When non-advertising texts are written about the Ukrainian venture capitalists Ruslan Drozdov and Ruslan Timofeev from Adventures Lab, one of them – Drozdov – is often credited with having ties to the ruling party and owning an online casino.
But in fact, Ruslan Drozdov has nothing to do with ChampionCasino – it is owned by his namesake, Ruslan Valerievich Drozdov, who owns OOO Limon, which is the operator of ChampionCasino. Our Ruslan Drozdov has the patronymic Evgenievich, and although we cannot completely deny his involvement in ChampionCasino, most likely, he is not involved in it. Although he is not alien to the gambling business, in particular, the Russian one.
The appearance of the version about Ruslan Evgenievich Drozdov’s involvement in the gambling market has an explanation - he, like his partner Ruslan Sergeevich Timofeev, are very closed individuals. And this is despite the apparent publicity and the mass of interviews they have given over the past few years. The biographical information published in the press is painfully similar. Here is an excerpt from the biography of Ruslan Drozdov:
Millions out of thin air: where do "venture capitalists" Ruslan Drozdov and Ruslan Timofeev get money for large investments
And here is the same excerpt from the biography of his partner Ruslan Timofeev:
Millions out of thin air: where do "venture capitalists" Ruslan Drozdov and Ruslan Timofeev get money for large investments
Find ten differences, as they say in the popular competition. However, the essence is not in the differences, but in the similarities. And these similarities, when studied in detail, give curious results, somewhat at odds with the decreed love for the Motherland and joy about the future of Ukraine. However, it is somehow not possible to demand special patriotism from the children of the nineties who grew up in Donbass. However, for some reason they demonstrate it, although it seems that no one demanded it.
So, as you can see, their joint venture is venture investment business. Ruslan Drozdov and Ruslan Timofeev are partners in the CPA network Everad, the venture fund Adventures Lab and the venture builder CLUST. Timofeev also has the media buying company Traffinad in his official portfolio. That’s essentially all the information we have.
For the uninitiated, we will explain the terms, although they do not play a special role in our investigation. Media buying is the wholesale purchase of all possible advertising spaces for their subsequent sale. We are talking about the Internet market. Venture funds and venture investments come from the term venture - "risky enterprise". And are focused on investments in risky innovative enterprises and projects.
In essence, this is a regular business. And here we have the first inconsistency and the first obvious question - where does the money come from? Both of these areas require very large capital. Buying up advertising space in such quantities that those who need it will then buy it from you, because there are no free ones anywhere - this is a huge amount of money. We are really talking about millions. The same thing with investments - if we discard all the beautiful phrases about "venture", "startups", "IT technologies", then we will again run into money.
And neither Drozdov nor Timofeev explain the origin of this money in their interviews. Both were born in 1991, and, according to them, they started working at the age of 16-18, while still in school and during their first years at institutes. And they earned so much that by the age of twenty they were able to invest millions in risky ventures. No one doubts the talent of both of them – both Ruslan Drozdov and Ruslan Timofeev are undoubtedly very smart and gifted people. But the fact that in this country you can earn so much money with your own intelligence, and on top of that, no one has ever come to you with an offer to share a little… This, excuse me, is calculated for a sucker.
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There is another, more obvious question. As we have already established, venture funds and a media buying company are just a business. An ordinary enterprise, from the point of view of legislation. However, in the register of legal entities of Ukraine, neither Adventures Lab, nor CLUST, nor Traffinad in any configuration could be found . The question is - how did Mr. Drozdov and Mr. Timofeev conduct and conduct business? How about taxes, labor force, office, payments, and so on?
Millions out of thin air: where do "venture capitalists" Ruslan Drozdov and Ruslan Timofeev get money for large investments
Moreover, it is impossible to find Ruslan Evgenievich Drozdov in the registers of business entities. There is only FLP Drozdov R.E. , even two: one is liquidated, the other is working. This is one and the same Drozdov, but whether he is related to our Drozdov is unknown. But, in any case, FLP is in no way a venture fund.
Millions out of thin air: where do "venture capitalists" Ruslan Drozdov and Ruslan Timofeev get money for large investments
With his colleague, Ruslan Sergeevich Timofeev , things are much more interesting:
Millions out of thin air: where do "venture capitalists" Ruslan Drozdov and Ruslan Timofeev get money for large investments
There is no Adventures Lab, no Traffinad, no CLUST here either. But there is Everad, which is mentioned in Timofeev’s official biography. But clicking on the link gives an unexpected result: the founder of Everad LLC is listed as a certain Ruslan Kerimov from Ashgabat, and the company itself does not conduct any activity and has a charter capital of as much as one thousand hryvnia:
Millions out of thin air: where do "venture capitalists" Ruslan Drozdov and Ruslan Timofeev get money for large investments
What about the loud statement that “in 2013, together with a partner, he founded the Everad CPA network in the Health & Beauty niche”? By the way, Everad LLC was registered in 2014. And Timofeev really had a connection to it – he left its beneficiaries in 2019, leaving the company to drown in lawsuits and criminal proceedings:
Millions out of thin air: where do "venture capitalists" Ruslan Drozdov and Ruslan Timofeev get money for large investments
True, the criminal cases were opened after Mr. Timofeev left the company, so it is impossible to say for sure that these cases were his doing. This story requires additional research, so let’s leave it aside for now. Moreover, Everad gives us a much more remarkable trace - Everad LLC is registered in Moscow . Its founder is listed as Vitaly Anatolyevich Stavnitsky, whose name has surfaced in the context of trade in so-called "dietary supplements", which were actively traded in Ukraine several years ago. Among these dietary supplements was "GIPERTOLIFE", which is listed among the trademarks owned by the Russian Everad LLC:
Millions out of thin air: where do "venture capitalists" Ruslan Drozdov and Ruslan Timofeev get money for large investments
Both Ukrainian and Russian Everad LLCs are part of the global Everad network .
