Catalyst – helping growing businesses with their to-do lists and much more

 

 

We know what it takes to make a business succeed, at the Sussex Innovation Centre we have spent the last 20 years making ideas happen, it’s our tag line and we have an 85% success rate.

 

One challenge we saw our members struggling with was how to find a reliable resource for ad-hoc projects, busy periods or part time roles. For those important areas such as marketing which need an owner to ensure consistency of message and production, but with no budget for an agency. Or sales, you want someone who cares about the business representing you. And where do we start with insight projects to validate a new venture or market idea?

 

We thought wouldn’t it be handy to have a risk free resource to tap into as and when you need it? Fully managed by an experienced business support team with a very reasonable hourly rate. 

Two years ago the Catalyst team was created with this gap in mind, we hired a team of graduates and placement year students from the University of Sussex on a one-year full time contact and started letting companies know we could help. The team we hired were all looking for a different employment experience, they came from a variety of schools and many hoped to start their own business one day.

Initial reactions from companies we spoke to was “what’s the catch?” and it was interesting to see the challenges of offering something new – but once members started working with us they kept coming back. 

 

The Catalyst team