Venture studio · 2015 · Indianapolis, IN

High Alpha Leadership and Fund Structure

Who runs High Alpha, how the studio-plus-capital two-arm model works, the funds I have been able to trace through SEC Form D filings, and the ExactTarget lineage that connects the firm to the broader Indianapolis SaaS scene. The four co-founders, the current partner roster, the studio-launched companies, and the venture-investing track that runs in parallel.

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The four co-founders — April 2015

High Alpha was founded in April 2015 by four long-time collaborators with deep ExactTarget and Indianapolis-startup roots. Per the firm's own about page, the founding rationale was to build a new venture-studio model rather than a traditional fund — combining capital, design, and operational resources to co-create B2B SaaS companies. All four remain partners at the firm a decade later.

Scott Dorsey
Co-Founder and Managing Partner
Prior · CEO, ExactTarget

Co-founded ExactTarget in 2000 and led it as CEO through its 2012 IPO and the June 2013 acquisition by Salesforce for ~$2.5 billion. Served briefly as CEO of Salesforce Marketing Cloud before reuniting with the ExactTarget core to launch High Alpha. The firm's most public face today — consistently named to the IBJ Indiana 250 and to TIME's 2025 list of America's Top Venture Capital Firms.

Mike Fitzgerald
Co-Founder and Partner
Prior · ExactTarget · Compendium

ExactTarget and Salesforce alumnus; serial entrepreneur in the Indianapolis SaaS scene before High Alpha (Compendium Software, acquired by Oracle in 2013). Leads investment work at High Alpha Capital and sits on the boards of several portfolio companies.

Eric Tobias
Co-Founder and Operating Partner
Prior · iGoDigital · ExactTarget

Founded iGoDigital, the personalization-software company ExactTarget acquired in 2012; came into ExactTarget through the deal and then to Salesforce through the 2013 ExactTarget acquisition. Operates the studio side at High Alpha — the resource pool that sits behind every studio-launched company. Honored alongside Scott Dorsey on the IBJ Indiana 250 list four years running.

Kristian Andersen
Co-Founder and Partner
Prior · Studio Science

Designer-turned-founder who built the Indianapolis design firm Studio Science before co-founding High Alpha. The design-as-strategic-differentiator framing that runs through every studio company — brand identity, product surfaces, marketing — traces back to him. Maintains a separate personal investing presence at kristian.vc.

Roster verified against High Alpha's own team page; titles and prior roles cross-checked against the linked LinkedIn profiles and the firm's about page. Partner-level additions beyond the four co-founders appear under Current partner roster below.

The studio + capital two-arm model

High Alpha runs two operating arms in parallel under the same partnership. The arms share office space, partners, design and operational resources, and back-office, but they take on distinct work and fund the work through separate legal vehicles. The split is published explicitly on the firm's Studio and Capital pages.

Arm 1

High Alpha Studio

Co-creates new B2B SaaS companies from scratch. The studio team partners with founders through a documented Explore / Build / Scale arc — ideation, Sprint Week, prototyping, MVP creation, founder-led sales, company launch — and provides embedded design, product, marketing, go-to-market, finance and legal, and HR resources alongside the initial capital.

Through 2025 the studio reports 40+ studio-company starts since founding. Studio-launched companies include Lessonly (acquired by Seismic, 2021), Tenon (marketing automation on the ServiceNow platform), Octiv (sales automation, acquired by Conga), Stitch (systems integrator), Base, Liminal (generative-AI security), and Flaunt (AI data analyst), among others on the firm's studio page.

The studio's legal vehicles trace through SEC Form D as High Alpha Studio, LLC (2015), High Alpha Studio II, LLC (2018), and High Alpha Studio III, LLC (2021).

Arm 2

High Alpha Capital

Invests in seed and Series A rounds of B2B SaaS companies founded outside the studio. The firm publishes three distinct check types on the Capital page: Anchor (lead Seed to Series A), Co-Invest (Seed / Series A / Series B alongside a trusted lead), and Studio (follow-on into studio-launched companies). Geography is positioned as “coast to coast,” with a clear Indianapolis-and-Midwest center of gravity.

Recent High Alpha-led rounds visible on the firm's news index include Opendate ($14M Series A, January 2026), Verisoul ($8.8M Series A, December 2025), Boost My School ($10M, August 2025), Kadence ($20M Series A, July 2025), and Datalinx AI ($4.2M seed, January 2026).

Capital-arm vehicles on EDGAR include High Alpha Seed Fund, L.P. (2015), High Alpha Capital Fund II, L.P. (2018), Fund III + Fund III-A (2020-21), and Fund IV + Fund IV-A (closed at $125M, June 2024) — plus a long tail of per-deal HAI Co-Invest LLCs.

The two arms interact in two directions. Studio-launched companies are eligible to receive follow-on capital from the Capital arm's funds as they scale, and capital-arm portfolio companies can use studio resources (design, GTM advising, talent) through the firm's Navigators Network, Founders in Residence, and Designers in Residence programs. The studio is the proprietary deal-flow engine for the capital arm; the capital arm is the growth-stage runway for the studio.

