Our team
The team behind the Sugarverse have previously developed over 10 games and attracted 60 million players. With experience in XS Games, Gameloft, Crazy Labs and worked with international companies such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Nike, Adidas, and Red Bull.
Nikolay Mitev
Co-founder & CEO
Serial entrepreneur with an extensive experience in Blockchain, gambling, gaming, marketing, shared economy, and knowledge in cryptocurrency industry. Invested in numerous start-ups, some of which got funded millions of dollars and become well-known brands in their industries.
Philip Balkanski
Co-founder & COO
Has spent 16 years in the UK where he completed his education with a Bachelors of Banking and Finance from Cass University. Then went on to establish a tech start-up called Printt that grew to be the largest consumer printing application in the UK with a community of over 450,000 active customers. He spent years growing the company through numerous rounds of financing. Philip is currently passionate about crypto projects and has deep understanding of running large technical teams with a financial background in scaling companies. Founder of Codery – developers outsourcing agency.
Hristo Tenchev
Board Member
Co-founder of LockTrip, HydraChain and Bitcoin7. Founder of XS Software, a gaming company with more than 60M registered players. Co-founder at Softuni - an innovative IT education centre with more than 300,000 students. He was listed in the European Forbes “30 under 30” as one of the most successful entrepreneurs in 2016.
Rado Tenchev
Board Member
An avid gamer since childhood, Radoslav started his career in gaming 12 years ago. Beginning at the lowest ranks and rising through the entire development and marketing processes of a game, became the CEO of XS Software in 2017. Taking on different roles in the company, Radoslav has developed a love for game design and hasn’t stopped creating ideas ever since.
Peter Tsang
Head of Investment
Peter co-founded and acted as strategic thought leader for a virtual multi-family office with asset under management in excess of US$600M. Having established and executed investment decisions across global asset classes particularly stock, private equity, venture capital, blockchain and cryptocurrency, Peter has over 15 years of financial and operational experience from both private and public companies. He has invested in 4 fast-growing, early and growth stage tech companies (Applicaster, Guesty, Bizzabo and Similarweb), resulting 1 IPO. He also advises hedge funds, family offices and institutional investors to manage and trade physical art as a digital form of ownership certificate (NFT). Director of Investor Relations in Animal Concerts.
Iliyan Markov
CTO Sugarverse
CTO - 10+ years of experience in devops, cloud infrastructure, backend development, product development, network management and team management. Worked for companies listed on NASDAQ, worked for companies servicing the needs of the creative industry in the UK and US like Pinewood studios, Technicolor, Warner Bros, Bad Robot, Universal, Netflix etc. Currently working in the startup environment, building ideas from scratch in a search for that horse like creature with a single horn.
Alex Dimitrov
Games Production Lead
Takes leading role in game development in Sugarverse. Loves to play and create games. With more than 19 years of experience in the gaming industry he has worked on more than 30 web and mobile game titles. The first to become "Unity certified developer" in Eastern Europe. Coaching and mentoring students at Software University on subjects like game development, Unity 3D and C#. Excellent knowledge in software architecture, relational databases, C/C++, C#, PHP, JavaScript. Head of Game Development in one of the largest Bulgarian gaming companies - XS Software, supporting millions of players around the world.
Stanislav Trenev
Head of Blockchain
Blockchain software professional with key expertise in the areas of Web 3.0 development, fintech, blockchain, and entrepreneurship. His experience includes consulting, advising, leading teams, and developing software for both Fortune 500 enterprises, startups, and DAOs. He is also part of the founding teams in several Web 3.0 startups, including Universe.XYZ and CoinbetFi. Stan is particularly passionate about the blockchain space, cryptocurrencies, DeFi, NFTs, smart contract programming, and token economics.
Maxim Dimitrov
Mobile developer
Enjoys creative problem-solving projects. Currently a senior mobile developer, highly proficient with over 5 years of experience. Previously has been involved in crypto projects as a developer. Maxim has developed a wide range of mobile applications using Kotlin, Flutter, Swift. He believes his main skills come from the ability to learn quickly and efficiently, helping with project management, as well as the others from the team. In the Sugarverse he is responsible for designing, creating and implementing client facing web and mobile interfaces.
Alex Karaatanasov
iOS Lead
Extremely passionate about iOS development and automation. With over 5 years of experience in iOS development, he has worked on applications scaling hundreds of thousands of monthly users. Aleks is an expert with Swift and has great understanding of developing AR projects using the Apple AR kit. Very energetic and highly motivated, Aleks is leading the Team for iOS development in the Sugarverse.
Niya
2D Concept Artist
Game conceptual artist and thinker, workaholic and chocoholic, trying to find inspiration in anything and everything. 2D Concept artist responsible for the environments and the background art in Sugarverse. Previous experience ranges from traditional portrait commissions and illustrations for books to work on indie video game development.
