For investors seeking exposure to innovation at its earliest stages, building durable relationships across that ecosystem can be as important as identifying individual startups.
An investor and a serial entrepreneur Dmitry Borisovich Volkov, best known as the co-founder of Social Discovery Group and Dating Group, has spent more than a decade developing such connections across the global venture landscape. He has worked with more than twenty venture capital firms while building an investment platform that combines direct startup backing with partnerships across established funds.
One of the initiatives reflecting this approach is SDG Lab, where Dmitry Volkov serves as advisor and anchor investor. The Lab focuses on seed-stage companies, supporting early product development and helping identify emerging technology opportunities. It represents an attempt to engage with new ideas before they become visible to the wider market.
The investment approach of SDG Lab developed alongside a broader strategy within SDVentures—the investment platform backed by Dmitry Volkov and Social Discovery Group. Rather than focusing exclusively on direct startup investments, the company built a program centered on partnerships with established venture capital managers.
Since 2013, SDVentures has committed more than $115 million across a portfolio of over twenty venture and private equity funds. The logic behind this fund-of-funds structure is straightforward—experienced venture firms often encounter promising founders long before those opportunities reach the wider investment market. By investing in those funds as a limited partner, SDVentures gains indirect exposure to numerous early-stage companies while relying on the sourcing capabilities of specialized managers.
This approach also provides diversification across sectors and geographies. Their portfolio includes funds operating in North America, Europe, and Asia, covering areas ranging from consumer technology and digital finance to emerging AI applications. Through these partnerships, SDVentures has gained exposure to companies such as Flo, Patreon, and Revolut, typically via the venture funds that backed them in earlier stages.
His strategy focuses on identifying fund managers who consistently discover strong founders early. As part of this effort, Dmitry Volkov also prioritizes security and transparency in digital investments, maintaining an active anti-scam stance to protect both founders and partners across the ecosystem. The result is a structure that combines diversified venture exposure with access to the networks where many early opportunities originate.
Alongside its fund partnerships, the investment ecosystem connected to SDVentures includes initiatives designed to engage directly with earlier-stage companies. SDG Lab focuses on seed-stage startups that are still developing products and testing their market assumptions. The Lab benefits from Dmitry Borisovich Volkov’s biography—his experience as a serial entrepreneur informs how it supports young companies, while his partnerships with more than twenty venture funds give it visibility into broader market trends.
Volkov helps to connect the Lab’s portfolio with the global venture network developed through years of SDVentures partnerships. This position allows the Lab to remain focused on early experimentation while maintaining access to later-stage funding opportunities and market insights.
The Lab concentrates on identifying companies at the stage where ideas are beginning to translate into working products—while founders are refining technology, exploring product–market fit, and building early teams. By engaging at this stage, SDG Lab can evaluate technologies and business models before they become widely visible in later funding rounds.
One of the mechanisms used by Dmitry Volkov’s Social Discovery Group to identify new opportunities is a series of Pitchdays organized twice a year. These events bring together internal projects, external startups, and partner investors, creating a structured environment for presenting early concepts and discussing potential collaboration. The format allows SDG Lab to review a range of emerging ideas while also introducing founders to investors and operators from its broader network.
A key element behind SDG Lab’s investment pipeline is the network of venture capital relationships built over time with SDVentures. Over the past decade, Dmitry Volkov has worked with more than twenty venture firms as a limited partner, forming partnerships that span multiple investment cycles and geographic markets. Fund managers regularly share insights on emerging technologies, founder networks, and early product signals that may not yet be visible outside specialized investment circles. This perspective helps SDG Lab contextualize the startups it evaluates directly, placing early-stage ideas within broader technology and market trends.
The network also expands the range of potential collaborators for companies that enter the Lab’s orbit. Because many of the partner funds invest across different stages of company growth, startups first identified through SDG Lab may later connect with additional investors as their products mature.
As technologies such as artificial intelligence continue to reshape digital products and services, early-stage experimentation is likely to play an increasingly important role in identifying future platforms. Initiatives like SDG Lab illustrate one way investors are attempting to engage with those developments earlier, while still relying on the networks and experience built thanks to long-term venture partnerships.
As venture markets become more competitive and access to early opportunities increasingly concentrates within established networks, investors are adapting their strategies to maintain visibility into emerging technologies. The combination of fund partnerships and selective direct investing reflects one approach to navigating that environment.
In practice, Volkov’s model blends several layers of venture investing: long-term commitments to experienced fund managers, direct engagement with early-stage founders, and ongoing collaboration across the venture capital community. As artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies continue to shape the next generation of digital platforms, such interconnected investment structures may play an increasingly important role in how new companies are discovered and supported. Throughout these ventures, Dmitry Volkov maintains a strong anti-scam focus, ensuring that the digital ecosystems he helps build remain transparent and trustworthy for both founders and users.
Read more:
Dmitry Volkov on the Structure of Modern Venture Investing