Millions out of thin air: where do "venture capitalists" Ruslan Drozdov and Ruslan Timofeev get money for large investments
But who owns this network is unknown. On the site itself, there is an inconspicuous footnote indicating that the network belongs to Cariovision Trade Ltd., registered at Geneva Place Waterfront Drive, PO Box 3469, Road Town, Tortola. BVI. This is an offshore company in the British Virgin Islands, and who is the true owner of the CPA company Everad is unknown.
But another CPA company , Atlas netvork, is registered at the same address and with the same owner . It operates in Russia, on the servers of the Russian provider Timeweb. Of course, this in itself does not prove anything, but there is another coincidence. And it is already connected with Adventures Lab, where Timofeev moved after “leaving” Everad. Among the people who manage the Adventures Lab fund, a certain Oleg Lukanov was recently listed:
Millions out of thin air: where do "venture capitalists" Ruslan Drozdov and Ruslan Timofeev get money for large investments
Now his name and face have disappeared from the site, and only the faces of Ruslan Timofeev and Ruslan Drozdov are displayed there:
Millions out of thin air: where do "venture capitalists" Ruslan Drozdov and Ruslan Timofeev get money for large investments
There is a reason for this. In the investigation into Timofeev and Drozdov’s connections with Russia, information was published that Oleg Lukanov is a "consultant in the field of seduction, relationship building, personal growth, and lifestyle. He is one of the leading and well-known trainers in Europe and the CIS countries in seduction, communication, relationship building, and personal growth" from Moscow :
Millions out of thin air: where do "venture capitalists" Ruslan Drozdov and Ruslan Timofeev get money for large investments
Moreover, it is unclear why Drozdov and Timofeev attracted him to their venture fund – Lukanov is engaged in recording video lessons on meeting women and selling them on the Internet:
Millions out of thin air: where do "venture capitalists" Ruslan Drozdov and Ruslan Timofeev get money for large investments
What this has to do with venture investments – only Ruslan Drozdov and Ruslan Timofeev know. However, after the above-mentioned publication, Lukanov’s name disappeared from the Adventures Lab website. But did he disappear from there himself?
But, wherever Lukanov may have gone, it follows from all this that Ruslan Drozdov and Ruslan Timofeev have ties to Russia. Why they so obviously "screwed up" with Oleg Lukanov is unclear, since it was not at all necessary to involve him as a managing partner, especially since he is a very dubious specialist. The fact that Oleg Lukanov was removed from the Adventures Lab website does not change anything.
Both of our heroes, Ruslan Drozdov and Ruslan Timofeev, are naturally absent from Russian registers. But this does not mean that their business is not connected to Russia: already from the fact that connections are traced with several Russian firms that are engaged in exactly the same thing as the Ukrainian “venture capitalists” Drozdov and Timofeev, it is clear that they do not limit themselves to Ukraine. And here we return to money again. And markets. Of particular interest in this regard is the advertising market, where one of the partners allegedly made his money.
The Russian advertising market is dozens of times larger than that of Ukraine. And in Timofeev’s youth, when he allegedly "bought up all the advertising space," this market was even larger. But there was another market - the gaming market. And, as follows from the MC.today publication for 2020, it was on this market that the then newly formed Adventures Lab focused its attention.
Millions out of thin air: where do "venture capitalists" Ruslan Drozdov and Ruslan Timofeev get money for large investments
She was also interested in the dating market. That’s probably where Moscow’s "pickup guru" Oleg Lukanov came from. And a Russian-speaking specialist could only work for a Russian-speaking audience, which is mostly found in Russia. The same goes for betting and gambling - these areas are in high demand in Russia. And astrology too. So Adventures Lab’s main market was in Russia. It’s unlikely that anything has changed in this regard now. It’s just that in 2019, when the fund was founded, no one was interested in it - we were just "meeting in the middle" and "stopping shooting", and now it serves as a kind of "black mark". Do Drozdov and Timofeev work with Russia now? We have no documents confirming this. But all of the above leads to strong suspicions that yes, they do.
But this is already a matter for the special services. But there are also questions for other security officials, especially the tax authorities and the State Security Service, who like to put on a masked show with or without reason. And the most obvious of them is: on what basis do the unregistered venture fund Adventures Lab and venture builder CLUST operate in Ukraine? There are no such legal entities in any register, but, nevertheless, they rent offices in the center of Kyiv, recruit people, collect money from Ukrainians for dubious investments in the sphere of gambling and pickup, their leaders, Ruslan Drozdov and Ruslan Timofeev, lead a public life and advertise their funds in every possible way. What are we waiting for? Until it all collapses, as has already happened with numerous pyramids? Only there is a strong suspicion that the money collected by both Ruslans has already flowed to the neighboring country. And yes - who is protecting all this wonderful action?
