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Auckland, New Zealand, August, 18, 2020 — NZ based software company, Portainer.io, today announced it has closed a US$1.2 million seed financing round. The round is backed by leading strategic investors Bessemer Venture Partners and Black Nova Group, as well as top New Zealand investors K1W1, AmpliPHI Ventures and a number of experienced senior business figures.

Portainer launched in 2017 as an open source product to radically simplify the deployment and management of Docker Swarm container-based environments. To date, Portainer has been downloaded more than two billion times and is actively used by approximately 500,000 users per month.

Enjoying 50% year-on-year growth, Portainer is poised to launch Version 2.0 including an advanced open source product and commercial business edition for Docker Swarm, Kubernetes and Edge computing. According to Portainer.io CEO and Co-Founder, Neil Cresswell, Portainer was developed to bring expert simplicity to the complex technologies in use by everyday IT teams;

“Extending Portainer to manage Kubernetes will enable organizations of any size to take advantage of the rich functionality without having to learn Kubernetes itself,” he says. “It quite literally makes an incredibly complex environment available to the average IT team, unleashing an immense advantage to teams using Portainer to deploy into Kubernetes or troubleshoot issues across its environments.”

The seed round enables Portainer to accelerate the growth of its open source version in the Kubernetes space, as well as bringing a fully supported business edition to market. Funding will be allocated to additional software engineering resources around the world, growing the Kubernetes community uptake and building traction for the commercial product.

“We have been watching the explosive growth of Portainer for some time” says Bessemer partner Michael Droesch. “We have been encouraged by what the team has achieved with their open source product and the engagement they have generated within the Portainer community. We believe Portainer can help bring ‘expert simplicity’ to leading cloud-native technologies like Docker and Kubernetes”

“We are looking forward to seeing Portainer.io accelerate its commercialization strategy” says Black Nova Group’s Managing Partner, Matt Browne, “Portainer’s development of a container management platform is helping software engineers and developers navigate through a rapidly growing market gap, as B2B SaaS increases in the current ever-changing market conditions”.  

In 2019, 89% of enterprises reported plans to adopt digital-first business strategies according to IDG. Then came the curveball that is 2020.

In today’s unparalleled circumstances, businesses are revisiting their meticulously devised digital transformation strategies. Some have approached the COVID-19 disruption by slowing their digital investments in an attempt to preserve their capital, whilst others are accelerating plans in preparation for the global economic rebound, and to further interact and connect with their customers.

While many businesses may survive, some intend to thrive. Uncertain times require the balancing act between short-term necessities with long-term investment strategies, i.e. digital transformation.

Revenue. To generate revenue, businesses must be customer-centric. Digitising operational procedures provides your customers, clients and stakeholders with true, reliable and measurable efficiencies.

Globally, there was an expected $2.3 trillion spend projected to contribute towards digital transformation, calculated to be an annual compounded growth of 17.1%. Since the economic volatility of the global market, this number may decrease significantly — however, digital transformation is still being recorded as a high priority. At its peak, 68% of businesses expressed that the digitisation of operations was their primary goal.

When a retrospective of the Covid-19 response has been completed, executives will have to re-assess their approach to risk & compliance and many will realise that their survival has been based on luck.

Culture. Finally, a salient reminder that businesses are only as good as their people. Now is the time to commit to reinforcing the importance of the faces and personalities that drive your sales, processes, procedures and everything in between.

Creating a positive culture throughout challenging transitions and impending digitisation of processes is imperative. Communicating that digital transformation is about the reduction of ‘low-value’ tasks for employees and replacing these with improved productivity and efficiencies.

Social Impact. Successful businesses will be those that meet the needs of as many people as possible, utilise as few resources as possible and engage and are responsive to as many stakeholders as possible. Over recent years, there have been conversations regarding sustainable business however there exists an unfortunate gap between what we say and what we do. Analysis by the United Nations Global Compact shows that while 92% of CEO’s believe integration of sustainability will be important to the future success of their businesses, only 48% say they are implementing sustainability in their operations.

