self-funded messaging app he founded
Shaan crowns Telegram founder Pavel Durov Billy of the Week: 36, worth ~$20B, ripped, fled Russia after refusing to hand over VK, self-funds Telegram, posts only shirtless model-style photos, and floats between countries.
“He's the Billy of the week. Pavel, Pavel, you are the Billy of the week.”
Shaan recounts Telegram's TON ICO that raised ~$3-4B promising to beat Ethereum; the SEC killed it as an unregistered security, so Telegram returned the money after holding a multi-billion-dollar free float for years. Some middlemen who oversold their $20M allocations got burned.
“And so they just pulled the plug on the ICO. But for a year, they held everyone's money. Saying it's going to get listed at the end of the year or 2 years, maybe even. They held everyone's money. So they had like a free float of a multibillion-dollar float for multiple years, and then they gave back the money.”