Capital welcomed. Capital respected. Capital returned.
If you have patient capital ready to support regenerative infrastructure, you've likely noticed how rarely the structures match the intent. Catalist is built the other way around.
✓ Mission-aligned infrastructure for networks, communities, and movements coordinating real action across the commons.
✓ Built deliberately over four years, stewarded by a small core team and a wide collaborator network.
✓ Designed — by intent and by law — to last beyond any one of us.
✓ A think tank that constantly prototypes — working on privacy and access layers, meaningful event spaces, collaboration tools, knowledge commoning, and collaborative action.
✓ Your capital participates in the platform, the commons, the team's runway, and the long-arc R&D practice that produces them.
What This Isn't
We'd rather respect your time than pretend otherwise.
✕A venture-scale exit play. We will not be acquired. We will not IPO.
✕A growth strategy designed to flip, or a founder team optimizing toward a payday.
✕The right room if you're optimizing for a 7–10 year exit at a multiple.
We're a steward-led research practice with working software, building infrastructure that's meant to outlive us.
The Investor Participation Unit
Capital that participates — without capturing the system it supports.
1
A Preferred Return
A flat, non-compounding annual return on your contributed capital — capped at a multiple of original capital. Predictable. Fair. Honest about what it is.
2
Principal Returned Over Time
Your original capital flows back from Available Surplus as the work generates it — a stewardship commitment, not a forced obligation.
3
Shared Abundance Participation
When the system thrives beyond its preferred-return obligations, abundance circulates per-capita among active participants. IPU holders are part of that circle, with bounded participation up to a multiple of their original capital.
4
A Respected Seat in the Ecosystem
IPU holders are welcomed as long-term allies in the creation of regenerative infrastructure — never as passive financiers, never as controlling authorities. Optional participation as an Advisor, or Member of a Council or Board if and when those bodies form.
Why This Works for Patient Capital
For capital that knows the difference between supporting a system and capturing it.
You probably already know that traditional venture structures don't fit work like this. The capital arrives with extraction baked in: exit timelines, governance leverage, growth-at-all-costs incentives. Founders end up working for capital instead of for mission.
The IPU is built for capital that knows the difference. You contribute. You receive a flat preferred return. Your principal flows back as the work generates surplus. You participate in the abundance the system creates. You don't take on governance. You don't trigger an exit.
This is for capital that has seen the costs of extraction and wants to try something else. For individuals and family offices that understand "patient" as more than a marketing word. For capital that wants its participation to compound the field rather than degrade it.
"There is a direct correlation between how Catalist is being birthed and the natural world we inhabit. You are reaching back to ancient wisdom (consciously or not) in order to set up a vehicle for the post modern world. I continue to be in awe of your minds and hearts. How you were both able and willing to access both… towards creating Catalist and shepherding it out into the wider world. I'm in!"
— Ellie Kirk
When Catalist thrives, everyone thrives.
What Your Capital Builds
Greater capacity, possibility and impact
3
Active client networks (early beta), expanded to 2 new client partnerships per month enabling greater collective impact
18,000+
Items curated, elevated with standards and protocols into a coherent knowledge commons for all
200
Spaces & infinite learnings with partners, solidified into templates for indigenous, bioregional and event communities
282
Framework sets with 1,800+ interconnected tags, provided for holistic sense making across the commons
↑
Increasing our speed to market with more tech partnerships and capacity to build micro apps
What 18,000+ items, 200 spaces, and 282 framework sets actually look like inside the platform — the compounding infrastructure your capital is supporting.
Knowledge Commoning
The Global Knowledge Commons
Video #6 · Coming soon
Five superpowers the platform already has: bringing data from anywhere, every view that matters, full white-labeling, monetization built in, embed anywhere.
The Collaborative Operating Agreement isn't boilerplate — it's the legal architecture that encodes stewardship, mission protection, and regenerative intent into the foundation of Catalist. Every commitment on this page exists because it's written into the document that governs how this organization operates, distributes value, and endures over time.
Catalist is built for capital that knows the difference between supporting a system and capturing it.
✓ Regenerative investors and impact-oriented capital
✓ Family offices and intergenerational wealth stewards
✓ Philanthropic and catalytic capital partners
✓ Values-aligned funds and operating foundations
✓ Friends, family, and individuals seeking long-term mission alignment
✓ Capital partners who value mission protection over speculation
Not a fit for investors seeking rapid exits, governance leverage, or proportional upside on a quick growth multiple.
Minimum participation: $25,000 current minimum for IPU participation. The door is open to friends-and-family capital and individual aligned investors, not just institutional rounds.
How Participation Works
1
Conversation first
We want to know who you are and how this might fit.
