A start-up resembles no other business: it burns cash before generating any, it finances itself in stages, it hires faster than its processes mature, and each quarter redefines its priorities. Its financial challenges are to match.

At launch: choosing the right structure, drawing up a credible financial plan — a legal obligation at incorporation, but above all a steering tool —, mobilising the Belgian support schemes for young companies (tax shelter for start-up companies, regional subsidies, partial exemption from payroll withholding tax for research staff, deductions linked to innovation). During growth: structuring successive funding rounds without diluting blindly, negotiating shareholders' agreements that protect the founders, attracting talent with stock-option and warrant plans, setting up reporting that investors take seriously. At scale: internationalisation, cross-border VAT, transfer pricing, governance. All with one permanent constraint: cash. In this context, an approximate finance function not only costs money — it can kill the company or sink a funding round.

Supporting start-ups and scale-ups is one of Catalyst's founding specialisations — our partners have themselves co-founded and developed technology companies, and we apply to our own tools the digital-first philosophy we recommend to our clients. In concrete terms, we act as your outsourced finance department: legal and tax structuring at creation, real-time digital accounting adapted to the metrics that matter to you (burn rate, runway, MRR), activation of the tax schemes supporting innovation, structuring of the remuneration packages of founders and teams, and preparation for funding rounds — financial plan, data room, valuation, negotiation of term sheets and shareholders' agreements alongside your lawyers. At the scale-up stage, we strengthen investor reporting, structure subsidiaries and support external-growth operations.

Our support adapts to your stage. At pre-seed: structuring of the founders, initial pact, financial plan, first tax schemes — good foundations cost little and pay off for a long time. At seed: investor-ready accounting, burn management, preparation of the first real round. At Series A and beyond: solid monthly reporting, structuring of the teams' incentive plans, anticipation of the clauses that bind (liquidation preference, ratchets, founder vesting). And at every round, one principle: terms are better negotiated when the figures are flawless and the file ready before it is requested. A clean data room shortens due diligence — and a short due diligence protects your valuation.

An entrepreneur launching a master-franchise network had to close a funding round within a very tight deadline: in two months, in the middle of summer, the entire amount was raised and the company launched ahead of the planned date — valuation, funding round, structuring and negotiation of the terms included. A project leader thoroughly revised their business model with our teams and built a far more solid financial plan, approaching their launch with clarity and serenity. An entrepreneur acquired, with our support, a small production plant — analysis of the transaction, valuation, structuring, financing — then entrusted us with the accounting and the advice on their subsequent acquisitions: their turnover has since been multiplied by five. And many founders entrust us, after their first round, with setting up the monthly reporting required by their investors.

Because we are entrepreneurs ourselves. Catalyst was created, developed, financed and structured like a scale-up: we know your challenges from the inside, not just from the files. Our ITAA-certified experts combine that entrepreneurial experience with a daily practice of funding rounds, shareholders' agreements and tax schemes for innovation. You move forward with a dedicated point of contact who speaks your language — that of metrics and traction as much as that of the Companies and Associations Code — and who grows with you: from the initial financial plan all the way to the exit. You also benefit from our ecosystem: bankers, investors, specialist lawyers and subsidy bodies with whom we work regularly and whom we activate for your file at the right moment. In a funding round as in an acquisition, your advisor's network is part of the value they bring you.