat than on Instagram), Pavel noticed immediately what “trick" stole ”this time =) And Alexia wrote on her Twitter that Telegram is a mixture of Snapchat and WhatsApp.


Pavel talks about Telegram, Alexia (presenter) is touched by icons

There were also questions about relations with the state. In particular, they recalled the story about Pavel Durov’s problems with the traffic police - Alexis asked with a joke if Pavel violated the rules of the road in the USA.

I especially remember the question about the NSA (which Snowden exposed) - Alexia asked: “What if the NSA asks you to provide user correspondence”, to which Pavel answered: “But we are a Russian company and the NSA don’t obey” - this caused a standing ovation and caused laughter at the audience in the hall.

After the speech, Pavel Durov went backstage, a group of journalists hurried after him, some of whom Pavel promised to give an interview, but then disappeared unnoticed, seemingly not wanting to answer the same questions. And on stage, he was replaced by the founder of the top incubator YCombinator Paul Graham, who also told a lot of interesting things.

Several video instagrams from the speech of Pavel Durov:
www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=1426779874202283
www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=1426779987535605


"We communicate on the sidelines" with Pavel. To the right in a red shirt is the founder of the top incubator YCombinator Paul Graham

In addition to Pavel himself, it was nice to see other VKontakte employees: vice-president of marketing Mikhail Ravdonikas, as well as developer Oleg, who, according to him, didn’t come specifically, but simply traveled around America and decided to watch the head’s performance.

PS: By the way, another celebrity of the Russian (and not only) IT world also unexpectedly visited the conference. Yuri Milner spoke in one of the conference halls, which brought together a full house at the end of the performance. According to rumors, that evening, Milner held a banquet for prominent world entrepreneurs at his home in Los Altos (California), which was supposedly attended by Mark Zuckerberg and Pavel Durov.

Update: Pavel said that he was ready to meet with the media and answer questions.

Thanks to GMIC 2013 represented byOreshkin Nikolay for the help and participation in the conference.

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