Positive impact, employment opportunities, and maximized overall outcome for stakeholders is how CEO/Founder Brian Pallas describes Opportunity Network. Before founding Opportunity Network, Brian worked at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), where he gained experience in private equity and investment banking.
Founded in 2013, Opportunity Network is a platform where members can anonymously post and connect to actionable deals and business opportunities ranging from early-stage funding to M&A, investment, financing, and commercial partnerships, both domestically and globally. Positioned as s a safe business environment, the platform simplifies deal sourcing for highly vetted chief executives and private investors worldwide.
In a recent interview with Opportunity Network’s Brian Pallas, TechCity discussed the company’s unique services and how growth—and global recognition—are on the horizon.
TechCity: What unique business problem does Opportunity Network solve and what is a good example of how the company is doing that?
Brian Pallas: Most companies’ success is driven by having access to the right people at the right time. Whether it’s finding an investor to raise capital, new clients for expansion, or new suppliers in times of crisis. These are the things that separate winners from losers, sometimes even more than the quality of one’s product or service.
At Opportunity Network, we dream of a world where it won’t matter whether you’re located in New York, Florence, Nigeria, or Tanzania, nor whether you’re a large international company or a small local one. A real global level playing field where every entrepreneur has equal access to business opportunities and grows based on merit.
Our purpose is to foster economic growth on a global scale, by providing all reputable CEOs and investors worldwide with equal access to business opportunities. Our platform combines cutting-edge algorithms with a dedicated account management service to connect our members to reliable counterparts for all their commercial, fundraising, investing, and M&A needs, both locally and globally.
TechCity: Who exactly are your clients/customers?
Brian Pallas: We serve CEOs and investors with a minimum threshold of revenues or liquid assets. We have two membership tiers, LITE and Premier, starting from $250k and $2.5M respectively.
Every member goes through a screening process to ensure their legitimacy.
Thus far we had zero cases of attempted fraud over a total of $410Bn in deal flow and more than 100,000 direct introductions, so we are pleased with how well our screening is working. 3. What’s the biggest thing Opportunity Network is working on at the moment?
What makes the network effective is the critical mass of vetted and reliable members ensuring that you will always find the right counterpart for your opportunity.
When we started, it took us 6 months to find 1 counterpart – and we would find one in only 20% of cases. Today, after 7 years of hard work, it takes us 48 hours to find, on average, 4 counterparts in over 70% of cases.
Network effects make this growth exponential and we are working to ensure that next year we will be able to match 95% of opportunities with 10 counterparts in just a few hours.
TechCity: Taking into account your unique role in providing access to new B2B opportunities around the globe, what are some of the biggest risks to Opportunity Network?
Brian Pallas: Well, if we were to onboard a good percentage of all reliable CEOs, rather than facilitating the Enterprise Sales market ($100k – $10Bn market), we would become the main conduit for it. As platforms, Amazon and Alibaba go through significant scrutiny from regulations due to their power to drive market dynamics.
What we would have to face would be even more significant because the decisions we make as a company would have the potential to shift market dynamics between countries.
TechCity: How is Opportunity Network poised to make a significant impact in the face of these risks?
Brian Pallas: Our impact on society will undoubtedly be very positive. We stand to create employment opportunities and to ensure that the best companies will thrive, regardless of their location.
Regulation is a welcome process as long as it’s meant to maximize the overall outcome for all stakeholders involved.
Alibaba created 30M jobs in 22 years. How many can we create if we get to scale this platform?
TechCity: As you think about the future of Opportunity Network, what are you most excited about?
Brian Pallas: We are creating something that never existed before and that stands to create millions of jobs once it reaches scale. It may eliminate the cost of missed opportunities from our society, as any entrepreneur with a good idea will always be able to speak with reliable partners to work with.
It would be hard not to get excited with prospects like these.
TechCity: What are the company’s five-year projections?
Brian Pallas:
- Scale the platform until it’s known globally as the place where CEOs do business.
- Provide vetted counterparts to all the reliable CEOs we come across.
- Being able to start counting in a concrete way the number of jobs we are creating by helping CEOs grow their companies. Ideally, that number will already be in the 7 digits.