Polyakov Maksym Valeriyovych
Official biography
Maksym Polyakov is a co-founder of the aerospace company Firefly Aerospace, a Ukrainian entrepreneur in the fields of space technology and IT, investor, economist and philanthropist.
He was born on June 30, 1977, in Zaporizhzhia in a family of engineers who worked at the Ukrainian rocket and space enterprise Hartron.
- In 2001, he graduated from Zaporizhzhia State Medical University.
- In 2013, he earned a PhD in Economics from Dnipropetrovs’k National University. In 2019, he received a Doctor of Economics degree from the Vadym Hetman Kyiv National Economic University. Vadym Hetman Kyiv National Economic University.
Business experience.
- In 2001, he founded his first company, IT-Ukraine. The outsourcing IT company was one of the first in eastern Ukraine to create software for consumers in the US and Europe. In just four years, the company grew from 6 to 93 employees.
- In 2005, he co-founded the IDE Group, which included Cupid plc, Murka, and HitDynamics. When the latter was sold to the American company Hitwise (Experian Hitwise), Polyakov became vice president of Hitwise.
- In 2006, he co-founded Maxymiser and served as CEO and executive director. During this time, the company raised about $15 million in external investment. As a result, Maxymiser attracted brands such as Hertz, Teleflora, and Time Warner Cable. In 2015, Maxymiser was acquired by Oracle.
- In 2010, he led the launch of Cupid PLC’s IPO on the London Stock Exchange. Under Polyakov’s leadership, the company attracted more than 54 million members and generated $83 million in revenue in 2011.
- In 2012, he founded Renatus Media, a publisher of social and mobile games, which became the US publishing company for the Apple App Store, Google Play, Amazon App Store, and Facebook.
- In 2014, he became a general partner of Noosphere Ventures Partners, a Palo Alto, California-based investment fund.
- In 2016, he became a co-owner of G.D.M. Group Holding Limited, which combines a range of marketing services, including performance marketing, mobile, programming, video marketing and media buying.
- In 2017, a subsidiary of Noosphere Ventures Partners acquired the assets, patents and intellectual property of Firefly Systems Inc. After the deal was completed, the company was renamed Firefly Aerospace.
- In November 2018, Firefly Aerospace was included in the list of companies selected by NASA for the lunar exploration program with a total budget of $2.6 billion.
- In 2019, Firefly Aerospace signed a cooperation agreement with Aerojet Rocketdyne, a former Boeing unit.
- In November 2019, the company successfully tested the 1st and 2nd stage engines (the first launch of the Alpha launch vehicle in 2020).
- In 2019, the US Air Force selected Firefly to participate in the Orbital Services Program-4 (OSP-4).
- In December 2019, a group of Firefly Space Systems’ original shareholders filed a lawsuit alleging fraud and intentional bankruptcy of the company by Tom Markusik. According to the defendants, including Polyakov, the lawsuit is provocative and the plaintiffs’ claims are unfounded, three years after the revamped Firefly Aerospace made significant progress. The lawsuit is still pending.
- In February 2020, Snopes published an investigation into allegations of Polyakov’s possible connection to some dating sites. Noosphere Venture denied this information.
- In April 2020, Firefly announced an agreement with Spaceflight, which was scheduled to launch in 2021 from Vandenberg Air Force Base.
- In May 2020, Firefly received AS9100 certification, and the team moved from development to the production phase of the Alpha launch vehicle.
- On September 3, 2021, the FireFly Alpha lightweight launch vehicle blasted off minutes after liftoff from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Firefly Aerospace raised $75 million to prepare for this launch.
- In 2021, Firefly Aerospace received a $93.3 million contract from NASA to deliver 10 scientific and technical devices to the moon as part of NASA’s Artemis program.
Compromising material
Max Polyakov, an American businessman from Zaporizhzhia, is well known in the media for his Noosphere Ventures project, which seeks to find and support technology startups. According to media reports, the company operates at a loss, drawing funds from its founder’s day-to-day income.
At the peak of its popularity, the value of Polyakov’s Cupid plc.’s data assets was estimated at $204.9 million. How did an obstetrician-gynecologist from Zaporizhzhia (this is how the future businessman started his journey to success) manage to earn millions of dollars from online dating? Ukrainian and foreign media became interested in this topic. Journalists investigated and found the answer: it was all about robots.
Back in Zaporizhzhia, Max Polyakov founded Cupid plc. In 2012, the company’s debit card revenue amounted to $125.4 million, and its capitalization reached $204.9 million.
After a media scandal in 2013, the businessman sold the company’s assets. As it turned out later, to his own brainchild, the Together Networks holding. In fact, in this way, Polyakov simply got rid of his Cupid partner, Bill Dobbie, to gain full control of the empire he had created. Today, the holding company owns 9 websites: NaughtyDate, Loveaholics, UpForIt, Flirt, IWantU, QuickFlirt, BeNaughty, AffairDating, IAmNaughty.
