Julia Milner biography. What do the wives of Russian and foreign millionaires look like?

Yulina's name flashed in the press after the opening of the 52nd Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art, where Mrs. Milner, nee Bochkova, appeared thanks to her patroness Olga Sviblova.
The interactive project by Julia clickihope, which gave the name to the entire Russian pavilion, left no one indifferent. A two-level apartment in the Mayakovskaya district with cold marble floors (“You don’t look like barefoot here,” the hostess says) and leather sofas looks like a man’s restraint. “We live here with my husband,” Yulia explains. – I did not participate in the design of this interior. It was pretty much the same when I came here five years ago.” But upon a detailed examination of the apartment, the presence of a creative person is very noticeable. By the hallway door is a bookcase full of fancy little handbags. The walls of the flight of stairs leading up to the bedroom are decorated with huge self-portraits made by Julia. On one she has yellow hair, on the other her lips are green. This is a mobilography, as the hostess explains: photos processed on a mobile phone, with which Yulia does not part. She does not change her old SonyEricsson communicator, because it has a function for editing pictures with a stylus. “It's simple,” Yulia looks at the phone with a smile, “I take pictures like that quickly,” she points the phone lens at me, “and then I paint on everything I want right on the screen.” Yulia strikes the screen with her wand, imitating how she creates her mobilography. In December, Julia has an exhibition in Courchevel together with the Gallery restaurant. “We need to come up with something Christmas,” she says. “Paint some Christmas trees.” The artist does not edit her paintings on a computer, she says that this is superfluous. After creative processing on the phone, the photos are immediately sent to print, so the result for Yulia Milner herself is always a little unpredictable. In the study, where there is a table with a computer and a bulky photo printer, a whole wall is occupied by a rack with books. A familiar face smiles from one of the covers. Yulia Milner poses as a model on the sensational folio “1001 Questions About It” in the 1990s. In the living room, unusual photographs hang over English-looking studded leather sofas. Dressed in vintage dresses, apparently rented from Mosfilm's dressing room, the companies pose in imitation of well-known classical subjects. “It was my friends and I celebrating my birthday,” Yulia explains. “We always come up with something. Somehow they arranged a holiday in one theater and asked all the guests to rehearse circus numbers in advance. Everyone was promised beautiful assistants, someone could perform with his wife. But many do not communicate with us after that, because they were afraid to swallow swords and participate in tricks. On the coffee table among the albums on art and photography is a huge multi-kilogram edition of LaChapelle's Artists & Prostitutes. There are only 2500 of them in the world. When I asked if it was difficult to get it, Yulia evasively answers: “We specially ordered it on the Internet.” Numerous Dolce & Gabanna outfits hang in the wardrobe on the second floor, and I ask the hostess about her dressing habits. “During the day I always go in a tracksuit,” Yulia met me in white sneakers and sweatpants, “and in the evening I want to change into a dress. I used to love Dior. And now I am somewhat disappointed in this brand, but I really liked the latest Dolce & Gabanna collections. Like any girl who is not indifferent to beautiful things, Yulia's wardrobe is packed to capacity. She says that her husband suggested compiling a card index on the computer: taking pictures and numbering all the dresses, so that later it would be more convenient to choose what to wear. In one room, as in an art workshop, Yulina's works are stacked: mobilographic self-portraits and oil paintings. There are quite a few of them: “We always present my paintings to our friends for their birthday,” Yulia explains, “we don’t give another one.” Still there are unpacked suitcases. Yulia travels the world with her exhibitions and interactive art projects, like the one displayed in the Russian pavilion in Venice. She will fly there again at the end of October, for closing. “I really hope that the Russian pavilion will be given the Golden Lion,” the artist admits. Harper's Bazaar 2008

Photo by Paul Eng (www.pauleng.com)

Forbes journalist Parmy Olson spent a day with Russian "techno billionaire" Yuri Milner, co-owner of DST Global and Mail.ru Group. As a result of this and other meetings, she wrote an article and spoke on her blog about who inspires the 49-year-old entrepreneur, what his Moscow home is, and why he is still offended by his older sister. Below is a translation of her notes with abbreviations.