Kali
2D Animator
Consistently working for success and improvements. She can bring forth the ability to design complex animation elements, edit static images to produce the illusion of motion. She pushes the limits of time, using and cheating with scripts. 2D animator in Sugarverse, responsible for Idle effects, bringing the characters to life and creating the UI/UX for the website. Successfully completed several projects in the gaming industry, and is highly passionate to grow within the sphere.
Stella
Lead UI/UX & Graphic design
Incredibly passionate about graphic design and focused on the UI/UX part of the Sugarverse. Stella is leading the branding for the Sugarverse and ensures our users can navigate through the interface of the platform. Stella has previously worked on hugely popular mobile app designs and has focused on perfecting user flows for over 3 years now. Incredibly passionate about making the Sugarvese look as magical as it can be to entice its audience.
Drew
Virtual production director
Working in the industry for 10 years with Unreal Engine, Blender and Adobe suite. Worked with brands like Nike, Adidas, LG, Lakenzie and artists like Slimesunday, Carl Cox and Ben Klock. Highly passionate about his work and always strives for perfection.
Angel Danchev
Creative Lead & Partnerships
After graduating, started working as a graphic designer for 3 years then focused on animations and cinematography. Angel has directed music videos, commercials, documentaries for clients like Mercedes Benz, BMW, Nivea, Red Bull, The Flying Bulls, Sebastian Steudtner, Telenor, EVN and many more. Living for a year in Portugal where he got the chance to wrap a bunch of successful campaigns with big wave surfer Sebastian Steudtner and Mercedes Benz. Angel is incredibly passionate about the creative direction of the Sugarverse and overall, about branding of the crypto economy.
Rosen
Head of 3D
Rosen is a 2d/3d artist and animator. His love for creating characters and creatures has helped shape several worlds in the entertainment industry. With over four years of professional experience in the game development and eye for clean and elegant design, he oversees the team that will design the SugerVerse. Highly skilled in Autodesk’s Maya, Blender and other Adobe products, Rosen has the skill and knowledge to comfortably lead the 3D teams at the Sugarverse.
Alex
3D artist
Alex is a specialist 3D artist with a high degree of attention to detail and professional approach. Previously worked for many high-end fashion brands on their 3d assets for advertising campaigns. Alex is currently in charge of building world assets for the Sugarverse and photorealistic environment assets for the mobile games. He is a specialist in Autodesk’s Maya and with high proficiency in many other software products. In the office he most commonly identifies himself as a Cactus.
Stivan
3D artist
Stivan is very passionate about 3D modelling and enjoys the process of creating. He is very flexible and can work in a team and individually when needed. Highly skilled in Blender, 3DS Max and Adobe suite, Stivan helps to shape the world in Sugarverse.
Danny
2D/3D artist
Self-driven creative professional with 4 + years of experience animating for 2D/3D mobile titles in a competitive environment. Sugarverse allowed him to bring forth the ability to provide creative direction for captivating visuals - static and in motion that shape the overall style of this universe. What started as a childhood passion led him to pursue training in Film and Animation which in turn brought him into the world of game development which further expanded his skillset in animating complex elements and characters to produce the illusion of motion and life.
advisors
Previously released successful crypto projects, companies and games, our advisory board is the solid backbone for the long-term success of the Sugarverse.
Nikola Alexandrov
Nikola is a co-founder and ideator of HydraChain (HYDRA) and CEO of LockTrip.com (LOC). He has seven years of experience with liquidity and HFT systems. He co-founded the Bitcoin7 exchange, top 3 by volume back in 2011. CEO of theSEO.bg agency. Nikola holds a BA in Business Administration from Portsmouth University.
Anders Christiansen
Founder of Priority Group & an active business advisor in multiple crypto projects. I have operated my own Recruitment company for over a decade, and I firmly believe in providing a genuine human and real considered approach to recruitment with a high level of EQ to our partners. I provide specialist recruitment services within the Blockchain and Crypto space since 2019, representing several exceptional projects at both advisory and consultancy level, having built a number of global teams through careful consideration towards skillset and culture fit, including collaboration with our many partners across Web3 to create engaging teams fulfilling their global ambitions.
James Boyce
Financial Advisor
Financial Advisor - James has over 11 years of experience in derivatives trading. In 2010 James moved to London where he became a discretionary global macro trader at Tower Trading Group (TTG). While at TTG James gained experience in the traditional markets trading a wide variety of products in FX, Bonds, Commodities and Equities. In 2017 James first invested in cryptocurrencies and started to determine ways by which he could use his experience to profit from them. He moved to Panima Capital Management in October 2018 to further his knowledge and experience, as well as to trade within a hedge fund environment. As the opportunities grew in the cryptocurrency space, James focused his attention in this area, drawing on his wealth of experience in his traditional derivatives trading career. In late 2020 new and diverse protocols started to appear that allowed for new and exciting opportunities. James launched Quinn Digital Assets Fund in 2022 with a focus solely on cryptocurrency assets and decentralised finance.