A validated thesis
What you are building, tested against real commercial signals rather than assumptions.
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Programme / Two intensive days
Catalyst
Turn a promising result into a validated opportunity, in two days.
Catalyst is for teams that already believe their science matters. Two focused days take you from conviction to evidence: a tested thesis, your first real-world signals, and the relationships that move it forward.
The starting point
For teams who have a go, and now need proof.
Conviction is not validation. The fastest way to lose two years is to build on an assumption the market would have corrected in a fortnight. Catalyst forces the hard questions early, while they are still cheap to answer, and turns a hopeful idea into something a funder can believe in.
- Principal investigators who have decided to pursue commercialisation
- Spin-out teams working towards incorporation
- Postdocs validating a specific commercial application
- Technology transfer teams preparing a project for investment
What happens
Two days, end to end.
Day one builds the case. Day two stress-tests it and shapes the ask. You leave with something defensible, not a wishlist.
- Day 1The opportunity, sharpenedTurning a broad result into a specific, defensible commercial bet
- Day 1The market, in personA structured push to talk to people who would actually pay
- Day 1The business modelHow value is created, delivered, and captured
- Day 2Competition and moatWhat protects this, and why you win
- Day 2The askShaping the narrative funders and partners respond to
- Day 2The validation planThe experiments that de-risk the opportunity next
What you leave with
What you leave with.
Four artefacts that move a project from interesting to investable.
A customer evidence pack
What you heard, in their words, from the people who would pay for this.
A first business model
A clear account of how the opportunity creates and captures value.
An investable narrative
The story and the ask, in a form funders and partners can act on.
For institutions
The step that makes a portfolio investable.
Catalyst takes the projects worth backing and gets them ready to be backed. For a university or funder, it is the difference between a list of promising ideas and a pipeline of fundable ones.
- Runs as a two-day cohort, on your site or ours
- Flat per-cohort pricing across the whole group, set up front
- Produces investment-ready outputs a technology transfer office can take forward
- Strengthens knowledge-exchange and impact evidence (KEF, REF)
- A natural follow-on from Activation, or a standalone for committed teams
- Delivered by a scientist who has raised capital and built companies
We run Catalyst with technology transfer offices, accelerators, and research funders preparing cohorts for investment.
Bring Catalyst to your institution.
Tell us about the teams you want to get investment-ready, and we will propose a cohort and a flat price.