Core Team
Venture Partners
Dan Ross
Venture Partner
Dan is Black Nova’s growth specialist. Having expanded Optimizely across the Asia Pacific, he is able to advise the portfolio on scaling challenges in particular as it relates to growth metrics and conversion funnels, market expansion strategies and partnerships, staffing and preparing for new market entry.
Matt & Aprill Allen
Venture Partners
Matt is a self-proclaimed geek turned business guy. Reach out to him when you’re needing guidance to connect dots in your business. He is experienced and keen to support companies that allow software development teams to be as focussed as possible.
Aprill is a knowledge management specialist. She’s an experienced customer support and service management operator and a certified Knowledge Centred Service trainer. You’ll want to pull her in.
Aprill is a knowledge management specialist. She’s an experienced customer support and service management operator and a certified Knowledge Centred Service trainer. You’ll want to pull her in.
Alex Retzlaff
Venture Partner
Alex is our tech-savvy VP with over a decade of CTO experience behind him – he will be the guy you want to reach out to when you require a tech audit, or just to take a snapshot of your business as a platform play – he will guide you through the process.
Noga Edelstein
Venture Partner
Noga is your go-to for all things marketplaces. Cofounder of UrbanYou and champion for female founders, she can be called on for a broad range of issues facing early-stage startups including growth, operations and strategy particularly as they relate to building and scaling marketplace model businesses.
Bill Trestrail
Venture Partner
Bill is a senior technology executive and has veteran of the dotcom wave and beyond. Bill has unique insights on business model design, partnerships, enterprise sales, governance and business intelligence tools.
Richard Tsiang
Venture Partner
Richard is based in Hong Kong with a vast network across many industries and can act as a sounding board for any of our portfolio companies that wish to expand their geographic footprint, particularly related to market entry for startups into Asia.
Anthony Hollis
Venture Partner
Anthony has over 40 years experience as a senior executive across a broad range of diverse roles including business strategy, managing high-performance teams, running businesses, sales, innovation, fundraising, investment and advisory services. He has held various roles as an executive, board member and advisor where he has sustainably grown business for multinationals, Australian Corporates, startups and not-for-profit organisations.
Christian Wanner
Venture Partner
Christian is an exited entrepreneur that co-founded the first pure play profitable online grocery in Europe. Christian led LeShop.ch as CEO to $300Mio in revenues with 4 logistic centers delivering nation-wide in Switzerland, including the first Drive-thru supermarkets in the country. Christian acts as a Senior Advisor to McKinsey & Co on e-commerce and multi-channel projects globally and is also an active venture investor in its own capacity as well as a venture partner with Blacknova and Antler.co.
He is active on a global scale helping companies succeed in their digital transformation and embrace radical change.
Nikhil Pooviah
Venture Partner
Nik is a medical doctor turned entrepreneur based in the United States. He currently works as the co-founder of digital health startup Elly (backed by Google, Snap, Bayer and Morgan Stanley). He practiced and trained as a Radiation Oncology physician in Sydney, Australia for 8 years prior to founding his first Australian startup CancerAid (backed Cedars-Sinai Health System and Techstars). Nik has experience building and operating digital health startups from Australia and scaling them into overseas markets. Having previously been successful on Shark Tank, he also excels at pitching, storytelling and refining the value proposition for startups.
Nik plans to leverage his wide US investor network (1K+) to help our portfolio companies expand into the US market and beyond.
Nik plans to leverage his wide US investor network (1K+) to help our portfolio companies expand into the US market and beyond.