The Company

Headquartered in Richmond, British Columbia, Ideon Technologies (“Ideon” or the “Company”) uses the energy from supernova explosions in space to image down to 1km beneath the Earth's surface. 

A world pioneer in the application of cosmic-ray muon tomography, Ideon provides advanced subsurface intelligence that supports the global shift to clean energy technologies. Ideon is helping accelerate the transition to low-impact mining of critical minerals and metals -- reducing risk, cost, time, and environmental impact of operations across the mining value chain. Muon tomography is the only straight-line geophysical imaging technique available on the market, producing high-resolution, locationally accurate subsurface imaging of density anomalies at depth. These new insights increase geological certainty for mining companies, in turn helping to reduce the need for traditional hit-and-miss drilling, increase the accuracy of mine mapping and monitoring, better characterize in-ground resources, and ultimately contribute to improved mine planning and reserve management. 

Muons are naturally occurring, invisible sub-atomic particles produced by cosmic rays striking the Earth’s atmosphere. As muons pass through the Earth, they lose energy progressively and at an accelerated rate as they encounter higher-density material. Ideon manufactures and deploys proprietary hardware that captures and measures muon activity beneath the Earth. Using customized imaging systems, inversion technologies, and artificial intelligence techniques, the Ideon team then transforms the data into reliable geophysical surveys and 3D density maps that help mining companies target and characterize resources more precisely. 

In June early 2021 Ideon Technologies completed miniaturizing their proprietary imaging sensor by 50x to a form compatible to fitting down industry-standard drill holes. Following this completion, Ideon successfully deployed the world’s first cosmic-ray muon detector in Saskatchewan with top uranium producer, Orano Group. At current state, Ideon has deployed, or is in the process of deploying, dozens of detectors under commercial agreements and in deep collaboration with major mining companies like BHP, Glencore, Vale, Orano and others. 

Ideon’s early success with BHP at their Nickel West operation in Western Australia is documented in a case study and was trumpeted by BHP’s Chief Technology Officer Laura Tyler at Canadian mining mega-conference PDAC 2021. The deployment of Ideon’s borehole muon detectors at BHP Nickel West is part of a multi-year project and the first deployment of the system outside Canada. BHP is also a test-site partner for Ideon’s Digital Supercluster project, a project focused on developing several new proprietary imaging modalities complementary to muon tomography and helping mining companies increase the sustainable production of critical mineral resources needed to fuel the industry’s clean energy transition.

Ideon also deployed muon tomography on Oak Island in October 2021 for the purpose of subsurface anomaly detection and can be seen featured on The History Channel’s hit reality TV show The Curse of Oak Island. 

Ideon Technologies’ innovation and disruption to traditional exploration and subsurface mapping methods has not gone unnoticed. In 2021, the company was shortlisted for Start-up Company of the Year through the BC Tech Association. In April 2021, they were awarded second place in the international Mining Cleantech Challenge, and most recently they were named a finalist by the Richmond Chamber of Commerce for Innovative Enterprise on of the Year. 

In September 2022 Ideon Technologies announced it closed a CAD$21M Series A funding led by Playground Global – a deep-tech VC out of Silicon Valley. The investment will expand Ideon’s production capacity and accelerate the commercialization of its Subsurface Intelligence Platform. In the next 3 years, Ideon seeks to reach CAD$50M in annual revenue and to secure longer-term commercial contracts with new and existing major mining clients.

The Opportunity

Having recently raised $21 million CAD in a Series A, the company is poised to continue strategically expanding its footprint into the industrial market, particularly with key mining clients. At this critical inflection point, Ideon is seeking a new Vice-President, Customer Partnerships to lead the vision, strategy, and execution of its offerings and services. 

This is an opportunity to work with a dynamic technology start-up at one of the most exciting moments in its journey to commercialization. You will be collaborating with company founders and technical experts to advance a ground-breaking solution that will generate significant economic and environmental benefit.

Reporting directly to the CEO & Co-Founder, the VP’s primary mandate will be to drive growth of the company by developing new client relationships, driving meaningful partnerships, and providing consultative, strategic, business development and sales leadership as a domain expert in the technology and mining market. 

This opportunity will appeal to a proven, seasoned, and strategic business development executive who has demonstrated substantial success establishing and growing major client partnerships with C-level decision makers, mine operations experts, and geoscience experts. This requires an inquisitive mind and the technical aptitude to articulate compelling value propositions and deliver meaningful outcomes for clients and a collaborative leadership approach that is “hands on”. An entrepreneurial mindset and experience with B2B, technology-enabled solutions for mining entities are also paramount.

