ℹ️ Key topics: freedom as a fundamental value, discipline and asceticism in daily life, extreme practices (ice baths, 5-hour swims), the history of VK and Telegram, censorship and bans, the balance of engineering and design in Telegram, its business model and TON, plus a little-known story of an assassination attempt through poisoning.
👉 While watching, I took notes of the most interesting moments with approximate timestamps. I think many will find them useful:
03:07 – Philosophy of freedom
06:15 – Refusal of alcohol and other drugs
14:20 – Living without a phone
20:16 – Even when things are bad, it’s important to do at least something; inspiration will follow. Excessive information distracts from this path. The key muscle to train is self-discipline
27:17 – Multi-hour swims across lakes (one lasted 5.5 hours)
41:28 – Telegram: lean approach, the team, and geopolitics. Core dev team: 40 people (frontend, backend, designers, devOps). Heavy focus on automation
56:50 – Story of arrest/trouble in France
1:13:01 – Romanian elections and politics. How the French tried to persuade him to interfere
1:33:30 – Intensive education and self-learning
1:45:30 – Nikolai Durov (brother), his role in the project. Pavel is very grateful to him and praised him a lot
1:50 – Programming and engineering culture
1:54 – The creation of VK: optimizations and why loading speed was so important
2:11:30 – How to recruit and retain an AAA team
2:20:30 – Engineering and design in Telegram (stickers, vector graphics)
2:39:40 – Encryption and security
3:03:15 – Assassination attempt (poisoning in 2018), never shared before
3:35:30 – Money, Telegram monetization path
3:44:15 – TON discussion and its potential
3:57:45 – Prisoner’s dilemma, two chairs, and the “walrus penis bone” in negotiations
4:10 – Universe 25 experiment (mice in abundance) and the danger of excess
4:26 – Final thoughts on Kafka, quantum “immortality,” and the importance of limitations and goals for humanity’s future
📱 Full interview available. Besides English, there are Russian and Ukrainian dubs, so you can listen to the fragments in more detail if you like. My notes above should help you navigate 😉
p.s. Likes and comments are welcome ☺️
💬 Would you be interested in watching Durov’s interview in full?
👍 – Yes, definitely
🤝 – Only selected fragments
❤️ – Prefer notes like yours
🔥 – Not into interviews at all
⭐️ – Thanks for the post
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