Timeline event kinds

Founding — the 2015 incorporation
Fund — a capital-arm vehicle close
Studio — a studio-arm vehicle close
Partnership — institutional collaborations
Leadership — partner-tier additions

High Alpha chronological timeline

Jun 2024
Fund
Fund IV closes at $125M
High Alpha Capital Fund IV, L.P. · CIK 0002008923
High Alpha's fourth capital fund closes at $125 million, focused on enterprise SaaS. Announced on the firm's news index in June 2024 as the latest in a sequence of progressively-larger SaaS-focused vehicles.

The primary Fund IV vehicle's Form D filings first appeared on EDGAR in January 2024 and were amended through mid-2024 as the fund accepted commitments. A parallel Fund IV-A vehicle (CIK 0002008925) filed alongside it; the firm has used this A-vehicle structure on prior funds to accept certain investor categories separately.

The firm's announcement framed Fund IV as continuing the same enterprise-SaaS thesis as Fund III — lead and co-invest checks into seed and Series A rounds — rather than a strategy shift. Combined with the Studio III vehicle from 2021, this is the active deployment platform as of 2026.

Jun 2023
Partnership
Strategic partnership with Purdue University
1842 Fund I, LP · CIK 0001975418
High Alpha announces a strategic partnership with Purdue University in June 2023, formalizing a research-and-talent connection that runs through several portfolio companies. The associated 1842 Fund I vehicle files Form D on EDGAR later that year.

The partnership was surfaced on the firm's about-page timeline; the related 1842 Fund I, LP (named for Purdue's founding year, 1869, and the Indiana Land-Grant Act lineage — Purdue itself was chartered in 1869, the “1842” framing references the Indiana general-assembly act of that year) appears as a separate Indianapolis-domiciled fund on EDGAR in late 2023.

This is the firm's first formal university-anchored vehicle; it sits alongside — not inside — the main Capital Fund sequence.

2020 – 21
Fund
Fund III, Fund III-A, and Studio III close
CIK 0001838624 · 0001839165 · 0001873303
The third generation of High Alpha's capital and studio vehicles closes across late 2020 and 2021. The firm's about-page timeline cites the Fund III announcement as October 2021.

High Alpha Capital Fund III, L.P. filed its first Form D on December 31, 2020; the parallel Fund III-A filed in January 2021. High Alpha Studio III, LLC filed its Form D in July 2021. The firm's public Fund III announcement landed October 2021.

This generation also opened the modern co-invest pattern at scale — a long tail of per-portfolio-company HAI Co-Invest LLCs (HAI Epulate, HAI Belle Pet, HAI Vellum Wellness, HAI Symita, HAI Greetr, HAI Marti, HAI Alpine Health Systems, HAI Croft, HAI Devnaut, and more) appear on EDGAR from 2022 onward as the firm structured per-deal vehicles for LPs to participate in specific portfolio investments.

Jun 2020
Partnership
Move to the Bottleworks District
830 Massachusetts Avenue, Indianapolis, IN 46204
High Alpha relocates to a custom build-out in the Bottleworks District on Massachusetts Avenue, taking the office that anchors the firm's current studio operations and recurring on-site programming.

The Bottleworks office is the recurring venue for the firm's Sprint Weeks, Flight Schools, the annual XO Summit, and other founder-programming events. The address is published in the firm's website footer.

2018
Fund
Fund II and Studio II close
CIK 0001734120 · 0001746753
The second-generation capital fund and studio vehicle close in 2018. The firm announces Fund II publicly in July 2018, three years after Fund I.

High Alpha Capital Fund II, L.P. filed its first Form D on March 9, 2018; High Alpha Studio II, LLC filed July 16, 2018. The Fund II generation maps to the period when several of the firm's most-cited studio companies — Zylo, Lessonly's growth stage, Tenon, Casted, Authenticx — were either being launched or scaling.

Jun 2015
Fund
Fund I announces with Lessonly, Octiv, and Visible
High Alpha Seed Fund, L.P. · CIK 0001643024
High Alpha announces Fund I in June 2015, launching with three studio companies — Lessonly, Octiv, and Visible. The first Sprint Week runs in October.

The original capital vehicle High Alpha Seed Fund, L.P., the studio operating entity High Alpha Studio, LLC, and the original co-invest LLC all filed their first Form D notices on May 21, 2015 — the firm's earliest EDGAR footprint.

By year-end 2015, the firm reports 5 studio-company starts and 3 outside investments. Lessonly is the most-cited Fund I-era launch and is the studio's first major exit (acquired by Seismic in 2021).

Apr 2015
Founding
High Alpha is founded
Indianapolis, IN · the four ExactTarget-alumni co-founders
Scott Dorsey, Mike Fitzgerald, Eric Tobias, and Kristian Andersen incorporate High Alpha in Indianapolis to pioneer a venture-studio model for B2B SaaS.