2
Mutual due diligence
We share the COA and Overview; you share what alignment matters.
3
If aligned: IPU Issuance
IPU Issuance Agreement + IPU Terms Schedule.
4
Ongoing relationship
Annual reporting per the COA, with informal quarterly check-ins. Invitation to participate through advisory conversations, ecosystem gatherings, strategic visioning, or formal advisory roles (by invitation).
Built for service, not for sale.
Built for regeneration, not for extraction.
Built for the next century, not the next quarter.
If this is the kind of future you want to build, we'd love to talk.
Catalist intentionally separates capital support from ownership and control. Our Investor Participation Units (IPUs) are contractual economic participation rights — capital that participates in the work and shares in the abundance the system creates over time, without governance leverage, without K-1s, without long-term entanglement. This keeps ownership stewardship-based and aligned with the mission, while making it easier for capital to participate fairly.
Yes — especially in mission-driven, infrastructure, cooperative, and regenerative finance contexts. Preferred return structures without equity are increasingly used to attract patient capital without diluting ownership or creating exit pressure. What's distinctive about Catalist is the clarity and intentionality of the separation, encoded directly into our Collaborative Operating Agreement.
Through contract. Your IPU is governed by a written Issuance Agreement that defines exactly what you receive: a flat preferred return that accrues annually whether or not surplus exists, principal payback as Available Surplus permits, and bounded participation in the Shared Abundance Pool. Each balance is tracked transparently in a dedicated investor ledger (Schedule D of the COA). Your rights are explicit, enforceable, and independent of any governance outcome.
The Waterfall — Catalist's surplus allocation framework — flows in this order: Legacy Member Capital, Legacy Contribution Pool, Commons Pool, Investor Preferred Return, Shared Abundance Pool, then RSC Capital Recovery. This sequence honors documented capital contributions made before yours, recognizes legacy stewardship, and supports the commons that makes the platform valuable — before flowing returns to capital that joined more recently.
Important context: operational compensation, taxes, and reasonable reserves are paid as ordinary operating expenses before the Waterfall ever activates. So investor preferred returns aren't subordinated to bonuses — they're part of the surplus allocation that happens once operations are sustainable.
No. Compensation and bonuses are governed by reasonableness, transparency, and predefined caps. Founder Manager Abundance Multipliers are capped at 4.0× per the COA (§6.13.4) and reviewed annually by the Founder Managers in good faith. Once governance councils form, the multiplier is subject to council review. Founders cannot redirect surplus to themselves at the expense of investor preferred returns — the structure prevents it.
Your preferred return continues to accrue annually whether or not surplus exists in any given year. When Available Surplus emerges, accrued returns are paid in priority order through the Waterfall. Catalist is designed for long-term value creation, not short-term extraction — accruals are predictable and contractual, even when payments are paced by the system's actual surplus.
That said, accrual is bounded: each IPU has a return multiple cap (typically 1× original capital). Accrual ceases once the cap is reached, but principal continues to be returned and Shared Abundance participation continues.
No. IPUs are not equity and do not participate in tax allocations of profits or losses. The Company will issue appropriate tax reporting documentation for amounts paid. Specific tax treatment of IPU distributions is best discussed with your own tax advisor.
Traditional equity ties money to power, creates exit pressure, and often misaligns incentives in mission-driven systems. Catalist is building durable infrastructure for collective intelligence and coordination — work that requires patient capital without capture. The IPU is built for that: capital welcomed without being asked to control the system it supports.
Catalist has no exit intent. The Collaborative Operating Agreement (Article I §1.5) explicitly disallows sale, public offering, or value extraction through liquidation — except in circumstances where dissolution is required by law or is the only reasonable means of preserving the Company's mission integrity.
In the unlikely event of dissolution, our structural preference is to transfer intellectual property, platform infrastructure, and the knowledge commons to mission-aligned stewards — purpose trusts, aligned organizations, or commons-governance bodies — rather than liquidate the work for cash.
In the unlikely event of dissolution, COA §9.8 governs the order in which obligations are met:
Obligations to creditors and tax authorities
Reasonable reserves for contingencies
Investor contractual obligations — including IPU obligations within the Waterfall
Return of positive Capital Accounts to Members
Recovery of Recycled Stewardship Capital
Any residual assets distributed by Equity Interest
IPU holders are satisfied within the Waterfall before equity-based returns of capital — but do not have automatic creditor priority.
Yes — explicitly, through three layered mechanisms:
Preferred Return — a flat, predictable annual return that accrues regardless of surplus, capped at a multiple of original capital.
Principal Payback — your contributed capital flows back as the system generates Available Surplus.