The position will also appeal to a people focused leader who has the ability to lead cross-functional collaboration and build a strong customer partnerships team. The successful candidate will provide leadership guidance and be a culture-carrier for the company as part of the executive team.

Position: VP, Customer Partnerships

Location: Richmond, BC

Reporting Relationship: Gary Agnew, CEO

Website: https://ideon.ai 

Key Responsibilities

During the early days of this role, as the company scales up rapidly, you will also have personal targets to deliver against in addition to the following broader responsibilities: 

• Leadership: Model authentic leadership behaviors, provide guidance, and steward team talent, fostering a culture of accountability, professionalism, performance, respect, and ethical behavior. 
• Go-to-market strategy: Refine and execute against our go-to-market strategy, aligning customer partnership objectives with company strategy, applying critical and aspirational thinking.
• Product-market fit: Work with customers to understand their problems and leverage that deep knowledge to advise internally about the solutions that Ideon can provide. Provide insight to the Ideon product development and geoscience teams to let them know what technical success looks like for the customer. 
• Relationship management: Work across customer organizations to effectively manage engagement with technical teams, innovation, centers of excellence, middle management, and executive teams to successfully identify opportunities and to ensure that Ideon is strategically positioned to capture them.
• Pipeline management: Make the customer relationship management platform an integral part of developing a high-performance go-to-market capability, centered on the customer.
• Results: Close deals and meet bold targets for conversion volume, strategic growth, and other key objectives. 
• Operations and resourcing: Develop and grow a knowledgeable and dynamic solution-based organization (including role definition, recruitment, performance management etc.). Develop and manage the customer partnerships budget, assessing needs and recommending investments in line with our strategic objectives.
• Professional development: Champion professional development initiatives to enhance the customer partnerships team’s effectiveness, productivity, and technical acumen.

Year One Critical Success Factors

Within the first 12 months in the role, the Vice-President, Customer Partnership will have:

•  A deep understanding of Ideon’s market position and competitive opportunities and will have refined and advanced the execution of the go-to-market strategy and plan.
• Developed strong relationships with key decision makers within Ideon’s current and future customer base.
• Determined and put in place the standards, processes, and methodologies to engage prospective clients most effectively. 
• Established an internal customer partnerships team of 2 to 3 people with the requisite guidance, structure, skills, morale, and culture. 
• Developed a robust deal pipeline and converted key opportunities into commercial agreements.

The Candidate

Experience and Professional Qualifications

• Master of Business Administration or equivalent. 
• Undergraduate or advanced degree in Earth sciences, engineering, or equivalent. 
• Minimum fifteen years of business development or sales management experience in a technology-based, business-to-business environment. 
• Minimum ten years’ experience directly inside or supporting the mining industry.
• A proven track record of excellence in growing customer partnerships, modelling leadership behavior, and building high-performance teams.
• Demonstrated experience in leveraging the full power of a sales and marketing-centered CRM platform.

Skills and Competencies

• Strong communication and presentation skills and an ability to build meaningful relationships with all levels of staff, stakeholders, and clients. 
• Values-based leader, collegial style and possesses a strong sense of integrity and trustworthiness. 
• A willingness to be very hands-on in helping to build the business, doing what it takes to move the company ahead. 
• Ability to roll up his/her sleeves, get into the details of the business, and engage with authenticity at all levels of the organization with cleat communication.
• Executive presence with a low ego and high level of emotional intelligence. 
• Strong commercial acumen and the ability to understand what the company needs to succeed and keep pace with competitors. 

Company Culture 

Ideon places at least significant emphasis during hiring to cultural fit and alignment. This is how they articulate their core values:

Great ideas and rich company culture come from diversity of thought, experience, and perspective. The Ideon culture is anchored in a set of core values that directly shape how we hire, coach, evaluate, and develop our people: 

• Driven by industry, informed by science. We solve industry problems with scientific rigor: listening carefully, analyzing the data, and developing solutions that our clients – and the planet – cannot live without.
• Inspired to create, wired to deliver. We are imaginative, creating new possibilities and embracing the diversity of thought and experience within our team to move with urgency, learn from our failures, and execute masterfully.
• Unified as a team, personally accountable. We have each other’s backs and operate with integrity, respect, and empathy. Success depends on leaving egos at the door, celebrating our differences, delivering promises, and owning the outcome together.
• Boldly ambitious, exceptionally human. We think big and have the courage to blaze new trails. We are in this business to win, but that does not mean we compromise on doing the right thing for our people, our clients, and our world.