Andrey Ternovskiy is the 18 years old(born on April 22, 1992) founder of Chatroulette, Chatroulette is a website that pairs random strangers from around the world together for webcam-based conversations. Visitors to the website randomly begin an online chat (video, audio and text) with another visitor. At any point, either user may leave the current chat by initiating another random connection.
Chatroulette.com was originally called Head-to-Head.org, and it came online on August 2, 2009.
On November 16th, having recently watched the Russian-roulette scene in “The Deer Hunter,” Ternovskiy bought the domain name Chatroulette.com, for seven dollars, and revamped the code.
He said he was looking for a site that would let him chat randomly on webcam and after searching with no success, he decided to build one, The site he said, took him three days to build in his bedroom, But bear in mind that he has been coding since he was 11.
He said the reason he built the site was also to allow him to speak to strangers after getting bored of speaking to his friends via skype.
After the launch of the site, he got 20 users to test it, after afterwards, the site kept doubling and now it gets over a million new people each day come on to his site.
He said he didn't advertise his site or post it anywhere else and the growth was from referrals of the initial 20 users that tested, and it continued to grow, each time the count grew, he had to rewrite his code to cope with the growth.
An early growth phase was funded by a $10,000 investment from his parents which he soon paid back.
As of March 2010, Ternovskiy runs the site from his childhood bedroom, assisted by four programmers who are working remotely and the site is supported through advertising links to an online dating service.
Right now Chatroulette uses seven high-end servers all located in Frankfurt, Germany. Network throughput is 7 gigabits a second.
Andrey is now the target of Russian billionaires and other investors as they offer him cash in millions for a
share in his venture and then you still have google on the other line.
The New yorker did a great article on him, check it out.
