Catherine Ann Reid

Doqit transforms how people manage life admin through easy, smart, simple organisation.

Born from personal experience, Doqit gives people a secure, single place to store important documents and never miss crucial deadlines. Because life's too short for paper chaos and missed renewals!

Available on iOS and Android, Doqit helps individuals and families take control of their life admin. From household bills to insurance documents, from school records to pet vaccinations - everything important, instantly accessible.

We also partner with forward-thinking businesses to offer Doqit as an affordable, high-impact benefit for their employees and customers. Zero integration required, maximum value delivered.

Recent recognition includes FinTech Scotland Challenge winner 2024, UK StartUp Awards 2025 finalist, and featured in the Female Founders Rise campaign.

Available for speaking engagements, podcast appearances, and panel discussions on topics including:
• Digital innovation in life admin 
• Female founder journey 
• SEND parent entrepreneurship 
• Building user-focused solutions

Want to discuss Doqit or booking a speaking engagement? Let's connect.

Founder & CEO

Doqit - Dropbox with a brain.

Today, we all have more personal paperwork, information and documents, than ever before, that we keep across a variety of on and off-line places like files, piles, spreadsheets, apps, emails...... making the
task of managing it time-consuming, stressful and often costly.

Our mission is to reduce this and help make your life admin simple.  We are fundraising NOW and seeking like-minded visionaries to join us on our journey. 

07867 788087 or drop a note: catherineann@doqit.io

An ITV News article today on parents of SEND children being forced into debt or out of work should concern all of us.

Families aren’t “failing to cope”.

They are being failed.

The SEND system is so fragmented and under-resourced that parents are having to:

- Reduce hours or give up work
- Fight repeatedly for basic provision
- Manage overwhelming paperwork
- Chase assessments and therapies that should already be in place

In fact 37% of parents/carers have (had no option but to) quit their jobs to support their SEND child! 

34% have reduced working hours, and around 22% changed jobs to find more flexible work.  

And while adults are pushed to breaking point, children and young people are missing education, missing therapies and losing opportunities that cannot be recovered later.

As a parent of a 23-year-old with complex additional needs requiring 1:1 support, I recognise every part of this story.

I’ve been fortunate to work flexibly freelance in the past, and build my business around caring responsibilities. 

Even so, the fight for support has been relentless and exhausting.

Most families don’t have that flexibility.

This isn’t about parental resilience or better time management.

It’s about a system that is structurally broken; and pushing carers, mostly mothers, out of the workforce.

We cannot talk about economic participation, inclusion or opportunity while ignoring this.

Families are absorbing the cost of systemic failure.

That is not sustainable. And it is not good enough.

Founder of Doqit | Bringing life admin and future obligations into one place

Young woman with riding cap and lady with light hair. Faces close. Both wearing glasses and look happy. 

I asked ChatGPT whether a Christmas pudding I found lurking at the back of my cupboard was still edible.

Best before: April 2022 -thinking I must have bought it around 2020! 

Current date: February 2026

Vibes: questionable

ChatGPT’s initial response:

 ☢️Proceed with caution. Inspect carefully. This has been a long time☢️

Fair enough.

Then I added one crucial detail - it’s from Waitrose.

The tone completely changed.

Suddenly it was … and I quote:

Ah. That helps. Commercially produced. High sugar. Alcohol. Properly sealed.

Honestly? Probably fine.

So yesterday I learned two things:

1. Christmas puddings may outlive us all.

2. ChatGPT, like the rest of us, clearly has opinions about brands.

Who knew artificial intelligence would end up reinforcing premium supermarket trust - one back of the cupboard find at a time?

Anyway. The pudding was delish.

And apparently brand equity now extends to AI reassurance.

PS thanks to Chat GPT for creating the image of ‘the pudding’😄

Founder of Doqit | Creating calm, clarity & control for families overwhelmed by life admin.

No alternative text description for this image

On Sunday I had ping from our Instagram messages. 