Some of Cupid’s assets were transferred to another of Polyakov’s offshore companies, Tradax IP Licensing Limited, registered in the British Virgin Islands. Having started working with NSI Holdings, the company began to create new websites: UnformDating, MatureDatingUk, LoveAgain, Cupid, SpeedDaterEvents, LoveBeginSat, Serencomtrer, GirlsDateForFree.
In addition, foreign media drew attention to the fact that all of Polyakov’s debit card platforms are virtually identical in appearance:
All these sites are officially part of Polyakov’s holdings. In reality, the businessman’s dating empire is much larger. Polyakov launches many parallel projects, including local dating sites for users from the US, France, Germany, the UK, and other countries. These resources are not part of the holding, but are developed and maintained by the same companies.
The entire dating empire is maintained from Ukraine. Most of Together Networks’ employees have been working with Polyakov for several years and moved to the new holding from Cupid plc together with him.
In addition to the debit card companies, Max Polyakov opened pornographic studios all over Ukraine. Law enforcement officers found one of them in Polyakov’s hometown of Zaporizhzhia.
Fraud charges: what Max Polyakov is famous for and what his business actually is
The American-Ukrainian company Firefly Aerospace raised $75 million to prepare for the first launch of its Alpha rocket. In 2017, this company (also called Firefly Space Systems) went bankrupt due to a dispute over the misuse of Virgin Galactic’s intellectual property rights, but it was acquired by Polyakov’s Noosphere Ventures.
In 2019, the first owners of Firefly Space Systems filed a lawsuit accusing Polyakov and the CEO of Firefly of conspiring to drive the company into bankruptcy, after which it was acquired by Polyakov. The outcome of the case is still unknown.
As reported, on September 3, at 04:59 Kyiv time, the US-Ukrainian company Firefly Aerospace launched its FireFly Alpha light launch vehicle for the first time from the Vandenberg Space Force base in California. The rocket exploded a few minutes after launch.
Despite the fact that the launch was unsuccessful, the company’s CEO Maxim Polyakov noted that “today is a historic day for Firefly.”
Polyakov and casinos
In addition to dating sites, Polyakov also worked on the creation of so-called “social casinos”. In fact, these are browser and mobile online games that differ from traditional casinos in the method of monetization, which consists in the sale of in-game items and bonuses to users. One such company, Murka, was recently acquired by the American Blackstone Group. We will focus on Murka for a bit. You can find a lot of feedback from employees online. Most of the reviews are negative. Eternal turnover, non-payment of overtime, lack of motivation for employees, inept HR managers:
One of the employees was so «boiled over» that he even wrote a whole article:
Here is an excerpt from this article:
However, in addition to “harmless” games, Polyakov is also engaged in the development of real online casinos, which are banned in Ukraine.
NatGeo breaks off relations with Max Polyakov’s Murka
National Geographic no longer wants to cooperate with Max Polyakov’s Murka and be associated with its gaming products.
The likely reason is the businessman’s involvement in gambling and pornography. The NatGeo brand has already disappeared from the companies’ joint product — NatGeo Wild Slots, a “social casino” slot for smartphones. The companies do not disclose the official reasons for the breakup, but the conflict is likely to have arisen due to Max Polyakov’s reputation and information about the businessman’s involvement in the creation of porn studios and the development of illegal gambling resources. National Geographic cannot afford such reputational risks, the online American publication State Journal writes in its investigation.
In July 2017, National Geographic signed a contract with mobile game developer and publisher Murka to create NatGeo Wild Slots, a mobile application in the form of a «social casino» using the materials of National Geographic’s Nature Geographic Wildlife channel.
«National Geographic has partnered with Murka to engage audiences with environmental issues through mobile applications. This is the first project of its kind to present National Geographic themed content in a social casino genre,» reads the official press release from National Geographic dated July 6, 2017. The first version of the application appeared in the AppStore on August 30.
Already then, people began to talk online about how, instead of solving environmental problems, NatGeo was becoming a promoter of gambling, and in particular, gambling, which is banned in many countries (including the United States). The situation was exacerbated by the dubious reputation of Murka owner Max Polyakov.
Polyakov and Maxpay
Polyakov also launched a money project. It is the Maxpay payment system. On his website, Polyakov boasts that the company has more than six years of experience and is supposedly a leader in the industry.
“Maxpay specializes in developing comprehensive acquiring solutions for its clients and provides tools for fraud prevention and in-depth analytics of online business,” the website says.
Well, a new method of money laundering has been invented. Polyakov doesn’t know what else to do to make money.
Summary.
Max Polyakov is called the “Ukrainian Elon Musk”. Is it really true? No, it isn’t. Polyakov’s company, FireFly Aerospace, is operating at a loss, and the only rocket it has launched has failed. While Elon Musk is performing feats, Polyakov is standing still. Moreover, the really profitable business that Maxim Valerievich is engaged in is debit card and illegal online casinos. And he is actively trying to erase all these sins from the Internet.