Welcome to issue #1

As the days of summer are slowly fading, I’m ready to embrace the ‘back-to-school’ energy that September brings and am feeling excited for new projects and a fruitful end to 2024.??

One of those new projects is this newsletter we're launching today, which we hope will be a useful digest of news, events and fundraising in the UK climate sector.??

We will publish an issue every fortnight and will alternate between two formats; a monthly digest of the latest industry news, and a monthly Q&A with an expert, where we deep-dive into a topic related to startup growth.???

In everything we do at Above & Beyond Recruitment, we try to create as much value for the climate startup sector as possible. Whether that be through our Climate Pioneers Show podcast series, our Climate Tech Pioneers Slack community or our bi-monthly roundtable events.??

So, we are keen to hear feedback on what you enjoy (or don’t) about the newsletter month by month, and we'd love to hear your suggestions on content you’d find useful, so please don’t be afraid to get in touch.?

One of the things I’m often asked, is how I’m finding the job market at the moment. Well, 2024 has definitely been a better year than 2023, with confidence returning to the market, more fundraises closed and more vacancies being registered. Q1 and Q2 were busy with a steady flow of new clients and vacancies but we started to see activity tail-off through June and July, which coincided with the election period. It’s always interesting to see how the slightest uncertainty around the wider economic or political landscape affects hiring decisions so quickly. August and September have seen a return to the growth we saw at the start of the year, and we are hopeful that the final quarter of 2024 will be a busy one!?

So, if you’re thinking of growing your team this year, feel free to get in touch. I’d be happy to chat about how we can help. For now, please enjoy issue #1 of the newsletter and let us know what you’d like to see more of in future issues.

Cherry

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There are so many fantastic companies, investors and individuals in the climate space. We’ll be featuring some of them here, in our Spotlight section, so you can make new connections and keep track of the wider industry.?

This month, we’re spotlighting Zero Carbon Capital .

Zero Carbon Capital is a VC fund investing in pre-seed and seed stage companies across Europe that are on a mission to fix climate change through deep science innovation.??

They look for hard-tech solutions that have the potential to make half a gigaton-level reductions of CO2e at scale; and have vision-aligned, ambitious teams to go with them.?

Recent investments have included: Cambridge Electric Cement, RepAir, Climate Crop and Ionate and they are keen to speak to visionary founders with moonshot ideas.?

In the latest series of our podcast the Climate Pioneers Show , we sat down with Pippa Gawley , Founding Partner of Zero Carbon Capital, where she shared her journey into the world of investment, more about the fund’s investment thesis and her thoughts on the challenges around scaling deep tech startups.??

You can watch the interview here or listen to the podcast on Spotify here.

If you’re working on something that you think could be the right fit for Zero Carbon Capital, you can drop them a line.?

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Every week we speak to exceptional people who are looking for new roles within climate and we want to do our best to showcase them to our founder community.??

Each issue we will be highlighting two climate jobseekers that have stood out to us over the last month, and who we think would add significant value in an early-stage startup.??

If you’d like to learn more about them and maybe even arrange an introductory call with them, please get in touch on [email protected] or via DM.??

This is just a snapshot of some of the brilliant people we speak to each month. So, if your current hiring needs are different to the skills found below, do get in touch. There’s a good chance we’ll know someone to match your requirements.

?? Chief of Staff - Hybrid (London) - expected salary ￡85k+? They have worked in a wide range of environments including consulting, charities, a hardware / software tech scale-up and a pre-seed climate tech startup. Giving them well-rounded experience and showing they are easily adaptable to new environments. Over the last year they've been supporting a very early-stage startup in food waste working across sales, customer onboarding, internal processes and internal / external communication. They're now looking for a role as Chief of Staff in an early-stage climate tech startup (pre-seed to series A) where they can work laterally across the business to unblock problems, put processes in place and drive growth. ? ? ?

?? Lead Product Manager / Head of Product - Hybrid (London) - expected salary ￡90k+? After seven years spent working for one of the world's most renowned tech companies; they joined an early-stage climate startup three years ago, focused on reforestation. Over the last three years their focus has been on driving user growth and retention, launching a new B2B product offering to market and improving user experience and user pathways across their suite of products. Now looking for a new challenge in a growing climate tech startup - with a particular interest in marine or forestry restoration and MRV solutions. ? ? ? ?

Congratulations to all the fantastic companies that have closed rounds recently. There are too many to mention them all, but here are a few that caught our eye this month:?

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Signol raised a $3 million seed round, to help companies turn their net zero strategies into meaningful action.?

Soil Capital hit their Series B milestone with €15 million, which will help them push further with regenerative agriculture and spearhead the low-carbon transition of farms.?

Skarper closed a €5.3 million seed round, to transform any bike into an eBike in one click.?

PuriFire Energy also finalised their seed funding at ￡2.7 million. They are pioneering the production of green hydrogen and green methanol to decarbonise the global shipping and chemicals industries.?

tem. closed their Series A raise at ￡10.5 million, as they continue to develop their transactions platform which uniquely matches businesses to multiple renewable energy generators at the right time, optimised to drive fairer prices for all and 100% traceability.

SOLASTA Bio had an oversubscribed $14 million Series A funding round to accelerate their nature-inspired crop protection technology.

Ogre AI secured €3 million to continue to revolutionise energy management through advanced AI technologies.

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After a break over summer, the climate sector event schedule is packed once again with fantastic events across September and October.??

Here are some of the events our team will be at over the next few weeks.??

If you see us, please come over and say hello ???

Please also drop a comment if there’s something we’ve missed, or somewhere you think we should be.

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Wednesday 25th September - Climate Tech Time (in-person, London)?

Thursday 26th September – Zinc portfolio showcase (in-person, London)?

Tuesday 1st October - Conduit Connect Breakfast Club (in-person, London)?

Wednesday 2nd and Thursday 3rd October – Sifted Summit (in-person, London)?

Wednesday 9th October – Women and Climate Dinner (in-person, London)?

Monday 14th – Thursday 17th October – SOSV Summit (virtual)?

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Our events:?

Thursday 10th October – Working in Sustainable Technology (virtual): Reducing Water Waste?

Julien Lancha from Advizzo and Thomas Jacks from Isle Group Ltd will be our speakers. They'll be discussing their individual journeys into the climate space, and telling us about how their companies are working to transform industry best practices and drive more sustainable behaviours around water consumption.

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Wednesday 23rd October – Climate Tech Pioneers (in-person, London): Understanding the Legalities of Fundraising?

The CTP team will be joined by VC lawyer, Fran Spooner . Having covered a range of corporate transactional and advisory work, including M&A and equity and debt finance, Fran now specialises in advising startup and scale-up companies and investors on VC investments. She'll be offering advice and answering all your questions.

This event is aimed at founders and C-suite.?

Spaces are limited, so be sure to register.

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Have you joined our community for UK-based founders, C-suite and investors in climate tech? If you’d like to join us and get access to our bi-monthly roundtable sessions, either comment CTP or drop me a DM and I’ll send you a link to join.?