When I first interviewed Milner last January, it was obvious that the former physicist and freshly listed Russian billionaire was not averse to pondering the answers. In general, he was relaxed but cautious, spoke with a Russian accent, but with a completely American note in his voice, and conversations about social networks were punctuated by almost Zen pauses. Everyone who spoke with him noted that he never talks too much about either his investments or plans for the future.

This time I met Milner in Moscow and spent almost the whole day with him, trying to understand what this person is and what he does. The following was discovered: Milner dresses very modestly (blue shirt, dark trousers and a zip-up sweater), prefers to always stay in the shadows, is outwardly very calm, but at the same time works like a maniac, and is incredibly focused on business. Despite the fact that social media is his main investment, he has only 57 friends on Facebook, and he does not write on Twitter at all - one gets the image very similar to a nightclub owner who himself never has fun on the dance floor, because he is too busy making guest lists and calculating the proceeds.

Milner loves Andrey Dellos' Manon Restaurant on 1905 Street. When we meet there, I ask him about his typical day. He laughs and begins to talk about how he gets up at 7 o’clock, about his morning workouts and how his daughters daily “report” to him about their successes for the previous day - this is how, according to him, they develop memory (the Milner girls are four and five years old, and they already speak English and play chess).

They say that you can tell a lot about a person from his desk in the office and from his home. In the case of Milner, this will not be easy to do. The billionaire does not think about how to decorate the office at all: for this he has an artist wife Yulia (who, by the way, does not use Facebook), and it is her paintings and photographs that hang on the walls. His desktops in the office and apartment are pristine - with the exception of the phone and cables to which you can connect a laptop. Sometimes it even seems that he does not use the desk at all. But this does not mean that Milner is idle. His day is scheduled to the minute, three secretaries work for him around the clock, who are trying to "settle" his schedule.

The Moscow house of Milner also does not stand out from this scheme. The walls of his penthouse are painted in deadly bright colors: orange, purple, green. The apartment has huge windows overlooking the city. Marble floors and three fireplaces. But instead of useless decorations, almost every wall has a constantly working flat-screen TV (there are nine of them in the living room and living area alone, not counting three in the home office). On the screens - CNN, Bloomberg, CNBC, broadcast mentions of DST, Mail.ru and other Milner companies on Twitter, as well as the Discovery Channel: the techno billionaire constantly feels a hunger for information. He negotiates on his iPhone, reads blogs on his iPad (mostly at night) from venture capital investors Fred Wilson, Bill Gurley, and Ben Horowitz, and browses Y Combinator founder's Hacker News Paul Graham. He sincerely admires Graham, who, in his words, "finds talent and nurtures them, and is very devoted to young entrepreneurs."

Due to the time difference with San Francisco, Milner works a lot at night, which is why he sleeps only 4-5 hours a day. The regime requires sacrifice: the man eats only healthy food (grilled salmon, salad, for dessert - fruit and low-fat cheesecake: "Julia strictly monitors sugar," he notes). There is no time for entertainment either. The last film Milner saw was The Social Network, simply because the job required it. From two to three weeks a month he spends constantly traveling - San Francisco, London, China, but he has not been in his country house on the Volga for almost a year. Surprisingly, the billionaire flies around the world not on a frequent business jet, but on the flights of the most ordinary airlines. And he often takes his wife and daughters with him, because otherwise he too rarely gets to see them.

