Lev Binzumovich Leviev


Lev Binzumovich Leviev is an Israeli-Russian entrepreneur and investor, co-founder of Russia's largest social network VK.com and the Selectel data center network.

Biography

Lev Leviev grew up in the family of a Volgograd entrepreneur and went to an American school in Herzliya, Israel, where he met his future business partner Vyacheslav Mirilashvili. In 2006, he graduated with a bachelor of Commerce degree in Finance and Accounting at McGill University in Canada.
Married.

Net worth

In 2012, a Hopes&Fears magazine established his net worth to be $218 mln.
In 2014, he ranked 66th in the rating of the financial magazine “Delovoy Peterburg” with ₽11,4 bln, in 2015 - 42nd with ₽20 bln and in 2016 — 43rd with ₽25,2 bln.

Entrepreneurship

VK.com

After graduating from university with honours in 2006, he moved to Saint Petersburg and co-founded VK.com with his friends, Yitzchak Mirilashvili and Pavel Durov.
Lev and Vyacheslav invested tens of thousands of dollars in the project. The money was borrowed from Mirilashvili-Sr. Leviev's share was 10%. From the moment of founding the company until 2012, he was the Chief Operating Officer of VK.com.
Yuri Milner's Digital Sky Technologies fund was the company's first external investor. He bought a quarter of the network in 2007 and later merged DST's shareholdings into the Mail.Ru Group. At the end of 2010, the holding increased its VK.com ownership stake by 7,5% - from 24,99% to 32,49%. In addition, the growing shareholder secured the option of buy another 7,5% of VK.com in 2011.
In July, 2011 Mail.ru exercised the option and increased its shareholding to 39,99% which reduced the total share of the partners from 55,5% to 48,01% making Lev's share between 6% or 8%, according to various sources.
Having learned about negotiations between his fellow co-founders and Alisher Usmanov in March 2012, Durov deleted their profiles id3 and id4. Leviev and Mirilashvili were planning to exit VK.com via an IPO for $3 bln, but at the end of March, Durov announced that the social network would not IPO for an undefined period.
In April 2013, It is estimated that - Ilya Sherbovich investment fund, United Capital Partners, paid $840 mln for the partner's share, assuming the whole network's worth at $1,75 bln. Lev would receive between $105–140 mln.
During the conflict between UCP and Pavel Durov, the fund considered Lev as a potential CEO of VK.com.

Selectel

In 2007, Lev Leviev and Vyacheslav Mirilashvili founded the Selectel data center network to provide for VK.com’s needs in processing and storing servers.
By 2009, VK.com’s full server capacity was being managed by Selectel. In 2012, VK.com opened its own data center, but it still remains a client of Selectel.
After selling his VK.com shares in September 2014, Lev Leviev assumed the role of CEO at Selectel.
In May 2014 it was reported that Selectel was investing ₽1 bln in a technopark in Saint Petersburg that would include a data center, offices and warehouses.
On December 17, 2015, in the presence of Saint Petersburg governor, Georgi Poltavchenko, Leviev opened the largest data-centre in the North-West of Russia, “Tsvetochnaya 2”.
By the end of 2016, Selectel was ranked the fourth largest IaaS provider for public and hybrid cloud in Russia.
By 2017, the company was one of the largest IaaS providers in Russia, with a market share of 7%. At the end of 2017, Lev stepped down from the CEO position, while remaining the Chairman of the board of directors.

Btc.com

In 2014, Lev co-founded BlockTrail with his long time friend, Boaz Bechar. Lev set up the holding company BlockCorp which made an initial investment of €500,000 in the BlockTrail project. The company developed a blockchain explorer, bitcoin transaction analytics tools and multi-platform bitcoin wallets.
In 2016, the project was bought by Bitmain, a Chinese producer of equipment for mining bitcoins, and renamed BTC Wallet.

Investments

Russian investments

Investments include:
Lev Leviev has also invested in international projects, such as:
In 2019, Lev Leviev's investment group, LVL1 Group, led a $19 million fundraising for Fnatic, a global eSports organization, joined by UK VC firm Beringea, Hong Kong based BlackPine, London based Unbound, and Joi Ito, Head of MIT Media Lab. Lev joined Fnatic's Board.

DST Global

Lev Leviev is an investor in several vintages of Yuri Milner's DST Global venture funds.
DST Global II acquired shares of Facebook, Twitter, Airbnb, Spotify, Alibaba and Xiaomi.
Among the most publicized investments of DST Global IV are Ola Cabs, an Indian car-hailing service, Flipkart, an Indian e-commerce platform, and Slack, a corporate communication platform.