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Indianapolis-based Champion, a marketing software startup that launched last year out of Indianapolis venture studio High Alpha, has closed on a $3.3 million round of seed funding, the company announced this week.
Overland Park, Kansas-based Flyover Capital led the round. Other investors included High Alpha, Minneapolis-based Bread & Butter Ventures and New York City-based Stage 2 Capital. The round was oversubscribed, meaning that the investment opportunity generated more interest from investors than Champion originally had anticipated.
Including this most recent funding round, Champion has raised a total of $5.3 million since its April 2023 launch, said CEO and co-founder Jeff Reekers. The company currently has nine employees, six of whom are based in the Indianapolis area, Reekers said.
Champion’s software platform helps companies sift through data to identify who their happiest and most loyal customers are—and to help them leverage this information to increase revenue. A company, for instance, could reach out to its most loyal customers to request referrals to new potential customers. Or a company might discover that a percentage of its most satisfied customers have recently changed jobs—which could create an opportunity to sell the company’s product to that new employer.
Champion’s target customers are large enterprises with at least 1,000 employees. Many of the company’s early customers are software and professional services firms, but Champion’s platform could be useful across a range of industries, “really anybody that’s business-to-business and wants to enhance the impact and relationships they have with their customers,” Reekers said.
Reekers, who lives in Minneapolis, has a background in marketing. Prior to co-founding Champion, he spent six years as chief marketing officer at Aircall, which offers a cloud-based customer communication platform for sales and support teams.
Champion’s other two co-founders are Gianna Scorsone of Brooklyn, New York, who serves as Champion’s chief operating officer; and Courtney Crispin, the company’s chief technology officer. Scorsone also worked at Aircall, serving as the head of that company’s North American operations from 2020 to 2022. Crispin, who lives in the Indianapolis area, formerly served as vice president of software engineering at Salesforce.
Reekers said Champion plans to use its seed funding primarily on product development and improvements, and on marketing.
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