Because of Milner's focus on work, his wife calls him a "robot". And Facebook board member Mark Andressen refers to DST employees as "a walking encyclopedia of online business," and that's no surprise. Everyone who works with Milner knows that his outward restraint is just a cover for the frantic pace of life, and if he calls his employee at 2 a.m. with some new idea, it’s better for him to forget about sleep and prepare the material the boss needs in a few hours . Perhaps that is why the billionaire prefers to work with young people and says he wants those who work for him to be in the region of 25 years old - that is, that they should be about half his age. In general, he believes in young people: the current CEO of Mail.Ru Dmitry Grishin received complete freedom from Milner at the age of 22.

I ask Milner about childhood and youth - and then it turns out that he is still a little offended by his older sister, who is eight years older than him. “I so wanted to communicate with her and her friends, but they did not accept me in their company,” he says. His mother was an epidemiologist, and his father, Boris Milner, taught economics and was one of the main specialists in American management in the USSR, who constantly traveled abroad on business trips. Moreover, the intellectual father did not particularly approve of the fact that his son abandoned his academic career in the late 80s and went into business, starting to trade in computers. So it is not surprising that it was he who encouraged Yuri to return to studies and get an MBA at the famous Wharton Business School (where Milner Jr. became the first non-immigrant student from the former USSR). After graduating from Wharton, the future billionaire worked for several years at the World Bank branch in Washington, but as he himself says, for him these were “lost years” for him: privatization was just underway in Russia at that time.

Milner returned to Russia in 1995, when Mikhail Khodorkovsky called him to the investment and brokerage company Alliance-Menatep. Around that time, he met his future long-term partner, Grigory Finger, director of the Moscow office of the New Century Holdings hedge fund, who persuaded him to go into the venture business. But when I ask Milner about what other people besides Finger and Khodorkovsky influenced his views, and he suddenly names ... Andrey Sakharov. In addition to a common alma mater (both Milner and Sakharov graduated from the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University), they once met in America and found a common language: according to the co-owner of DST, Sakharov always tried to look to the future and predict what awaits science in 5-10 years, and he is trying to do the same with regard to how the Internet will develop.

Childhood

The future entrepreneur was born in Moscow, as they used to say, in a good Jewish family. His father was an economist, his mother worked in a sanitary and epidemiological laboratory.

Education

Considering the positions of his parents, it is not surprising that Yura easily entered the Physics Department of Moscow State University. After graduating in 1985, the young man went to work at the Physical Institute of the Academy of Sciences. By the way, Vitaly Ginzburg himself was Milner's leader. Despite this, the future businessman and philanthropist did not see any special talents in himself as a scientist. Five years after graduation, he went to the States to study at the Wharton School of Business.

Entrepreneurial activity

After graduating from the business school, Yuri Borisovich began to develop as an outstanding talented entrepreneur.

His new place of work was the World Bank, where he worked for three years as an expert. Then there was the Alliance-Menatep company - the entrepreneur headed it as a general director, and two years later he took the post of deputy chairman of the board and headed the investment fund of Menatep Bank. A year later - a new position, director at Alliance-Menatep. He enjoyed authority and respect among his colleagues - he was considered an extremely promising and talented employee.

1999 turned out to be a significant year for his career: the businessman was one of the founders of NetBridge. In less than a year, his brainchild turns into a clear market leader. The company stood at the origins of a number of successful projects: List.ru, Molotok.ru, 24x7 online store.

Then there is another important event - the merger of NetBridge and Port.ru, which owns the mail service Mail.ru. In early 2003, the businessman headed the Neftyanoy concern and joined the board of directors of Atomenergosbyt.

In 2005, the entrepreneur founded the DST investment fund, and four years later the company acquired a small stake in the well-known social network Facebook. In 2010, she changed her name to Mail.ru Group and took control of the following projects: Mail.ru, Odnoklassniki, ICQ, VK.com, OSMP and others.

In 2012, the businessman ended his career at Mail.ru Group in order to focus exclusively on large foreign Internet projects.

patronage

The billionaire does not spare money for science, regularly taking financial part in various projects. The loudest, perhaps, was the establishment by him of a prize for research in the field of fundamental physics. The first winners of the prize each received three million dollars, and the prize itself became the largest award in the field of physics in the world.

