Dmitriy Surkov

My life philosophy is to take something complex and make it simpler. Not primitive — just down to the essence. Down to the few fundamental principles that actually work: in business, investing, relationships, and understanding oneself. First, figure it out for myself, then put it in plain words for like-minded people, engaging them in the process.

When I was five years old, my parents managed to find one of the first personal computers of the time — a Soviet BK-0010-01 — and I started programming. I got pretty far with it. But the real passion of my childhood was space. I devoured every book on cosmonautics I could find, built rockets out of toothpaste tubes, using them as combustion chambers, and once, while experimenting with "fuel" from leftover holiday fireworks, I burned the kitchen stove at home. My parents were horrified, but they backed my engineering experiments anyway.

My most successful launch was a rocket with a detachable stage: inside an orange Kinder Surprise egg sat a spider-cosmonaut, a little bulb glowing off a battery in his capsule, and a parachute tucked behind the nose. The stage separated, the parachute opened, and the spider landed alive. That was my own Baikonur — in that moment, I was completely happy. Perhaps joy isn't always about the scale of a project, but rather about being a part of something previously incomprehensible.

That spirit of exploration — "what if I try it like this?" — has stayed with me. Fed by Daniel Defoe's books, which I read to tatters, it turned into a way of living: don't be afraid of complex problems, break them into parts, test hypotheses, find solutions, and move to the next ones.

I still carry a picture of a world where space has become part of everyday life, where we move between planets as casually as we hail a taxi today.

In third grade, I got my first taste of entrepreneurship. Ace of Base's "All That She Wants" was a global hit, and everyone wanted to know what it was actually about. I spent almost the entire day rewinding the cassette, writing the lyrics down by ear, and translating them into Russian. I made a few handwritten copies and sold them at school. Demand creates supply, as they say. Plenty of the words were wrong, but the gist was there.

By eighteen, I opened my first business — building websites. Then came companies in IT, finance, consulting, and construction: more than ten ventures over twenty-five years. Some worked. Some failed. And honestly, the failures shaped my thinking just as much as the wins — especially when it comes to people, risk, responsibility, and self-deception.

One of the most painful lessons: I learned to tell "I trust this person" apart from "I want to trust this person." The difference is enormous — and so is the cost of getting it wrong, in money, in time, in nerves. Another one: "the mistakes you repeat aren't mistakes; they're choices." It sounds harsh, but it's true.

In 2018, I moved into venture investing. I've had a few successful exits, including DigitalOcean, which went public. My portfolio now holds more than twenty startups: AI, robotics, finance, infrastructure, space tech. What started as a passion has become an integral part of my professional life. Over time, I worked out my own method for evaluating venture deals, and I offer promising opportunities for co-investments.

Venture investing is like quantum mechanics: you can calculate the probabilities, but you only know the outcome at the moment of observation.

But life, of course, isn't all about business. I'm drawn to philosophy, longevity sciences, astrophysics, mountains, tennis, martial arts, and deep conversations where no one tries to outdo the other. My library holds over a thousand books — which reminds me how much I still don't know.

I call my way of living "healthy hedonism." Not in the sense of "take everything from life," but rather in the sense of not postponing life to some mythical "later": doing meaningful work, taking care of the body, dining with loved ones, gazing at the mountains, and remembering that results without a sense of fulfillment are like form without content.

For a long time, I stayed a private person. But reflecting on my own decisions, deals, wins, losses, the people I'd met, and the places I'd traveled to convinced me of the need to share my knowledge and experience. So in 2023, largely at my friends' urging, I started writing on practical modern philosophy for business and life — the essays now collected here on this site.

I'm no guru, and I don't want to teach anyone how to live. The stance I like is: "I tried it, gained experience, here's what I noticed." Perhaps that's why my readers are people who carry a lot of responsibility but also have a desire to experience joy in life here and now: entrepreneurs, managers, investors, and people with unconventional ideas.

If you, like me, are looking for a foothold in our fast-changing world — through trading ideas, friendship, or business ventures — I'd be happy to see you among my readers, friends, partners, or like-minded people.

Thank you for your attention!