As an executive search consultant there is no bigger thrill than advising early-stage companies as they begin to build their first go-to-market teams. Advising founders on selecting revenue leaders that are the right stage-fit, culture-fit, and function-fit for their start-ups is an opportunity and responsibility that I am grateful to have.

Every week offers a new topic to learn, and I loved that each session went in order of building a GTM motion. Every [participant] was the exact same stage, and really struggling with the same things. Plus, the overall network of Catalyst coaches, mentors and guest speakers was just amazing. 

Leaving the startup ecosystem better than when I came into it is a big deal to me. Being part of the Stage 2 LP family while getting to be part of the Catalyst as a Coach/Mentor is a dream come true with a chance to make a difference for these incredible startups.

As a founder, you're almost like a high-performance athlete. You're firing on all cylinders, and you are heads down putting in a ton of work. The mentorship we received during the Catalyst was like getting tips from an amazing coaching team who had won many championships. The improvements we saw were 10X because we were learning from leaders that had solved problems like ours, and coached similar companies, many times over. 

Great opportunity for founders (especially first-time founders) to learn from the best, while preventing common mistakes. I had at least one "AHA!" moment during each weekly session. The coaches each week were extremely helpful and took time to dig into our business and answer questions freely.

With the Catalyst, we were able to tighten our ICP, the problem we solved, and our value proposition. During the program, we grew our MRR by 2X with less customers. We were finally hitting the message, the market, and the problem we wanted to solve.

As a coach, I enjoyed engaging with participating companies, hearing them pitch, challenging their thinking, providing feedback, and then seeing how their narrative evolved and how they took action based on the Catalyst sessions.

The Catalyst was a great learning experience for us, and I think it would be for any founders. My co-founder and I are second-time founders with a successful exit and considerable GTM experience, and we still received tons of value out of the content and the from the coaches, mentors, and Stage 2 Capital team. 

Becoming a Stage 2 Capital Catalyst LP was a no brainer. It's given me a chance to be a hands-on mentor to early-stage companies, help them with tactical recommendations, and see them hit milestone after milestone. It's also given me a network that helps me fine-tune what I'm building with my professional consultancy, and just think through top problems like tools, hiring, new markets, etc. 

As a first-time CEO, the Catalyst helped me determine where our business is in its journey. It showed us what we need to do to get to "go-to-market fit" stage, and how we'll know when we're there. It also formed my opinion about how we need to capitalize our company — where we need to hire, how we know when we're ready to hire, what it looks like to bring that role on, and who that hire may be.