🧑‍🤝‍🧑Team (Tribe)

Who is in our Tribe?

Co-Founder & CEO: David Matz

David is a serial entrepreneur/innovator with many years of experience overseeing daily business functions and improving overall business functions. He is a strong decision maker and a excellent client relationship builder. His experience with taking calculated risk and being a business owner over the past 20+ years has enabled his past business ventures to be very profitable. With a proven capacity to multi-task, utilize time management, a positive attitude, and the ability to develop successful team environments. He is also a Certified Blockchain Expert with 4 years of crypto trading, market research, and using technical analysis to make long term and short term investments.

Co-Founder & CTO: Kristian Matz

Kristian is the technical partner of the project and lead on how we specifically want the game to run and what direction the games ecosystem should have. He has experience in search engine optimization, experience in website development, experience in graphic design and user interface design, also has been in the crypto space for 5+ years with crypto consulting and investing. He is heavily involved and invested in ICOs & start ups and has a passion for finding great projects. As the vice president of operations in his last venture he worked closely with the companies president to offer strategic vision to help the company become more profitable, produce high-quality services, and meet its production goals.

Co-Founder & COO: Mohammed Arif Ansari

Mohammed Arif Ansari comes with more than eighteen years of leadership experience in operations, planning, IT and strategy with Tier 1 Global MNCs, Fortune 500 and the Big 4 consulting firms.
 He has extensive experience as a Co-founder and COO in setting up and scaling Fintech startups; Co-founded a crypto exchange in Europe and launched a payment company in India.
 He holds an Engineering degree, a MBA (Systems & International Business) and is a PMP certified professional, currently pursuing a Master's in Digital Currencies from the University of Nicosia, Cyprus.
 He is a Certified Global CIO from the ISB (Indian School of Business), the no. 1 Business school in India. Mohammed sits on the advisory board of many successful ICOs, IEOs, STOs, NFT and Defi projects. In the past, he has been instrumental in setting up and successfully scaling up offshore practices (Global Delivery Model) for a few MNCs.

CFO: Barbara Branikova

Barbara is an accounting professional with over 20 years of experience possessing a multitude of skills. She is proficient in audit reviews, budgeting, cash management, financial statement reporting, fixed assets, general ledger reconcilitations, and trend analysis. Barbara will play a vital role of managing and overseeing accounting department tasks pertaining to account receivables and payables, general ledger, payroll activities, and budgeting; and cash forecasting; establishing and enforcing proper accounting methods, and completing annual audits of the company.

Chief Director of Game Design & Economy: Tsahi Liberman

Tsahi joins our team with over 17 years experience as a gaming entrepreneur, game designer, and developer. With 10+ years in various roles of technology, data analysis, game design, narrative design, business development and partnership roles. He has worked on several blockchain/cryptocurrency game projects as part of research to create NFT and examine game mechanics. With experience using Rust, Solidity, React, and working with Tera Network, Celo, Solana, and various other platforms. Tsahi was also Head of Product and Strategic Partnerships at All iN! and led strategic partnerships with Valve, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, and Sony PS teams.

Senior Unity 3D Game Developer: Ufuk Coban

Ufuk has over 20 years experience as sound engineer, system programmer, system architect, software programmer, and game developer. Using advance level Unity 3D, Ufuk has developed games for MacOS, Windows, Apple IOS, Android, Windows Store Apps, and WebGL. He also has vast experience in the development of VR, using Oculus Quest, Oculus Rift, Oculus Go, HTC Vive, HTC Vive Focus Plus, HDK2, and Pimax. We will also use his talent with game graphics as he has experience using Modo, ZBrush for modeling, Photoshop, and Affinty Designer. Ufuk’s past involvement as a sound and electronics engineer will help assist in creating the sounds effects for our game.

Senior Blockchain Developer: Devis Pei

Devis is a Certified Blockchain Developer and experienced in developing Rust smart contracts, Solidity smart contracts, and JavaScript with years of experience in cryptocurrency blockchains such as Ethereum, Polygon, Immutable X and Layers 2s like Solana. He has created Solana SPL tokens,NFT, and remodeled dApps. His vast history has allowed his skill sets to be utilized in a multitude of projects.

Lead Art Director: Randy Emberlin

Randy Emberlin is a comic book artist/inker and animator who has spent the past 30 years working in a variety of creative fields. Whether as a comic book artist, an illustrator of educational books or an animator on over 50 television commercials, he has made his presence felt through his style and sensibilities.

Over the last 25 years Randy Emberlin is best known for his work as an inker on over 4000 pages of comic art, with a resume that includes long runs for Marvel on Amazing Spider-Man #339- 410, (Co-Creator of Carnage, Maximum Carnage etc.) Web of Spider-Man #117-129, (the Clone Saga), GI Joe #65-126, (5 years) Doctor Strange/Strange Tales #76-81 & #1-19, (3years) and Alien Legion #8-20 (2 years), plus additional work on the X-men, Avengers, Punisher, Silver Surfer, She Hulk, the Defenders, Quicksilver, Captain America and Conan.

Senior 3D Artist: Paul Rodriquez

Paul Rodriguez is a 20 year veteran digital artist with proven work in CG, Graphic Design, Web Design, Advertising, and Event Promotion. He received his Bachelor of Fine Art in Graphic Design from Boise State in 2005, and went on to work for Primedia and SPIKE.com. In 2009 he chased a dream of competing as a professional skydiver, and placed 6th in the World Games in Poland 2017. After retiring from professional skydiving, he went back to school and earned a Master of Fine Art in Animation & Visual Effects from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, where he has honed his craft in modeling and texturing 3D assets for the film and game industries.

2D Element Artist: Wenbo Shi

Wenbo is a game designer and a very talented artist with over 7 years of working experience. He started his career as a 3D artist at Doodle Mobile. Later, he focused on 2D design and became a freelance designer, providing outsourcing services for many companies and customers around the world. He has participated in the design of many games, such as Knives Out, Killing Floor 2, Warship Attack 3D, Sniper Shot 3D, and many other games. Most of the 2D artwork you see in Apeball was created by Wenbo.

Legal Counsel: Daniel Florescu

Daniel is a practicing attorney specializing in international commercial law and privacy law, with a deep understanding of the legal frameworks surrounding emerging technologies, digital assets, blockchain and NFTs. He is also a Contract Law Teaching Assistant, currently completing a PhD in International Commercial Law. Daniel runs his own legal practice, dealing mainly with international corporate clients and has been involved as an advisor in multiple gaming and blockchain projects.

Social Media and Marketing Manager: Chelsea Birano

Chelsea Birano is a graphic designer and social media specialist with years of successful experience in B2B and B2C marketing management. Her years of experience has led to various marketing internships with Hawaii Law Enforcement, her art work shown in Olympia Art Museum, and working for a Washington State University student newspaper program. She inspires to grow her skills in cryptocurrency and the gaming industry while regularly staying up to date with the latest market trends on social media. Among her peers she is driven and believes in the power of positive thinking. Aside from working, Chelsea enjoys traveling and spending time with her family.

Advisors:

Advisor: Travis Zang

Travis is a unconventional hustler and self-starter, focusing on global business development and growth strategy. He has 13 years of work experience and 7 years of business development & ops with 6 years focusing on team management specializing in business development in fintech and cryptocurrency. Travis currently sits as an advisor on a few crypto gaming projects and will be assisting the Apeball team on a advisory level.