About Our Business
After decades in the financial industry spanning across investment banking, asset management and wealth management we decided to devote our skills and energy to things we love, people that inspire us and ideas that get us buzzing.
We love helping driven entrepreneurs with audacious, industry disruptive visions reach their goals. We love connecting people and ideas to create a multiplier effect. We love leveraging our global network to hear from the best.
The Team
Milena Nikolova
Managing Partner
Milena has over 20 years of finance experience across investment banking, wealth management and venture capital investing.
Milena has been an active angel investor and startup adviser since 2015. Aside from being Founding Principle at Therion Advisers, she is also a Member of the Board and Venture Partner at Aera VC, a visionary venture capital firm focusing on reversing climate change through deep technology. Further, she is a Venture Partner in Antler, a global early stage VC that enables the founding of about 200 startups per year and an adviser with Plug and Play in the fintech and insurtech verticals.
Prior to that as Executive Director at UBS Investment Bank in London, she advised leading European banks and insurance companies on M&A and IPO transactions totalling over $10bn. In Wealth Management in Singapore, she worked with ultra high net worth individuals on a wide spectrum of topics, including financial assets allocation, wealth planning or corporate structuring.
Milena also devotes considerable time to charitable causes. She is a partner at Women on a Mission which aims to raise awareness and funds for women survivors of war or abuse. Together with Ivan they also established ReachOut.BG, a Bulgarian children's charity.
Milena is a CFA Charterholder and holds an MSc in International Accounting and Finance from the LSE.
Ivan Vatchkov
Managing Partner
Ivan Vatchkov is a private investor focusing on fintech, healthtech and edtech. He is the founder of Kalibra.ai, your digital health and wellbeing compass.
Prior to this he was a hedge fund portfolio manager for over 10 years at multi-billion dollar funds GAMA and Algebris Investments (Asia) in Singapore.
He has been a member of the Young Global Leader community at the World Economic Forum since 2014. Ivan’s expertise has been acknowledged and extensively quoted by Bloomberg™, Asian Investor™, CNBC™, Reuters™, FT™ and the Wall Street Journal™.
He is recognized as a thought leader in financial regulation, compensation incentive reform and the new Basel III hybrid debt market (‘CoCos’). Prior to Algebris Investments Ivan was a Director in the CFO office of Credit Suisse Investment Bank and an equity analyst at Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank.
Ivan holds an MSc in International Accounting and Finance from the LSE and is a CFA charterholder. Ivan and Milena are engaged in extensive philanthropic work having established ReachOut.BG, a children’s charity based in Bulgaria dedicated to the support and education of abandoned children.