Family status

Is officially married. The wife of a millionaire, Julia, is a creative person - a recognized artist and famous model.

The owner of a huge fortune, Yuri Milner, has gone from a theoretical physicist to an Internet entrepreneur, co-owner of Mail.ru Group and DST Global. He is known as a philanthropist, founder of investment funds and founder of awards.

Billionaire family

The Jewish Milner family lived in Moscow. The second child, who was born on 11/11/61, was named Yuri by the couple. His father, Benzion (Boris) Zakharovich, by that time had achieved considerable success on the path of a scientist-economist. Mother's career took shape in the SES laboratory.

There is practically no information about the personal life of the multimillionaire. His wife, Yulia Milner, is a famous artist and model. She walked the runways in Paris, New York and Tokyo for 8 years. She returned to the Russian capital in 2003 and was seriously interested in drawing and photography.

Her works are kept in private Russian and foreign collections. Thanks to Yulia, the mobilography of Russia (shooting on phones) has risen quite high. In 2007, she traveled to the 52nd Venice Biennale with the Click I hope interactive project.

The success of his wife is associated solely with her talent, says Yuri Milner. Children (a married couple have two), according to Yulia, are an inspiration, an impetus to a creative flight.

In 2011, Yuri Borisovich purchased a mansion in California. The spacious house, located in the part of Silicon Valley where the city of Los Altos is located, cost him $ 70 million.

Education

After school, the young man brilliantly passed the exams at Moscow State University, at the Faculty of Physics. In 1985, after successful studies at the university, he became a graduate in the field of "theoretical physics". After 5 years, Yuri Milner decided to leave his career as a scientist. He went to the US to study economics at the Wharton School of Business.

Career

The first business project of Yuri Borisovich - the sale of computers - turned out to be a profitable business. It became an excellent start for the development of business activities of Y. Milner. Since 1992, for three years, a talented economist has been working as an expert in one of the branches of the World Bank.

In 1995, he was offered the chair of the general director at Alliance-Menatep. After two years, Yuri Milner becomes deputy chairman of the board and heads the investment fund of Menatep Bank. And a year later, he was entrusted with the position of director at Alliance-Menatep.

In 2000, the financier founded the NetBridge Internet company, which quickly broke into the market leaders under his leadership. As a result of the president's skillful implementation of foreign Internet models, the company becomes the owner of competitive projects: the List.ru portal, the Molotok.ru online auction, and the free hosting Boom.ru. She also owns an online store 24x7.

After the merger of NetBridge and Port.ru, Yuri Borisovich, having accepted the position of CEO, gets access to the management of the Mail.ru mail service. Since the beginning of 2003, he simultaneously becomes the head of the Neftyanoy concern and is a member of the board of directors of Atomenergosbyt. In 2005, a businessman establishes an investment fund DST. 2009 will be marked by the fact that the DST investment company will acquire a small stake in Facebook.

In 2010 the fund will be renamed. The company formed by Milner will be called Mail.ru Group. From that moment on, several large Internet projects will come under the control of the entrepreneur. He will start managing Mail.ru, Odnoklassniki, ICQ, a minority stake in VK.com, OSMP, e-port and a number of other Russian assets.

The share in Facebook will increase to ten percent. Game developer Zynga and discount resource Groupon will fall under the control of DST Global. In 2011, a successful financier invested a huge amount in the Y Combinator incubator. In the spring of 2012, Yuri Milner leaves his brainchild Mail.ru Group in order to focus on foreign Internet companies.

Entrepreneur success is incredible. Yuri Milner, whose biography is full of luck, in 2010, according to Vedomosti, was declared the businessman of the year. A few months later, the men's magazine GQ names him the man of the year.

patronage

Yury Borisovich, together with P. Durov, implements the IT Charity projects. They support start-up Internet businessmen. Having selected promising startups, businessmen finance them.

