- General
- November 9, 2020
- 6 minutes read
Badoo Founder Starts New App
Andrey Andreev, Founder, Badoo (MagicLab).Photo credit: Hubert Burda Media, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 In November last year, MagicLab, a parent firm…
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| Andrey Andreev, Founder, Badoo (MagicLab). Photo credit: Hubert Burda Media, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 |
In November last year, MagicLab, a parent firm of popular dating apps including Badoo and Bumble, was sold to private equity firm Blackstone in a $3 billion deal. The deal saw MagicLab’s founder and a long-time dating apps entrepreneur, Andrey Andreev, pocket a big amount of cash and stepped down from a company he led for many years. Andreev left MagicLab and handed over the CEO position to Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd, with speculations of what his next venture could be.
Now, Andreev although a long-time online dating entrepreneur has ventured away into another space with the launch of a new app called Stereo, which is a social audio app. Stereo is an app that lets users interact with audio, with user profiles and posts like conventional social apps. On Stereo, users can share audio among themselves just like pictures are shared on Instagram and Facebook and its likes.
Andreev is apparently looking to stage another success with what seems to be a podcast-like social network. On Stereo, users can follow themselves and join in each other’s conservations, or listen back to them like podcasts. Andreev is betting that an audio-like social network could be a big hit and is offering monetary incentives to draw users.
Stereo is still in beta but is planning a full launch this week. The app has already gotten a sign-up from a fairly popular user, the comedian Jeff Ross who is a frequent participant of Comedy Central’s popular celebrity roasts. Similar to what he does on television, Ross hosted a roast session on Stereo in September.
Roast fans, Come to my birthday roast party tonight at 9pm pacific on @app_stereo ! Call me up say hi right here: https://t.co/XVr5ZP53Vt
— Jeff Ross (@realjeffreyross) September 15, 2020
Stereo is staffed with two teams in London and Los Angeles. It recently launched in the US and is now planning a global launch this week. A significant number of the startup’s staff were formerly at Badoo, a dating app that Andreev founded back in 2006 and scaled to over 400 million users.
