DFS Lab operates as a combined advisory, venture fund, and venture studio that uses frontier-market research work for governments and large institutions to directly inform where they deploy venture capital—an unusual integration for a small, early-stage fund. They explicitly favor backing startups that augment existing informal and agent-based networks rather than trying to replace them with fully digital apps, following their "cyborgs over androids" strategy that differentiates them from investors who push pure-play digital models transplanted from developed markets.