If we are to make the exponential change and innovation needed to emerge from the COVID-19 crisis stronger and make real progress towards the sustainable development goals, organisations need to genuinely value sustainability, integrate it into their organisational culture and their business strategy. Finding sustainable leaders who will drive change on the ground is important now more than ever.

Sustainability is a complex problem that leaders of today face:

• How do we best position ourselves to support sustainability?
• What stance makes sense for the value we bring to customers?
• How do I evolve my product to enable sustainable business practice?

If you require support with these questions reach out to the team at Simply Progress. Our experts take a research/evidence-based approach to ensure that your sustainable policies will meet your customer and product needs now and into the future.

Also understanding what digital changes need to occur can be difficult to navigate:

• What will increase customer engagement and provide a more enjoyable user experience?
• How do you ensure employees are engaged and productive?
• What processes do you need to automate, integrate or build your business?

Experience Digital focuses on transformative digital augmentations that further enhance a business’s capabilities both technologically and culturally to ensure they align. This is done by exploring what works best for the business and deploying digital software, data, automation or systems integration solutions that are specific to the customer’s needs. If you need guidance through these complex times, contact Dillon da Costa.

In the last week of June, the Black Nova team tuned in to the Antler Virtual Demo Day 2020 to watch 12 Founders pitch their hearts and souls out after completing Antler’s Program.

If you’re unfamiliar with Antler check them out here. You’ve heard of startup accelerators and incubators. Antler are a startup Generator, pulling together the best minds and experience from interdisciplinary roles to create startups out of thin air, that then go on to secure funding and scale.

After watching the 12 pitches, one thing stood out to me. You have to be crazy to be a Founder.

To walk away from a stable career path, and back yourself against the heavily stacked odds (90% of startups fail), with huge uncertainty, competition and limitless hours of hard work in front of you is crazy, there’s no other word for it. If you’ve seen Gladiator, think back to the scene where he enters the colosseum. Some days must feel like that as a Founder (without the lions and swords of course).

But more than ever, successful, intelligent and sane people keep stepping up to the plate to run the entrepreneur gauntlet. Why is that?

The Founders I’ve met since joining Black Nova vary wildly.

Some are the accidental entrepreneur. They hit a problem and thought, “there must be an existing solution for this”. Turns out there isn’t and they can solve it better than anyone and are now on a quest to save people from the very challenge they encountered.

Some have always been that way inclined. They’re on their 3rd or 4th business, and it’s been an innate drive of theirs to be in control of their own destiny.

For some it’s been something they’ve always wanted to do, but always put off. The timing was never perfect. But after a spark of inspiration and too much FOMO, they’ve finally thought “Fuck it, I’m doing it!”

But all of them share one thing. At some point they’ve been told a variation of; “ you can’t do that, stay in your lane”. To which they immediately flip the script… “ Why not?” They’ve been knocked back and had their dream stamped on. But they came back for more.

And the world is a better place for these people. They take the risks no one else does. They jump first and learn to build the plane on the way down.

There’s a quote by Theodore Roosevelt that sums it up perfectly for me:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

The last few months have been pretty dire for huge numbers of people. But one thing is certain. There will always be those crazy souls who say “ why not?”

In my opinion it’s infinitely better to be in the arena, than to be the armchair critic telling people what they can’t achieve.

Sydney, July, 13, 2020 — Strawman founded by Andrew Page has reached a new milestone by reaching 10,000 users, despite the economic volatility for the Australian Stock Market. Black Nova Group has proudly supported the re-launch of the Strawman Index through their partner, Experience Digital.

Strawman is a community-based platform that allows Australia’s best private investors to evaluate and produce share market research and recommendations. Users share investment ideas and research by managing virtual portfolios and building company reports. Using real world prices, Strawman allows you to gain valuable experience in trading and portfolio management — risk free — as well as follow proven investors with hard won track-records.

Founder and Managing Director, Andrew Page says “Strawman is all about the democratisation of sharemarket research. Our goal is to give private investors a platform in which they can connect and collaborate in way that delivers real results”

Since their re-launch in early 2020, Strawman’s user base has grown significantly. The community has delivered returns that sets them apart from most professionals, that sadly have a poor track record.. With an overall increase of 38% per annum since late 2017, Strawman has effectively unlocked the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ and empowered private investors to make more informed investment decisions

The platform provides members the capability to share investment ideas and rationale by managing virtual portfolios and building company reports, all of which are ranked by community endorsement and portfolio performance.