“I’m loving Doqit and wanted to share a testimonial. 

I know you’re busy so made it ready to share”. 

Ellie’s a SEND Mum, Wife, and Teacher. And still made time to share her feedback. 

This is why we do what we do at Doqit.

Recognise this?

That’s how I opened my three minutes yesterday at the Finbridge Global  pitch event - and the nods around the room said everything.

Life admin overwhelm clearly resonates.

Not because people are disorganised or lazy, but because life admin has exploded and the tools and systems haven’t kept up…

… and don’t address the underlying issue: future obligations. 

The renewals, deadlines and commitments that quietly come back, expire, or cost money if you forget about them.

That’s the problem Doqit is built around.

A big thank you to Barbara and Kim for bringing together such a thoughtful mix of investors, partners and fellow founders; and to Eloise and Price Forbes for generously hosting.

A morning that felt collaborative, energetic, and genuinely constructive.

It’s been less than 24 hours, but I’m already grateful for the conversations it’s sparked.

We’re currently raising the final part of our SEIS round on a rolling close. 

If you’d like to chat, let’s get a date in.

Image shows lady with dark hair. Head in hand. Legs crossed. In the background is words that itemise many of the life admin obligations we all have. 

⭐️ Another one-star review. Only this time, I’m not upset - I’m curious.

As a founder, I’m genuinely okay with negative reviews when they’re honest. 

If something doesn’t work, that’s on us to fix.

But occasionally, you get feedback that isn’t confusion, it’s just factually untrue.

An App Store review from last week claimed:

> Doqit forces users to choose from fixed categories (it doesn’t — users can create their own)

> That users can set passwords on individual documents (this feature does not exist)

> And then speculated that we’d “hired out the dev work” rather than building the product ourselves

What’s interesting to me isn’t the rating … it’s the motivation.

Because this isn’t a misunderstanding of UX, or someone bumping into an edge case. 

It’s a description of behaviours that simply cannot occur in our platform.

So I’m left wondering:

- Is this a review intended for a different app?
- Is this someone misremembering an experience that didn’t actually happen?
- Or is this simply an example of how easy it is for incorrect information to travel once it’s written down?

Either way, we’ve reported it to Apple for review and responded publicly with the facts; calmly, transparently, and without drama.

Building consumer products means listening hard, staying grounded, and sometimes accepting that not all feedback is created equal.

I started my career as Sales Exec in a Typesetter in Glasgow.

Our clients were some of the best advertising agencies in the country like Ogilvy Mather, Barkers, Morgan, Ash Gupta. 

Globally awarded work. Sharp strategy. Even sharper copy.

I learned very early that words matter.

Good copy wasn’t about shock, trickery, or 'gotcha'.  

It was about clarity.

→  Precision
→  Respect for the reader
→  And fun! 

Last week I read an article on here about a marketing email with the subject line:

“Your name’s on the Epste*n list.”

When opened, it read, “Only kidding. We just wanted you to read this.”

This is not clever, bold, or innovative.

It’s lazy.

And worse than that; it uses something that caused harm to real women and children as a hook for attention.

We can do better than that. 

> Yes, digital marketing has changed.
> Yes, inboxes are crowded.
> Yes, attention is harder to earn.

But if your strategy relies on baiting people into opening an email by referencing exploitation and abuse, then something has gone badly wrong.

Good businesses build trust.

They don’t borrow shock value from trauma.

We choose how we position ourselves.

Reach is not the same as respect.

And in the long run, respect wins.

#sayitforward an opportunity for me to pick up the baton from the wonderful, always composed, highly articulate, Rebekah Clark FRSA

Here are my Friday Five hashtag #sayitforward superpowers:

Craig Unsworth -  a champion extraordinaire, and with a brain that LLMs are modelled on 🧠 
Georgie Harris - fearless fellow SEND Mother, who took her life being turned upside down, into positive action 💥 
Sam Simpson - Captain of the fundraising lifeboat, bringing clarity, direction, and buoyancy in choppy waters 🧭 
Emmie Faust - holding the vision that so many of us have benefitted from; bringing the most amazing women into my life - eternally grateful ✨ 
Chloe Greaves - for being a continual inspiration and light in my life 🫶 

If you're reading this, do pick up the baton. 

