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Carbon accounting company Optera just raised a $12 million Series A with this redacted 7-slide pitch deck
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- Carbon accounting startup Optera just a raised $12 million Series A round.
- The fresh funds come from Next Frontier Capital and will be used to expand into Europe and Asia-Pacific.
- We got a look at the 7-slide pitch deck the company used to raise the cash.
US carbon accounting company Optera has raised $12 million in Series A funding.
The Colorado-based firm, founded in 2006 as a boutique consultancy, helps big companies measure, track, and report their emissions. It pivoted to software in 2016 when it set about productizing its in-house consulting.
Carbon accounting boomed in 2021, with freshly-spawned companies drawing in record amounts of venture capital off the back of increased awareness of the climate crisis. The busy market is now primed for consolidation, but Optera CEO Tim Weiss told Insider that his company stood out from the crowd due to its decade and a half of experience.
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“There were a lot of folks that entered this market that felt like [it was] another data problem in the corporate world,” he said. Many thought they could build an automated “workflow optimization thing,” send it out into the world, and scale, he added.
“The challenge is, we’re helping companies measure and manage the emissions from literally everything that they do, from every corner of their supply chain to every product they sell, to investors, to every asset they manage. This is just really hard, there’s no getting around it.”
This is especially the case for the largest companies in the world, “which are going to be the ones that are most critical in this transition to the low carbon economy.” Such companies have sprawling supply chains across verticals, sectors, and geographies, and therefore sprawling emissions that are difficult to measure.
That’s what led Optera to hone in on Scope 3 emissions, which refer to those that lie in a company’s value chain. Optera has to collect emissions data from suppliers that is accurate and comparable, but that is just one piece of the puzzle, Weiss said.
For example, a chip maker may have a big footprint from the chemicals it uses in the manufacturing process. This then has a knock-on effect on the footprint of electronics companies who use those chips, he said.
“Our customers are helping innovate with their suppliers on how they can improve the chip-making process. That engagement, collaboration, is happening on our product,” he added.
“It enables them to ultimately create action plans for their most mature suppliers and their least mature suppliers. Really, what we’re trying to do is help centralize the activities that are happening across dozens, hundreds, of suppliers and say ‘here’s the touch point this quarter for this entity’.”
Optera boasts the likes of Dell, HPE , Grove Collaborative, and Williams-Sonoma on its client list. It has so far been focused on North America but plans to grow its presence in Europe and Asia-Pacific with the fresh funds.
Currently a team of 60, headcount will also expand with a focus on go-to-market and sales.
The round was led by existing investor Next Frontier Capital, with participation from Blackhorn Ventures, Mucker Capital, Overture, Engage, Massive, SaaS Ventures, Valo Ventures, AngelList, and Stout Street Capital.
It brings Optera’s total raised to $17 million.
Check out the 7-slide redacted pitch deck below:
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