What does Catalyst actually do?
That sounds simple, and in many ways, it is. Still, nearly two years ago I found myself wrestling with an uncomfortable question: what exactly is Catalyst? Are we a technology company? A SaaS solution? An administrative services provider? On paper, I could clearly explain what we did. We had built our own registration platform, managed data for thousands of participants, supported multiple collective actions, and clients paid us a fixed monthly fee for those services. Business was good. Yet something did not quite feel right. Whenever a client asked me how on earth I managed to organize all that work, I would often answer, 'It's simply a matter of putting the right people in the right places.' While that was true to some extent, it did not really capture how Catalyst operates. Those people are not an afterthought, they are part of the product itself. Clients are not looking for a piece of software with a few people behind it. They are looking for someone who understands what needs to be done and can organize the right people and processes around it.
That realization became much clearer at the TLTF Summit in Miami last autumn. At the legal tech conference, I found myself surrounded by CEOs of companies that had just raised twenty million dollars in funding, yet often had very few customers. I explained that Catalyst was already supporting thirteen collective actions, that every underlying foundation paid us a fixed monthly fee, and that I had built the entire business from a single idea. No outside funding, just steady growth, one step at a time. One of those tech founders looked at me and said, 'Charles, cherish that. Bootstrapped and stable revenue. That's exactly what we're looking for here.' I had travelled to Miami thinking I might need to start behaving more like a technology company. I returned with exactly the opposite conclusion: Catalyst is not a technology company. We are a service provider that also delivers technology.
A few months later, at Perfect Law in London, everything clicked into place. That event brings together the entire collective actions ecosystem: law firms, litigation funders, and other stakeholders. I had deliberately decided to spend more time listening than talking. What I heard was remarkably consistent. The market is not waiting for yet another tool. It simply wants things to be taken care of. White glove, red carpet treatment: give us an application, manage it for us, think alongside us, and take care of the back office. Build and maintain the infrastructure so we can focus on the legal substance of the case.
That is exactly where Catalyst sits: at the intersection of technology, legal translation, and execution. Since then, 'white glove, red carpet treatment' has become our mantra, the standard that guides everything we do. You can see that reflected in our own Catalyst Registration Platform, where participants register for collective actions. Drawing on our legal expertise, we translate legal requirements into practical solutions. Our back-office team ensures that participants receive fast, accurate answers whenever they have questions. We provide that complete combination for a fixed monthly fee. Additional services, such as design, copywriting, or software development, are charged transparently at cost, without any markup. That keeps the relationship clean: we are there to help the case succeed, not to profit from incidental extras.
That transparency matters, because a collective action already involves enough stakeholders: the foundation, the law firm, the litigation funder, and the participants. Catalyst sits at the centre of that ecosystem, but the foundation remains in control. The law firm handles the legal work, the funder provides the financing, and Catalyst ensures that execution remains structured and manageable.
Catalyst is therefore not a software vendor with a rigid product roadmap, nor an agency that simply builds websites, nor an administrative office processing isolated assignments without understanding the legal context. What Catalyst is, is a full-service provider for collective actions. We bring together technology, back-office operations, process management, and communications because, in practice, those elements cannot be separated.
Perhaps that still does not fit neatly into a single category. But in practice, it works. And in the world of collective actions, that is usually where things start to get interesting.