“We are pleased to see Strawman’s growth continue to skyrocket right through the recent volatility” says Matt Browne, Black Nova Group’s Managing Partner, “first time investors have the opportunity of gaining well researched insights alongside experienced investors, helping everyone to navigate ever-changing market conditions, which is an edge when investing in today’s financial market”.

As the only platform that allows you to paper trade the ASX using virtual portfolios, Black Nova Group is backing Strawman while it paves the way for first-time investors to gain experience in portfolio management and trading without any risk.

Black Nova Group

Black Nova Group exists to empower the next generation of iconic, tech startups. We inject capital and services into businesses looking to scale. We operate in Australia and Europe and are united by one goal; supporting great founders with ambitious dreams to achieve their potential.

Has Covid-19 turbocharged the digitisation of business?

The world before Covid-19 was already moving quickly, now the world seems to have completely lost its ability to move at a reasonable speed.

Organisations that once planned their strategy at a three-year to five-year phase have little choice now but to scale in a matter of weeks and months. This crisis has presented us with a glimpse into a new world, one where ‘digital’ has become essential to every form of communication, forcing businesses to adapt. A world in which agile methods of working are a necessity for meeting business needs.

It has formed a future in which digital systems will become the primary form of engagement and automated processes will be the driving force for productivity — a source of flexible, open and steady supply chains.

Can the pandemic have a positive outcome for businesses?

If there is a silver lining, it might be in the diminishment of obstacles to improvisation and innovation that have emerged among clients, markets and organisations. The ways they learn from and adapt to today’s crisis will deeply influence their performance in tomorrow’s changing world, providing the opportunity to retain greater agility as well as closer ties with clients, employees, and suppliers.

In this unique moment, companies can learn and progress more quickly than ever before. Those that are successfully able to make the transition will more likely be successful during the recovery.

So, what now?

It is time to reconsider digital capabilities — those that provide support to employees, clients and the stakeholders to which corporations are increasingly responsible for — and to those that position you for a post-Covid-19 world. A place in which some things will go back to their prior form, while others will be forever changed. Playing it safe now, as crazy as this sounds, may just be the worst option.

If you feel like your business is unable to keep up with the speed of this changing landscape remember that you are not alone.

At Experience Digital our team is at the forefront of digital change and would be happy to assist with your digital transformation.

When we introduce ourselves, we are often asked: “Is Black Nova Group a VC?”

In short, the answer is no — that does not mean that we aren’t ready to back strong founders & innovative solutions.

Black Nova Group bridges the gap between the entrepreneur & Venture Capital during the earliest stages of building a business. Venture Builders are often referred to as ‘startup suites’, ‘tech studios’ or ‘co-building partnerships’. In a way, the Venture Builder model has revolutionised the opportunities for startup growth.

A Venture Builder takes a collaborative approach to building a business with an entrepreneur. When engaging with a Venture Builder, each will provide a unique approach.

Black Nova Group provides bespoke services to each founder to which we engage with. These include:

The conceptualisation of ideas — In the very early stages of a business, sometimes a great founder has a seed idea, but with the support of a Venture Builder, it may become a go-to-market MVP.

Process & Automation implementation — Having gone through the process of building startups a number of times, Venture Builders have tried and tested playbooks. These include a wide range of operational processes that ensure each process is done efficiently, allowing more time for collaborative creation.

Access to discounted products or services — One of the reasons many Venture Builders are referred to as ‘start up suites’ is due to their network or internal ecosystem. VB’s leverage off their personal relationships, or team resources to ensure that their portfolio has access to the best in the business, at a reasonable cost.

Talent acquisition — A startup is only as exceptional as their core people. As the business grows, so will the team — and Venture Builders have access to unique talent who have the resilience and determination to work with Founders to build and scale. VB’s are also hyper-aware of the requirements for in-house talent acquisition, and will provide guidance on how to assemble multi-disciplinary teams, effectively.