Shared Abundance Pool participation — when Catalist thrives beyond its preferred return obligations, abundance flows out per-capita to active participants. IPU holders are part of that circle, with bounded participation up to a multiple of their original capital.
The principle is straightforward: when Catalist thrives, everyone thrives.
The current minimum for IPU participation is $25,000. We may revisit this as Catalist scales, but at this stage we want the door open to friends-and-family capital and individual aligned investors, not just institutional rounds.
Not without prior written consent of the Company. IPUs are not freely transferable — the structure is designed for stewardship partnership, not for secondary trading. Per the Issuance Agreement (§8.2), any permitted transfer is subject to a right of first refusal in favor of the Company. Change of control of an entity holding IPUs is also treated as a transfer requiring consent.
The Company may, at its discretion and from Available Surplus, redeem outstanding IPUs — but is not obligated to. Redemption is not a guaranteed liquidity right; it's a discretionary accommodation aligned with the system's financial stability. The honest answer: IPUs are designed for patient capital, not for short-term liquidity. If you need exit optionality on a timeline you control, this isn't the right vehicle for you.
IPUs aren't convertible — they don't become equity, ever. SAFEs and convertible notes are designed to defer the equity question until a later round; IPUs answer it permanently: there's no equity to convert into. They're a separate instrument category, designed for capital that wants long-term participation without ownership rights or exit conversion.
Annual reporting per the COA, with informal quarterly check-ins. You'll receive financial statements, distribution summaries, and a year-in-review on the work your capital is supporting. We're a small team — annual is what we can commit to honestly. Quarterly conversations happen organically as part of the relationship.
Capital is allocated across:
Platform development — continuing the prototyping work on privacy & access layers, event spaces, collaboration tools, knowledge commoning, and collaborative action
Knowledge commons curation — the 18,000+ items, 200 spaces, 282 framework sets, and the systems that maintain them
Team runway — the small core team and wider collaborator network
Mission-aligned partnerships — bandwidth to serve clients, projects, and indigenous groups whose work depends on this infrastructure
Current capital extends operations through the end of 2026 at present pace. Additional capital lets us move faster — bring in AI expertise, support strategic collaborations with proper legal and reciprocity structures, and expand the partnerships that make the work matter.
It won't. The COA (Article I, §1.5) explicitly disallows sale, public offering, or value extraction through liquidation, except in circumstances where dissolution is required by law or is the only reasonable means of preserving the Company's mission integrity. Founders cannot unilaterally sell the Company. Any forced dissolution is governed by the wind-down provisions in §9.8 — and even then, the structural preference is to transfer mission-relevant assets to aligned stewards rather than to maximize cash return.
They don't reduce yours. The Issuance Agreement (§5.3) explicitly protects accrued preferred return balances of existing IPU holders against retroactive reduction, impairment, or reallocation. New issuances expand the company's runway and capacity — they don't dilute the contractual rights of earlier participants.
The COA encodes mission-first stewardship into the company's legal structure. Three mechanisms keep it real:
Article I §1.4 — purpose, mission, and values are foundational, with explicit primacy over financial optimization
Core Activation document — the operative reference for purpose interpretation in any situation requiring judgment
Wisdom Council (when formed) — structurally tasked with mission alignment review, including consent on purpose-critical actions like changing the mission, selling commons assets, or shifting toward extractive structures
Mission isn't a mood — it's documented, governed, and reviewable.
Founder Manager transitions are governed by COA §9.4 — Capital Account balances convert to Recycled Stewardship Capital (RSC), not buyouts. Founders cannot extract value on their way out; capital stays with the Company. IPU obligations are independent of team composition: preferred returns continue to accrue against Available Surplus, principal payback continues, and the structure designed to outlive any one founder also outlives any specific operational configuration.
The Issuance Agreement governs transfer of IPU rights upon the holder's death. As with any other transfer, written consent of the Company is required. We work in good faith with the holder's estate to honor the contractual rights and ensure orderly continuity. For entity holders, change-of-control provisions apply (§8.3).
Regenerative investors and impact-oriented capital
Family offices and intergenerational wealth stewards
Philanthropic and catalytic capital partners
Values-aligned funds and operating foundations
Friends, family, and individuals seeking long-term mission alignment
Capital partners who value mission protection over speculative return
It's not a fit for investors seeking rapid exits, governance leverage, or proportional upside on a quick growth multiple.
When capital arrives in alignment, the work compounds for everyone. That's the whole design. Investors share in the success of the system they support — through preferred returns, principal payback, and bounded participation in the abundance Catalist creates over time.
In Catalist, capital supports the system. Stewardship protects it. Mission outlives both.