Cathal's career in sales came first. Over 13 years of it - from a Food & Drink graduate programme to managing complex deal sizes within Microsoft.

He's closed deals at every level of the market - from early-stage founder agreements to nine-figure enterprise contracts - across multiple geographies and industries.

What he learned in those years wasn't necessarily just the sales technique. It was pattern recognition.

The people doing the best work - the ones with real expertise, genuine results, and something worth selling - were almost never the ones winning commercially. Not because the market didn't want what they had. Because they'd never been given a structure that let them stand it up properly.

Brilliant at their work, but flying blind at the business.

When he left Microsoft and start building Dúchas, that's the problem he set out to solve.