Role: Business Development Associate

Type of Employment: Contract, with the potential to go permanent

Reporting to: GTM Team

Environment: Can start off as Remote. If this role progresses to permanent, it would be London-Hybrid. So you would need to have the right to work in the UK

Contract rate: Competitive

Initial Contract Term: 3 months with notice

Other: We cannot sponsor visas at this time

Please apply even if you do not see yourself meeting every criterion on this job spec. We want to build an inclusive, thriving team that represents the world we want to build and live in. We are led by our Founder/CEO who is a Woman of Colour and deeply values equity and inclusion.

Opna’s Vision

Imagine a thriving, equitable planet where everyone actively participates and benefits from building projects that contribute to a low-carbon economy, safeguarding our environment, and combating climate change. At Opna, we want to make this vision a reality - by unlocking the needed capital for every high-quality climate project that addresses climate change with speed, scale, and equity.

Urgent Challenge

We stand at a pivotal moment in the fight against climate change. We must rapidly undo the centuries-long impact of fossil fuels. This demands an unprecedented infrastructure revolution - we must rapidly scale high-quality climate projects that remove and reduce carbon dioxide from our atmosphere. High-quality carbon removal projects, from afforestation to biochar, to newer/frontier technologies encounter formidable barriers in accessing necessary financing - that’s where Opna comes in. We’re combining data, financing innovation, and technology to help high-quality climate projects access right timed, right sized financing, anywhere in the world.

Our Solution

Opna offers a software platform for climate-action-committed companies to finance and manage high-quality carbon projects in a standardised, transparent, and cost effective way.

The world’s leading climate-action committed companies are moving away from simply buying carbon credits, to directly financing carbon projects. Thousands of other companies, big and small must follow suit, but simply do not have the inhouse resources, expertise, or large budgets to contract with projects in a cost-effective, transparent, and knowledgeable way.

Opna’s software allows companies to discover a wide range of high-quality carbon projects, understand their risk and impact using Opna’s proprietary risk-assessment engine, finance projects using standardised tools and finally, monitor and report on projects’ post financing.

We’re making carbon projects financing more accessible, cheaper and 100% transparent, enabling companies big and small to take credible climate action. This also helps solve the massive project financing gap and brings net-new supply of high quality carbon projects to the market.

Our Team

We are HQ’ed in London but also have team members in Berlin and Barcelona. Collectively we have deep experience and expertise across capital markets, carbon markets, startups climate finance, and FinTech. We hold each other accountable and give regular and open communication. We share our optimism for finding solutions to climate change. We’re gritty and actively practise empathy. We are serious about our work, but don’t take ourselves too seriously!

We are backed by leading multi-stage and climate tech VCs such as Atomico, Pale Blue Dot, My Climate Journey and supported by unicorn founders and accomplished operators from Klarna, Stripe, Eventbrite and Kinnevik amongst others.

Requirements

Your Mission

We are looking for a motivated, climate-inclined Business Development Associate (this role will start off as contract, with the potential to go permanent but for now this will be a 3 month contract). Your mission is to enable success for the GTM team by identifying new business opportunities, conducting market research, and being the swiss-army knife (from social media, to content, to lead generation) to help our customers and the Opna GTM team succeed.

Responsibilities:

1. Lead Generation: Proactively identify and research potential clients through various channels, including online research, networking events, and industry publications.
2. Market Analysis: Conduct market analysis to understand industry trends, competition, and potential areas for business expansion.
3. Policy Analysis: Stay on top of changing policy landscape in the carbon removal/voluntary carbon market landscape.
4. GTM Support: Collaborate with the GTM squad to develop and execute strategies, including collateral creation, presentations, and client follow-ups.
5. Pipeline Management: Track and manage our CRM and pipeline, providing weekly updates and reports to the team
6. Collaboration: Work closely with members across the team, helping them with adhoc tasks related to product, marketing etc.

We think you will thrive here if...

• You want to dedicate your skills and experience to solving climate challenges - We are an early stage company building in a nascent market.
• You care deeply about customer and business needs and see technology as the most effective way to solve them.
• You can prioritise effectively
• You want to, and are comfortable working in an early stage/resource constrained environment, where your role may stretch beyond the initial remit.

Qualifications:

• Proven experience in business development, sales, GTM or a related role.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills.
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team.
• Excellent organizational and time management skills.
• Goal-oriented with a demonstrated ability to meet or exceed targets.
• Familiarity with CRM software and other relevant tools

Strongly preferred:

• Previous experience in a startup
• Genuine interest in working on climate
• High level of comfort with lead generation, email-outreach, Linkedin Sales Navigator and similar tools
• Experience with CRMs
• Experience with Google slides, Canva etc
• Comfortable operating with startup Tech tools such as Miro, Gsuite, Slack etc

Character:

• Extreme sense of ownership and urgency to get stuff done, to a high standard.
• Thrives on clear communication and expectation setting
• Thrives with high accountability, high visibility, and high-impact career
• Confident in their ability to proactively collaborate and be autonomous
• Resilient, hard working, and robust to changing environments. Will roll their sleeves up and fight the fires when needed
• Wants the scrappiness that’s the hallmark of early-stage startups while holding high the importance of rigour and robustness in delivering quality solutions for clients.

Interview Process

We aim for this process to be swift, pragmatic, and friendly!

• Internal screening
• Video call with our CEO, Shilps/our GTM team
• Practical assessment and Debrief with Shilps and the GTM Team
• Meet the team
• References to Offer

We know that diversity is multifaceted and intersectional, and we want to build a company where different identities and perspectives can come together to deliver on our mission and vision. We are a venture-backed company founded and led by a woman of colour. 75% of our team today has their roots in the global south, and a majority of our investors identify as women. We speak English, Hindi, Spanish and French across our team.