By the age of 28, Maxim Dreval had dropped out of two universities, worked at Yandex and Mail.ru Group, launch an online school and participate in the creation of the Netology group holding. His new project at the intersection of eSports and education has already attracted $2 million in investment and 1.8 million users. What scale does the entrepreneur expect?

"I've never been a gamer," Maxim Dreval, a nominee in the ranking of the 30 most promising Russians under 30, begins with an uncharacteristic recognition for the founder of an eSports startup. For three years now, he has been developing the Learn 2 Play Limited (L2P) project, a service at the intersection of the eSports and education industries. The latter is well known to Dreval as the co-founder of the "Netology-group" holding. In 2017, he resigned from the company's shareholders to start a new independent history. Over two years, L2P has amassed an audience of 1.8 million users, attracted $2 million in investment, and is about to close another $4 million round. What is the uniqueness of a startup's business model?

Serial student

A native of Kemerovo, Maxim Dreval graduated from school in Tula, and moved to Moscow to enter the University. Following the results of two Olympiads, he was enrolled in the mechanics and mathematics Department of Moscow state University without exams, but dropped out after two years. "I was disappointed —" the entrepreneur explains. - I thought that education would be more applied and modern, but no." After MSU, he transferred to the faculty of business Informatics at the Higher school of Economics, but even there he did not find any use for himself.

In parallel with his studies Dreval accumulated practical knowledge: as a freshman, he got a part-time job in the digital Department of the Agency Publicis United, where he developed online advertising campaigns. During a year of work, the young specialist rose to the position of project Manager, but then left — for the sake of an invitation from Yandex. There Dreval formed information blocks (widgets) on the main page of the search engine about other sites and services of the Internet giant.

In 2010, through mutual friends, he met Alexey Polovinkin, a teacher of mathematical analysis at MIPT, who six months earlier, with the support of the University, had started developing online courses for schoolchildren in the form of live broadcasts of lectures by fiztech teachers in physics and mathematics. "We hired students to set up equipment in each classroom. They came with backpacks that had a netbook, speakers, and modem (schools often had problems with the Internet). We modified the classes and conducted them using two applications, one of which was broadcast audio, and the other-video, " - said Polovinkin in an interview with the Village in 2015. The project was unsuccessful: the sound lagged behind the video, and the students didn't want to stay in school after class.

Then Polovinkin decided to simplify the model — to post video lectures on a separate site. He purchased the domain 100ege.ru ("100EGE") and began to look for a partner who could take over the technological part of the project. This role was performed by his new friend: Dreval helped not only bring the service to mind, but also turn it from social to commercial.