New High Alpha Company Targets Executive Assistants
Indianapolis-based venture studio High Alpha has announced the launch of its latest portfolio company. Base, a Software-as-a-Service platform designed for executive assistants, has completed a $2.6 million seed funding round, led by Matchstick Ventures. The company says its platform modernizes the way assistants and executives work together through specially-tailored technology.
In an interview with Inside INdiana Business, Base Founder and Chief Executive Officer Paige McPheely said the platform serves a market that, until now, has been overlooked.
“It provides one place for an executive assistant to manage the executive or the executives that they support,” said McPheely. “More than ever before, we’re seeing EAs support more than one executive, sometimes five or more executives and so, before Base, EAs would have to toggle back and forth from all of the various tools they use and the tools their executives use, juggle logins…but with Base, each executive that every EA supports has their own distinct workspace so that the EA can toggle back and forth, have all of the information that they need in one place.”
The funding round also included participation from Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, High Alpha Capital, and Slack Fund. McPheely says the company, which currently has eight employees, will use the funding to add to its team, grow its sales and marketing efforts, and build out more office space.
“At Matchstick, we look for innovative ideas with massive market potential,” Ryan Broshar, founder and partner at Matchstick Ventures, said in a news release. “This is an entire profession that has never been supported with modern technology, until today. We’re thrilled to be part of the movement that is creating an entirely new category of software.”
While McPheely is based out of Greenville, South Carolina, High Alpha says Base is being built remotely with employees in Indianapolis and throughout the country. McPheely says the system creates a larger talent pool from which the company can draw.
“While we have made a number of hires in Greenville and in Indianapolis, we felt it was really important to not limit it to those two locations and so we’re a fully-distributed team. That’s enabled us to move faster when we’re making some hires and to ensure that we really are prioritizing diversity and inclusion in our hires.”
While the Base platform is live, McPheely says the company’s short-term goals is to get the foundation of the platform’s features live by the end of 2020.
“Beyond that, we really want to change the conversation of what it means to both be an EA, to give support, and then on the executive side, what it means to receive support humbly and with strength and to maximize that relationship.”
McPheely says the platform serves a market that, until now, has been overlooked.