High Alpha raises $14 million to launch latest tech company

Indianapolis-based venture studio High Alpha on Tuesday announced that it has raised $14 million in funding to launch its latest company and chosen well-known local technology executive Scott McCorkle to run it.

The company, MetaCX Inc, is developing a software-as-a-service, or SaaS, product that is expected to “bring suppliers and buyers of enterprise software together for better collaboration and outcome management,” the company said. The MetaCX platform is in closed beta testing with expectations of an early-2019 launch.

The funding round is led by Upfront Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm based in Los Angeles. Upfront has invested more than $1 billion since 1996 in early-stage tech companies including Ring, Maker Studios, TrueCar, Overture and Bird.

McCorkle, the former president of ExactTarget and CEO of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, co-founded MetaCX and will serve as its CEO.

“Our founding team includes world-class engineers, designers and architects who have been building billion-dollar SaaS products for two decades,” McCorkle said in written comments about the new company.

He said the MetaCX platform will help SaaS companies and clients evaluate whether they are achieving the goals they expect from Saas products.

“We understand that enterprises often struggle to achieve the business outcomes they expect from SaaS, and the renewal process for SaaS suppliers is often an ambiguous guessing game,” he said. “Our industry is shifting from a subscription economy to a performance economy, where suppliers and buyers of digital products need to transparently collaborate to achieve outcomes.”

Kobie Fuller, partner in Upfront Ventures, will join the MetaCX board along with McCorkle and Scott Dorsey, managing partner at High Alpha and co-founder and former CEO of ExactTarget.

High Alpha officials said Fuller is an expert in SaaS, having sourced or led investments in companies including ExactTarget, Instructure, UserTesting, Invoca and AdRoll.

“The MetaCX team is building a truly disruptive platform that will inject data-driven transparency, commitment and accountability against promised outcomes between SaaS buyers and vendors,” Fuller said in written remarks.

MetaCx will be the 11th company launched by High Alpha since its founding in 2015.

High Alpha—founded by tech entrepreneurs and investors Dorsey, Kristian Andersen, Mike Fitzgerald and Eric Tobias—creates and funds startups through mentoring and venture capital. Its studio companies include Sigstr, Zylo, Lessonly, Doxly and Pattern89.

McCorkle joined High Alpha as part-time executive in residence in January 2017, several months after stepping down as Salesforce Marketing Cloud CEO. He among numerous former ExactTarget executives that Dorsey has tapped to help him at High Alpha.

“Scott is an extraordinary tech leader and visionary," Dorsey said. "He and his talented team of SaaS veterans are re-imagining the future of digital, subscription-based businesses. I am thrilled to be working with Scott again and look forward to helping him and his team bring non-incremental innovation to our industry.”