Indianapolis software firm Metaimpact lands $5M investment
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Indianapolis-based Metaimpact, a software firm led by local tech veteran Scott McCorkle, has raised another $5 million in equity funding—some of which came from the company’s own customers.
The funding round, which closed July 1, was led by Atlanta, Georgia-based BIP Ventures. A returning investor, BIP first invested in Metaimpact in 2021.
Other investors in this round include Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co. and Wellstar Health System, which is based in the Atlanta suburb of Marietta and operates a network of hospitals, medical offices, rehabilitation centers and other facilities across Georgia. Both Lilly and Wellstar are Metaimpact customers.
“I believe having customers as strategic investors is a strong advantage for a company. We’re very excited to have them involved,” said McCorkle, Metaimpact’s founder and CEO.
Before launching Metaimpact, McCorkle was president at ExactTarget, the Indianapolis software firm that was acquired by Salesforce in 2013. Post-acquisition, McCorkle served as CEO of Salesforce Marketing Cloud until leaving the company in 2016.
Metaimpact offers a platform that customers can use as a third-party space for communicating and collaborating with customers, suppliers and other outside parties on complex projects and goals.
As one example, McCorkle said, the state of Michigan has used Metaimpact’s platform to collaborate with schools, business organizations, government officials, grant providers and other entities working to carry out the state’s workforce development strategy.
And the Indianapolis Foundation is using Metaimpact to collaborate with the city of Indianapolis, the Coalition for Homelessness Intervention and Prevention, service providers and others on Housing to Recovery, an effort to help people move from homelessness to permanent housing.
Metaimpact launched out of Indianapolis venture studio High Alpha in December 2018. The company originally operated as MetaCX before rebranding itself as Metaimpact in 2023.
Since launch, the company has raised $45 million in investment.
Though it’s been around for seven years, McCorkle said he still considers Metaimpact to be operating somewhat in stealth mode and he declined to share specific metrics about the company, including how many employees it currently has.
In September 2023, IBJ reported that the company had 42 employees, 16 of whom lived in the Indianapolis area, and more than 20 paying customers.
The company has been mostly quiet about its achievements to date—it shares some information in occasional LinkedIn posts or on its website’s blog, but it has not been as outspoken about publicizing its activities as some companies might be.
Why so quiet? McCorkle said it’s a strategic decision. He wants to build a track record of success first, especially because the platform can require some explaining before people grasp the concept.
“We believe it’s a sophisticated platform that we’re building, (one) that benefits from examples of how it’s being used,” McCorkle said.
There’s also the network effect. Because the platform is a tool for connecting with others, the more users Metaimpact has, the more valuable the platform becomes to those users—and that network effect takes time to develop.
McCorkle said he anticipates the company will have built enough traction by early next year to emerge from its semi-stealth mode.
“Things are going exceptionally well,” he said. “We couldn’t be more excited about the value we’re delivering to our early customers. And as we begin to reveal the full power of this, I think it’s going to make a big impression on the marketplace.”