Sergey Portnov is stepping back from Parimatch, the global iGaming brand that defined the first chapter of his career, and launching SP Ventures — an investment and advisory firm built to back the next generation of technology companies with more than capital.
As part of the transition, Portnov will no longer manage Parimatch. Deals with local operating partners across its markets are being finalized, some already at an advanced stage. Portnov is reviewing options, and the teams are preparing a plan to transfer operational management of the remaining assets to a foundation or trust under a full transfer of control.
The move caps more than a decade during which Portnov built Parimatch from a single-market operation into a brand recognized across over 20 countries worldwide. Portnov is stepping back from a company at its peak, going from running one company to standing behind many.
"For more than a decade, Parimatch has been the defining work of my career, and I'll always be proud of it," Portnov says. "But my interests have grown beyond a single industry and the management of one business. I'm stepping toward what comes next."
What comes next is a firm built on a specific conviction: For most founders, capital is rarely the hardest thing to come by. SP Ventures will combine investment, hands-on strategic advisory, and access to a community of entrepreneurs who have built and scaled companies before — the judgment, networks, and hard-won experience that money alone can't buy.
The model is structured to match. Rather than advising from the outside and charging fees, SP Ventures will take equity in the businesses it helps grow — so the firm does well only when the founder it supports does. It's a deliberate inversion of the standard advisory model, where the bill arrives whether the advice works or not.
The firm will back early or established companies across technology, education, and other fields shaping the future — united by ambition and conviction to build something lasting. It's a broader canvas than the single industry Portnov spent the last decade in, but a very deliberate one, as his interest now runs to the technologies and companies likely to define the coming decades.
In practice, that hands-on layer looks less like counsel delivered from a boardroom and more like the kind of problem-solving Portnov spent a decade doing personally: sequencing market entries, building licensing and compliance playbooks, structuring partnerships with local subsidiaries, and knowing when to hire ahead of growth rather than after it. SP Ventures intends to draw directly on that experience, pairing each portfolio company with people who have built and scaled businesses of their own.
That approach shapes who the firm looks to work with. SP Ventures is less interested in polish at the pitch stage than in founders already deep in the unglamorous, day-to-day grind of building.
"We would rather move slowly and stay close to a handful of companies than spread ourselves thin across a wide portfolio, treating attention as the scarcer resource in a way most investors don't," Portnov says.
That discipline is itself a kind of bet: that the advisory relationships which matter most are built over years, not quarters, and that experience earned running a company transfers only by staying in the room with the people building the next one.
"Every great story has a sequel," Portnov says. "Mine is about enabling other founders to write theirs."
Portnov will lead SP Ventures as founder and chairman. The firm's portfolio already features its first investment project, Cyprus-based Trinity Private School, focusing on education as one of its core future-oriented pillars. SP Ventures is also reviewing opportunities and expects to announce its next investments in the coming months.
See how SP Ventures helps founders turn ambitious ideas into lasting companies.
This sponsored post was supplied by SP Ventures.
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