Catalyst portfolio company BrightFarms is changing the future of food but would not be able to do so without the help of people like Denise DeRue – one of the head growers at BrightFarms. Denise began her career as an apprentice grower at the BrightFarms Virginia facility and after months of training was promoted to head grower of the Pennsylvania facility. BrightFarms’ greenhouses are operated via hydroponics and the company understands that smart growers like Denise enable them to expand rapidly. Each grower focuses on one greenhouse to make sure it has the healthiest, cleanest and freshest produce all the time.
Attracting and retaining top talent are among the most challenging and critical CEO responsibilities. In addition to cultivating a positive culture, compelling compensation and benefit programs provide the quantitative rationale for prospective employees to join and remain at a company. In a market with well-funded competitors, companies need to compete with terrific culture, a mission that motivates prospective employees, and yes, a competitive compensation package.
At the growth stage, our portfolio companies are rapidly scaling teams, adding experienced leadership, and rethinking organizational design. We want to provide our CEOs with effective compensation committees that can provide advice, guidance and oversight around compensation and benefit programs. Often, companies have not formally established committees by the time Catalyst invests – instituting a committee to review compensation (and particularly bonus plans) may feel like a luxury during the start-up phase. As companies scale to $8 million to $10 million of revenue and 50+ employees, they need to be able to recruit large numbers of employees and managers who weren’t part of the founding team. Those hires expect market salaries, understandable bonus plans, stock options and competitive benefit plans. The CEO benefits from putting some of the responsibility and oversight in the hands of a compensation committee that can tie the structure of the plans to long term value creation while grounding them in the realities of the competitive market.
A compensation committee is typically comprised of a subgroup of the board, and often the management team will make recommendations to the committee for review. Ideally, the committee will include independent board members who can provide neutral input. Below are a few suggested guidelines to optimize compensation committee efforts.
Catalyst portfolio company eSUB, a leading field data and construction operations platform developed for subcontractors, updated its integrations with PlanGrid® and BIM 360®, construction software from Autodesk®. Designed specifically to address the workflows of trade contractors, eSUB serves as the field data collection and system of record for trade contractors and leverages PlanGrid and BIM 360 for drawing management and field collaboration.
The market for software and tech-enabled services handling Governance, Risk & Compliance (“GRC”) needs is experiencing tremendous growth, a phenomenon Catalyst has seen first-hand through our investments in Fusion Risk Management and Envoy, among others.
The GRC space has traditionally been dominated by consultants and manual processes and we believe companies are still in the early days of pivoting to more efficient, purpose-built software.
A significant driver of this change is the nearly exponential growth in the amount of data volume and variety being captured by companies – resulting in the need for more sophisticated GRC tools. Additionally, market growth is being further propelled by a heightened regulatory environment, increased tech adoption by regulators (both political and industry-specific), and the enhanced level of scrutiny facing both the C-suite level and boards for potential lapses in risk management – a particularly topical point given the publicity that recent data breaches / compliance issues have received.
Catalyst portfolio company Fusion Risk Management made Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500 ranking of the fastest growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences, and energy tech companies in North America.
Fusion’s extraordinary 210 percent growth since 2015 has seen the company double its staff and footprint in the US and open its European headquarters in London to support an expanding client base. During this time, Fusion strategically expanded its product offerings across the broader risk management category to meet growing client and market demand, while aggressively accelerating investments in marketing, sales, and services. With its investments and unwavering commitment to innovation, Fusion has continued to set the gold standard for customer experience and success.
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