Industry Internet Website sdventures.com Founded 1998 | Founders Dmitry Volkov Founder Dmitry Volkov | |
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Area served United States, China, Colombia, Post-Soviet states, EU, Asia, Latin America | ||
Social Discovery Ventures (SDVentures) creates, supports and promotes Internet projects such as communication platforms that enable people from different countries to expand their social and business networks – to travel, learn foreign languages, play online, make friends and date. SDVentures invested into more than 50 international projects among those TripTogether, Dating.com, PumpUp, Streetlife, LinguaLeo, Thrill, Layer, Roomi etc. SDVentures has founded technological companies such as UsabilityLab and Payonline. The company contributes to scientific and humanitarian projects. Its corporate values are underpinned by innovative technologies and contemporary art.
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The company has offices in New York (United States), Moscow (Russia), Hong Kong (China), Minsk (Belarus) and Riga (Latvia), with over 500 employees. The Moscow office employees are involved in the corporate soccer championship.
History
The company was founded in 1998 as a developer of technological platforms for online social communication. In 2006, the company founded UsabilityLab, the largest usability company in Eastern Europe.
In 2008, it founded an Internet-based payment system Payonline. In 2012, UsabilityLab and Payonline were winners of the Runet Prize competition in the Innovation and Technology, and Economy, Business and Investments categories. In March 2013, the TripTogether project was launched, helping travelers all over the world to communicate with each other. In June 2014, the holding company organized an expedition to Greenland, dedicated to the 'problem of free will and consciousness in analytic philosophy'.
In 2015, Payonline was sold for more than $8 million to the US public corporation Net Element. That same spring, the company invested $500,000 in the development of LinguaLeo and acquired the Dating.com website.
Projects
Science initiatives
The company organized and currently supports the Moscow Center for Consciousness Studies which partners with Moscow State University, Philosophy Department.
In 2014, the company organized a philosophical conference and expedition dedicated to the 'problem of free will and consciousness'. The expedition took place on a schooner heading to the shores of Greenland. The most renown philosophers participated: Daniel Dennett (American philosopher who won the Erasmus prize in 2012), David Chalmers (Australian philosopher and cognitivist, specializing in philosophy of mind and language), Paul Churchland and Patricia Churchland (world famous neurophilosophers).
Art initiatives
Social Discovery Ventures organized the publication of a series of art works under the title "Contemporary Art". The album presents the most significant works of a number of artists and their reviews by a leading contemporary art critic Viktor Miziano.
The company cooperates with various Russian and European artists, collectors, critics and musicians, including Dmitry Gutov, Oleg Kulik, Pierre-Christian Brochet, Mikhail Pyatigorsky and Polina Osetinskaya.
Social Discovery Ventures is the organizer of two street piano festivals in Moscow in Muzeon Park. - in cooperation with the Igor Butman production center at September 2014, and with Igor Butman' orсhestra and Daria Parkhomenko at September 2016. Specially for last festival such contemporary musicians and art researchers as Petr Aydu, Olga Kroitor, Electroboutique art-group, Ian Kalberzin, Oleg Makarov, Alexander Kaplan researched and introduced a 'hybrid piano' concept and samples. Also, a number of well-known musicians, such as Vladimir Nesterenko, Oleg Akkuratov, Anton Baronin, Polina Osetinskaya and Valeri Grohovski participated festival.
It ran a pop-up exhibition of contemporary technological art under the title "Superconduction" in Riga.
In 2016, it was an official partner of the Art zone at the Geek Picnic 2016 festival.
In cooperation with the "Garage" Museum of Contemporary Art SDV Arts&Science Foundation, created by SDVentures has launched a new grant program "Art and Technology", designed for artists between the ages of 18 and 35 working in the fields of IT technology, engineering and science art.