In August 2012, billionaire Yuri Milner founded an award for physicists. The bonus fund is formed by 3 million dollars. This is the largest award in history in science. The Nobel Prize awarded for research in the field of physics is 2.5 times lower than the one established by Yuri Borisovich.

Yuli Milner's artistic strategy sensitively and clearly reflects the rapid changes in our technogenic world.

Yuli Milner's intrusion into photography happened swiftly and vividly. The 24-year-old artist in her project "Actual Mobilography" has demonstrated her own style with such spontaneity and freedom, which is given only to very talented and very strong people. Her exhibition became one of the sensations of the International Moscow Biennale Fashion and Style in Photography 2005. She made self-portraits, portraits of friends and acquaintances from a “close distance” with a mobile phone with a built-in camera. With the help of the same phone, she paints and transforms photos with childish spontaneity, resulting in bright and expressive images. Julia Milner draws her characters into a game that can reveal or, on the contrary, retouch their egos. In any case, she manages to find an unbanal move, bright and cheerful. An open mind, freedom of internal communication with his characters, a sense of humor are the key to the success of the young author, who subtly and gently ironizes himself and the surrounding world of glamor.

Enlarged to large monumental formats, the works of Yuli Milner transformed the "defects" of shooting with a mobile phone into the articulated style of a new direction - Mobilography.
Mobilography, as a new technology, gives rise to a new type of artistic reflection, expanding the existing boundaries of the art territory.

In the video project “Universe”, Julia Milner uses scientific photographs of the Universe: space galaxies, ring nebulae, lunar eclipses, sunspots, solar wind, etc., created using the most sophisticated equipment by astronomers, and described by them scientifically and at the same time time in metaphorical and poetic language. Through the cosmic landscapes in her works, images of the female sexual principle appear, as totem signs of the eternal femininity of the Universe. The dynamics of gender changes taking place, including in art processes, leads to a change in emphasis from male totem signs to the feminine. The artist turns her project into a fun and at the same time serious game.

The exhibition at the European House of Photography (MERE) also features Yuli Milner's Internet project “Click I Hope”, shown in the Russian Pavilion at the 52nd Biennale of Contemporary Art in Venice.

Creating her version of a new cyber-behavior game, net-art 2.0, focused on the latest Web 2.0 technologies, the artist appeals
to the natural vital energy of a person, moving from a reflective paradigm to an action strategy.

The installation presents an LED screen displaying the net-art project “Click I Hope” (www.clickihope.com), as well as a touch-screen, thanks to which viewers can become participants in the project.
The phrase "I hope" floats across the screen in 50 languages. Following the “Click I Hope” instruction, project participants who visit the site click on one of the suggested languages. More often, they choose their native language, receiving an interactive response in the form of a phrase that comes to life, blinking at them.
At the time of the click, a counter appears next to the selected language, showing the results of the activity of participants who select this language. Captions in different languages ​​either grow or decrease in proportion to the number of users clicking in the same language in any part of the planet. The total counter on the screen shows the number of project participants at the moment. We do not know the motives for which a person clicks "I hope" in a particular language. But the “I Hope” click is not the “I Kill” click, which is what most computer games teach us and this is what is promoted by a huge amount of mass media. “Click I Hope” is a virtual accumulator of hope that each of us needs.

The project, which started in June 2007, collected more than one million two hundred clicks in a year. Milner's appeal to Internet art and new interactive technologies that have emerged in cyberspace quite recently is a regularity, yet anticipating the art of the future. It will inevitably appear as a reflection of a new type of communication that has emerged in the virtual world, which is increasingly replacing the real world and direct human communication. In this virtual space, the artist acts as a demiurge, setting the rules of the game, and the work itself arises and develops due to the accumulation of the actions of each of the project participants.

Olga Sviblova,
Director of the Museum "Moscow House of Photography"