Life and work can be tough, and we don’t tell each other often enough how highly we think of one another 💚 ✨ 

Who would be in your Friday Five?

A friend is in the middle of a house move at the moment.

Moving home still ranks among one life's most stressful experiences, surpassing even childbirth! 

But what’s surprised her most isn’t the chain, or even the packing. 

It’s the paperwork.

There are stacks of documents.

Different parties involved. Repeated ID checks. And, remarkably, still wet signatures in 2026!

Which is why last week’s announcement from Nationwide Building Society is big news.  

They’re the first lender to allow mortgage deeds to be signed digitally.

It might sound like a small operational change.

It's not.

Moving house, remortgaging, settling estates, are already cognitively heavy moments. 

When you’re making big decisions, coordinating timelines, and managing money, even the smallest administrative hurdles feel amplified.

Digital signatures don’t just remove paper.

They remove friction.

And more broadly, they signal something important: institutions are starting to rethink how documents are handled, tracked and verified in a way that reflects how people actually live today.

The real opportunity isn’t just going paperless. It’s creating systems that are clearer, structured properly and reliable over time - so people aren’t scrambling for documents when their plate is already overloaded.

That’s a shift I’m sure we’re all pleased to see.

Image is AI generated. It shows a red brick house with white window frames. Detached and two storey. Lush green garden. With a for sale sign with sold across it. 

An excerpt from Where To Begin: A Small Book about Your Power to Create Big Change in Our Crazy World by Cleo Wade.

I’m just going to quietly, not silently, leave this here.

The idea of the ‘admin night’ and ‘admin party’ is appearing everywhere lately; from TikTok to lifestyle press.

This says something broader about how we experience everyday organisation.

People are now literally getting together with friends or colleagues and carving out time just to tackle life admin - bills, insurance, budgeting, paperwork, renewals - because doing it alone feels overwhelming. 

Mashable, The Independent and international press are even chronicling this as a social behaviour trend.

On the surface, it sounds social. But underneath, it’s a signal.

People aren’t doing this because they enjoy admin. 

They’re doing it because life admin has become fragmented, hidden, and mentally exhausting; and tackling it alone feels like a heavy lift.

What’s interesting is how people describe leaving these sessions: 

- Not ‘organised’ but lighter
- Not ‘productive’ but relieved

They gain confidence, clarity, and the sense that nothing important has been missed.

That tells us something important: the real problem isn’t motivation - it’s mental load.

When people need to create a social ritual just to stay on top of everyday responsibilities, it’s a sign the system is broken, not the person.

I think the future of life admin isn’t more to-do lists or reminders, it’s quieter systems that work in the background, so we can spend our time together doing the things we actually choose.

Genuinely curious have you ever joined (or hosted) an admin night? 

And did it leave you feeling organised or just unburdened?

Image shows a social gathering with lots of paperwork and laptops on the table. 

Director, Technology

Director, Audit Technical Portfolio

OpenText

Principal (Senior) Solutions Consultant

Hempsons

IT Director

CMS Cameron Mckenna Nabarro Olswang

Head of Business Applications and Architecture

Macfarlanes

Applications and Development Manager

Nuix

Works for the integration department in Philadelphia

Senior Integration Architect

Contracting - Predominately with Microsoft 2010.

Senior Software Engineer

TFPL Consultancy (part of the IDOX Group)

Contracting - Working with SharePoint 2007/2010 and other technologies

Senior Solutions Architect

Lewis Silkin

Spear heading the SharePoint 2007 Project.
Was the technical lead for the design and implementation of the "Legal Layer" developed with SharePoint 2007 to replace the existing Document Management System.

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