MRMW NA 2019 Conference Series – Guy White – Catalyx

Happy Market Research Podcast

Welcome to the MRMW NA 2019 Conference Series. Recorded live in Cincinnati, this series is bringing interviews straight to you from exhibitors and speakers at this year’s event. In this interview, host Jamin Brazil interviews Guy White, CEO & Founder of Catalyx.

Contact Guy Online:

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[e-mail]

Catalyx

[00:00]

This interview is with Guy White of Catalyx. He is the founder of this company. You are really going to enjoy listening how an internal research at Proctor & Gamble felt a tremendous amount of pain specific-use case and then evolved that evolved that into his own startup. Earlier day trials and tribulations – how he overcame them to ultimately bring to market an ultimately very successful and growing, thriving business. They sit right in the middle of the innovation process. Check him out. You can find information on the show notes. Hope you enjoy this episode.

[00:36]

Guy, Catalyx, tell me a little bit about your business.

[00:40]

So, Catalyx is an insight innovation agency. Our aim is relentless pursuit of getting insight into businesses in such a way that it is going to build brands and make people buy more product. I’m actually not a researcher; I’m a marketer. I’m an ex-Proctor marketer. And I set Catalyx up because I was actually frustrated that you couldn’t access consumers as I felt I needed to from the partners that we were working with in such a way that I would have recommendations to build the business. And we thought we could do it better. So that’s kind of how we started.

[01:16]

That’s super interesting. I think it’s fascinating that you started the business... You started the business?

[01:22]

Yeah.

[01:22]

You started the business out of the context of your own pain.

[01:26]

Yeah, exactly.

[01:27]

Which is a completely unique... I say, “Completely unique.” It’s not really completely unique, but in our industry, usually what I see happen is you have technology or a solution that’s looking for a problem.

[01:39]

Right.

[01:40]

Which is kind of to the other point, which is... I think Gayle made it this morning if you heard that interview, sorry, talk about how you need to be in love with the pain, not the solution.

[01:53]

Right, absolutely. I saw that. I agree.

[01:55]

Talk to me a little bit about... When did you start the business?

[01:58]

So, first client was 2013.

[02:01]

Wow, congratulations. Tell me about that first project.

[02:05]

The first project was crazy. So, the first project, I was actually moderating an innovation conference in France in English in front of a French-only conference.

[02:19]

[laughs] Heavy lift, isn’t it?

[02:23]

I tell you what at the start you take what you can get. So...

[02:25]

That is a multi-layered...

[02:28]

Right, yeah.

[02:30]

Just you and...

[02:33]

500,000 French business owners wanting to learn a little bit about innovation. No clue about what I was talking about.

[02:41]

Perfect.

[02:41]

But the first proper project I would say was... We used to do a ton of insight from social listening back in kind of 2013 when people really didn’t know what social listening was and how to use it. And we said, “Well, the trouble is with the platforms; you can’t get insight from a platform. You can get data but not insights.” So we developed a methodology to be able to convert what people were saying online into kind of golden nuggets that people could use. And we did that for a few years as we were building up kind of our crowdsourcing capabilities as well. Yea, so that was kind of the first stuff we did. And that lead onto about five or six other projects with the same client all around how do people shop for hair care online, for instance. What do men feel about shaving? Really, really, not just the process,