# Patrick Petitti

> Patrick Petitti is the Boston-born co-founder and CEO of Catalant, the consulting marketplace that began as the Harvard Business School project HourlyNerd. A former Booz Allen Hamilton and Vantage Partners consultant, he turned his frustration with costly, generalist project teams into a platform built around independent specialists. Since the company's first $50 transaction and a cold email that helped secure Mark Cuban's backing, Petitti has helped steer Catalant from small-business marketplace to enterprise consulting provider, authoring a book on flexible work along the way. In September 2026, the company launched Forward Deployed Experts, pairing experienced operators with AI engineers.

- **Role:** Co-Founder and CEO at Catalant
- **Organizations:** Catalant, Vantage Partners, Booz Allen Hamilton
- **From:** Boston, United States
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** Bachelor of Science in Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Master of Business Administration, Harvard Business School
- **Known for:** Co-founded the company that began as HourlyNerd and became Catalant., Helped secure a $750,000 seed round led by Mark Cuban in 2013 after a cold outreach., Received the 2016 EY Entrepreneur Of The Year New England Award with fellow HourlyNerd leaders.

## Career timeline

- **2008-2010** — Worked as a consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton.
- **2010-2012** — Worked as a consultant at negotiation and conflict-management consultancy Vantage Partners.
- **2013** — Co-founded HourlyNerd as a Harvard Business School class project; the company completed its first $50 transaction and raised a $750,000 seed round led by Mark Cuban.
- **2015** — Appeared on Bloomberg to discuss whether traditional consulting firms still mattered.
- **2016** — Shared the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year New England Award with HourlyNerd co-founders Rob Biederman and Peter Maglathlin.
- **2016** — HourlyNerd rebranded as Catalant as the business expanded beyond its original small-business marketplace.
- **2017** — Co-authored Reimagining Work with Rob Biederman and Peter Maglathlin; Catalant announced $41 million in new financing.
- **2025** — Discussed Catalant's journey from class project to Consulting 2.0 on the Self Funded podcast.
- **2026** — Led Catalant's launch of Forward Deployed Experts, pairing experienced operators with AI engineers.

## Achievements

- Co-founded the company that began as HourlyNerd and became Catalant.
- Helped secure a $750,000 seed round led by Mark Cuban in 2013 after a cold outreach.
- Received the 2016 EY Entrepreneur Of The Year New England Award with fellow HourlyNerd leaders.
- Co-authored the 2017 Wiley book Reimagining Work: Strategies to Disrupt Talent, Lead Change, and Win with a Flexible Workforce.
- Built Catalant into a consulting provider that reports serving 700-plus businesses in more than 20 countries and completing more than 16,000 platform projects.

## Latest updates

- **2026-09** — Catalant launched Forward Deployed Experts, a service pairing senior domain operators with AI engineers after analyzing more than 6,600 client-interaction data points across over 900 Fortune 500 and private-equity-backed companies.
- **2026-08** — Petitti publicly welcomed Tye Howell as Managing Partner of Catalant's private equity practice.
- **2025-11** — Petitti appeared on the Self Funded podcast to discuss Catalant's evolution from HourlyNerd to its Consulting 2.0 model.
- **2025-11** — Published a LinkedIn article about the economy titled Lets talk turkey about the economy.
- **2025-08** — Published LinkedIn essays on AI's effect on consulting and why clients are rejecting outside-only consulting models.

## Links

- Website: https://catalant.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-petitti-428300b
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/PMPetitti

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/patrick-petitti
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-09-27