Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay, and his wife, Pam, established Omidyar Network (ON) (Linkedin, Crunchbase) based on the belief that every person has the potential to make a difference. We make venture capital investments and grants to innovative organizations that create opportunities for individuals.
The firm invests across 5 key initiatives: Education, Emerging Technology, Financial Inclusion, Governance and Citizen Engagement, and Property Rights. In addition, ON has begun investing across the following new domains: Digital Identification, Technology & Society and Energy Access. This role will have the opportunity to work closely with investment leads across each initiative with the goal of maximizing both social and financial impact for all for-profit and non-profit investments. Since 2004, we have invested over $1B in for-profit investments and non-profit grants.
Energy Access is one of ON’s newest areas of focused work. Over 2 billion people worldwide lack access to reliable energy, and 60% of them have no electricity at all. We believe dependable access to electricity, for those who are totally disconnected or faced with unreliable power, enables people to achieve a higher quality of life and is a fundamental building block to economic empowerment. At ON we are focused on identifying business models and technology driven solutions addressing the issues of access, reliability, and affordability, which are necessary to achieve universal access to energy. In this new focus area, ON expects to play a range of roles, including investing in entrepreneurs and innovations, as well as market-changing policy/research interventions.
POSITION SUMMARY:
The Director/EIR will be a seasoned investor playing a key role in testing the early investment hypothesis, crafting an investment strategy, and evaluating investment opportunities. S/he will be responsible for guiding investment priorities, deepening pipeline opportunities, and thinking creatively about the key areas of intervention for ON capital. In addition to being responsible for sourcing and completing new investment opportunities, s/he will work with investees to help them achieve critical business and impact milestones. Ideal candidates will provide technical expertise in energy and
in investing. They will also bring a keen operational perspective to the ON Energy Access
team. Either full-time or contractor role is an option and the location is flexible.
Specific responsibilities include:
• Focus on execution & ongoing refinement of the investment strategy:
o Build and develop pipeline of emerging market investments o Source new opportunities
o Deal structuring and execution
o Management of portfolio companies
o Constructing balanced investment portfolio
o Learning/capturing feedback
o Identify potential areas and approaches for influence beyond direct investments
- Help build the team’s thought leadership, network, and brand in the energy access ecosystem including identifying technologies and markets ripe for innovation and disruption
- Represent ON engagement at multi-stakeholder initiatives and sector convenings
- Draft case studies, blog posts, and articles on topics related to energy access
- Oversee agenda for continuous learning
- Guide annual progress reporting to ON partnership and board of directors
- Take up other responsibilities as necessary
Desired Skills and Experience:
- 10+ years of experience, including 5+ years focus on energy
- Deep passion for ensuring universal access to energy
- Experience sourcing, evaluating and structuring invest-able opportunities in the energy or cleantech sector.
- Demonstrates deep domain knowledge, and clear understanding of technical and business model challenges present in the emerging market energy sector
- Experience representing sector and institutional interests in international settings (e.g. involvement in multi-stakeholder initiatives or steering committees)
- Strong relationships with leaders and experts in the fields of emerging markets energy
- Excellent and clear written and oral communication skills
- Strong strategic mindset and proven ability to innovate, collaborate and translate strategy into action
- Success in developing and maintaining institutional, political, and personal relationships
- Ability to travel internationally as necessary
- High level of comfort with ambiguity and working in a dynamic, rapidly evolving organization
If interested, please apply here.
