Axel Neff

David "Axel" Neff is best known for his role as the former Assistant Director of International Operations of the Russian social network Vkontakte and as a co-founder of mobile messaging platform Digital Fortress, used to create the instant messaging application Telegram. Neff was a co-founder of the US based Telegram LLC, which was responsible for the creation of Telegram Messenger. He served as the head of subsidiaries for both companies, Durov LLC and Digital Fortress LLC respectively. Neff was also the director of Pictograph LLC and Telegram LLC.

Neff is from Buffalo, New York and graduated high school from Springville Griffith Institute. From there he moved to Philadelphia, PA to attend Swarthmore College, where he studied engineering and played football. He graduated in 2003 with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering and Economics.

While in College, Neff became acquainted with Ilya Perekopsky and Pavel Durov through a mutual friend at Saint Petersburg State University.

From July 2008 to April 2014, he served as the Assistant Director of International Operations. He assisted with various global expansion efforts, VK operational matters in the USA, and translation of the social network from Russian into other languages. He played a key role in acquiring the domain name VK.com which VK transitioned to in 2012. He was also involved in VK expansion by sending contest winners iPod Nano promotion from Colden, NY.

Digital Fortress LLC was a company created by Neff in his home city of Buffalo, New York in 2012, and co-founded by Pavel Durov. It is engaged in the management and financing of mobile applications. Neff servs as the director of this company. Digital Fortress LLC maintained its headquarters in Buffalo, New York. In early 2013 the company bought 96 terabytes of infrastructure from QBC Systems. In April of that same year, Pavel Durov said that Digital Fortress was a cloud cluster, that was created for the benefit of startups from the Start Fellows.

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