Mentorship — One of the leading reasons that Founders seek Venture Builders over Venture Capital is the people within the advisory team. Exclusive access to those that have surpassed and succeeded in the stages of business development and growth, Founders often see value in the support and guidance, rather than the financial contribution.

Access to a founder-based community — It is easy to feel alone as a Founder, building a business. A Venture Builder is capable of building a community and providing a network of like-minded individuals, who thrive on shared solutions, talents and growth.

The startup world is not one that succeeds around ego or large amounts of money raised. Early success for a newly formed business aligns with the founding team’s resilience through adversity and their ability to ask for support when required. This is where a Venture Builder, like Black Nova Group, can help entrepreneurs dream, build and grow.

About Black Nova Group Pty Ltd.

Black Nova Group exists to empower the next generation of iconic, tech startups. We inject capital and services into businesses looking to scale. We operate in Australia and Europe, and are united by one goal; supporting great founders with ambitious dreams to achieve their potential.

Each year, Black Nova Group invests a sizeable capital allotment into development of a new business. Experience Digital, Ezi Debt Collection and Upcover have all been ventures that Black Nova Group has taken on — with the bulk of development on these works being completed by the agency Black Nova Group’s development arm, Experience Digital.

Venture Builder — What does this mean?

When we introduce ourselves, we are often asked: “Is Black Nova Group a VC?”

In short, the answer is no — that does not mean that we aren’t ready to back strong founders & innovative solutions.

Black Nova Group bridges the gap between the entrepreneur & Venture Capital during the earliest stages of building a business. Venture Builders are often referred to as ‘startup suites’, ‘tech studios’ or ‘co-building partnerships’. In a way, the Venture Builder model has revolutionised the opportunities for startup growth.

A Venture Builder takes a collaborative approach to building a business with an entrepreneur. When engaging with a Venture Builder, each will provide a unique approach.

Black Nova Group provides bespoke services to each founder to which we engage with. These include:

The conceptualisation of ideas — In the very early stages of a business, sometimes a great founder has a seed idea, but with the support of a Venture Builder, it may become a go-to-market MVP.

Process & Automation implementation — Having gone through the process of building startups a number of times, Venture Builders have tried and tested playbooks. These include a wide range of operational processes that ensure each process is done efficiently, allowing more time for collaborative creation.

Access to discounted products or services — One of the reasons many Venture Builders are referred to as ‘start up suites’ is due to their network or internal ecosystem. VB’s leverage off their personal relationships, or team resources to ensure that their portfolio has access to the best in the business, at a reasonable cost.

Talent acquisition — A startup is only as exceptional as their core people. As the business grows, so will the team — and Venture Builders have access to unique talent who have the resilience and determination to work with Founders to build and scale. VB’s are also hyper-aware of the requirements for in-house talent acquisition, and will provide guidance on how to assemble multi-disciplinary teams, effectively.

Mentorship — One of the leading reasons that Founders seek Venture Builders over Venture Capital is the people within the advisory team. Exclusive access to those that have surpassed and succeeded in the stages of business development and growth, Founders often see value in the support and guidance, rather than the financial contribution.

Access to a founder-based community — It is easy to feel alone as a Founder, building a business. A Venture Builder is capable of building a community and providing a network of like-minded individuals, who thrive on shared solutions, talents and growth.

The startup world is not one that succeeds around ego or large amounts of money raised. Early success for a newly formed business aligns with the founding team’s resilience through adversity and their ability to ask for support when required. This is where a Venture Builder, like Black Nova Group, can help entrepreneurs dream, build and grow.

About Black Nova Group Pty Ltd.

Black Nova Group exists to empower the next generation of iconic, tech startups. We inject capital and services into businesses looking to scale. We operate in Australia and Europe, and are united by one goal; supporting great founders with ambitious dreams to achieve their potential.

Each year, Black Nova Group invests a sizeable capital allotment into development of a new business. Experience Digital, Ezi Debt Collection and Upcover have all been ventures that Black Nova Group has taken on — with the bulk of development on these works being completed by the agency Black Nova Group’s development arm, Experience Digital.