Blacknova

Black Nova (Black Nova Venture Capital, also referred to as Black Nova Group) is an early-stage venture capital firm headquartered in Sydney, Australia, with an office at 11 Albion Way, Surry Hills. It describes itself as a thematic fund focused on B2B technology companies, investing predominantly in Australian businesses at the pre-seed, Seed and Series A stages, and states it is comfortable investing in pre-revenue companies and writing a company's first cheque.

The firm publishes standard fund terms on its site: a minimum investment of $100K, 20% carried interest, a 2% per annum management fee, and a stated 30% IRR fund objective. Selection criteria emphasise deep domain expertise and a determined, ambitious founding team. Portfolio companies named on the firm's site include Pathzero (carbon management platform), Phantm (clean tech), Avertro (cyber security), Cipherstash (partnered 2020), Kismet (founded 2022), Operata (founded 2018) and OfferFit (founded 2021, partnered 2022); Functionly, RightPaw, Portainer.io and Strawman also appear in founder testimonials and news items on the site.

The team is led by Managing Partner Matthew Browne and General Partner Darcy Naunton, alongside Partner Nick Tonkin, Principal and Head of Investment and Operations Joshua Farrugia, operating partners and a large venture partner bench drawn from operating and founder backgrounds, including Rob Skillington (Chronosphere), Alok Kulkarni (Cyara), Elon Aizenstros (RecordPoint), Scott Handsaker (CyRise), Leena Wood (Winning By Design) and Dan Peters (Uber APAC).