Qatalyst is a boutique that only advises technology companies. It was founded in 2008 by Frank Quattrone, who was one of the best-known tech bankers of the dot-com era, and it's based in San Francisco. It's worked on a lot of the biggest tech acquisitions of the last fifteen years.
Who should apply
Qatalyst isn't a general banking application. You should only apply if you genuinely care about technology companies, because every deal you'd work on would be one. That's the whole point of the firm, and they'll test it.
It's also small. Most of its analysts are in San Francisco, and it hires in very small numbers in London, if at all, in a given year. If you're in the UK, treat it as one application among many and don't build your plan around it.
What a Qatalyst CV needs
- Real interest in tech, shown not told. A tech-focused internship, a stock pitch on a software company, a product you've built, a strong view on why a particular acquisition did or didn't make sense.
- Technical finance skills, as at any boutique.
- Specific interests. If you code, say what you've built. "Python" in a skills line means nothing; "built a scraper that tracks 400 SaaS companies' pricing pages" means a lot.
Before: Passionate about technology and innovation
After: Built a comparables model of 30 listed SaaS companies' growth and margins; used it to argue a take-private case at the investment society