The founding rationale, per the firm's about page, is to combine company-building and venture-capital under one roof — using the operational lessons from ExactTarget and the design-firm operating experience from Studio Science to reduce the time from idea to product-market fit. The first two years (2015-2016) are a controlled experiment; the second studio fund in 2018 marks the model's commitment to permanence.

Current partner roster

The partner tier visible on High Alpha's team page as of June 2026 is the four co-founders plus a fifth partner who carries the firm's finance function. Operating leads outside the partner tier are described under Studio operators and team leads below.

Scott Dorsey
Co-founder · LinkedIn
Managing Partner
Sets the firm's strategic direction and the public-facing voice of the partnership.

See the founders strip above for prior-roles and ExactTarget context.

Mike Fitzgerald
Co-founder · LinkedIn
Partner
Leads Capital-arm investment work; board director for several portfolio companies.

See the founders strip above for prior-roles context (ExactTarget, Compendium).

Eric Tobias
Co-founder · LinkedIn
Operating Partner
Runs the Studio arm's operating resources — design, product, marketing, GTM, finance, talent.

See the founders strip above for prior-roles context (iGoDigital, ExactTarget).

Kristian Andersen
Co-founder · LinkedIn
Partner
Owns the design-as-strategic-differentiator framing across studio companies; sits on multiple portfolio boards.

See the founders strip above for prior-roles context (Studio Science). Maintains a separate personal investing presence at kristian.vc.

Blake Koriath
LinkedIn
Partner and CFO
Carries the firm's finance function across both arms; the only partner-tier addition outside the four co-founders.

Koriath is the most-senior non-founding member of the partnership and the named principal on the firm's fund-administration and LP-relations work. His promotion to Partner is the clearest visible signal that the firm has moved beyond a pure four-founder partnership over time.

Studio operators and team leads

Outside the partner tier, High Alpha's team page surfaces a working group of operating leads who carry the studio's day-to-day resourcing. Per the team page as of June 2026 this includes Jon Hubartt (VP, Design & Product), Eric Goodman (VP, General Counsel), Claire Kelley (Design Lead), Mollie Kuramoto (Director of Marketing), Ashley Blevins (Director of HR and Talent), Katelyn Vierk (Associate), and a finance / operations bench (Tara Lemieux, Amanda Carroll, Katherine Langlois, Brooke Lamb, Melissa Nauert). The list churns; this page does not enumerate the full staff — the team page is the canonical roster.

Portfolio highlights

High Alpha's combined book through 2025 covers 40+ studio-company starts and 100+ founders backed across the Capital arm's outside investments. This page does not enumerate the full portfolio — the firm's companies page is the canonical, live-updated roster — but the names below appear most often in High Alpha's own marketing, in IBJ and Inside Indiana Business coverage, and in this site's other Indianapolis-software surfaces.

Studio-launched — selected

  • Lessonly — learning management for sales teams; Fund I-era launch; acquired by Seismic, 2021. The studio's first major exit.
  • Tenon — marketing automation built on the ServiceNow platform; Studio II-era launch.
  • Octiv — sales-document automation; Fund I-era launch; acquired by Conga.
  • Anvl — frontline workforce safety and quality on mobile.
  • Zylo — SaaS-management and -spend platform.
  • Casted — B2B audio / video content platform.
  • Bolster — on-demand executive talent marketplace.
  • Encamp — environmental compliance software.
  • Metaimpact — AI-first content and digital experience.
  • Liminal — horizontal security for generative AI.
  • Base — modern workspace for executive assistants.
  • Flaunt — AI data analyst.

Capital-led / participated — selected

  • Opendate — live-events operating platform; High Alpha-led $14M Series A, January 2026 (the round seeded the matched Opendate Series A Brief on this site).
  • Verisoul — anti-fraud and bot-detection platform; High Alpha-led $8.8M Series A, December 2025.
  • Kadence — workplace operations platform; $20M Series A, July 2025.
  • Boost My School — K-12 advancement-fundraising software; High Alpha-led $10M, August 2025.
  • Datalinx AI — data-readiness for enterprise marketing; High Alpha-led $4.2M seed, January 2026.
  • Logik.ai — omnichannel CPQ platform; acquired by ServiceNow, June 2025.
  • Attentive — conversational SMS marketing for retail (capital-arm position).
  • Salesloft — sales-engagement platform (capital-arm position).
  • LogicGate — governance, risk, and compliance software.
  • Authenticx — conversational intelligence for healthcare; Indianapolis-headquartered.
  • SmartSuite — work-management platform.
  • Smartwyre, Narvar, Superside, Socio — additional capital-arm positions.

Studio vs. capital classification reflects the firm's own framing on its studio and capital pages; some studio companies have also received capital-arm follow-on, so the categories are not strictly exclusive. Where a portfolio company has its own page elsewhere on this site (Opendate, on the Indianapolis jobs board), the link surfaces inline above; everywhere else, the firm's own portfolio page is the canonical source.

ExactTarget lineage

The ExactTarget lineage

High Alpha exists because of ExactTarget. ExactTarget was the Indianapolis-headquartered email-marketing and digital-marketing platform co-founded in 2000 and led by Scott Dorsey through the 2000s. After two attempts at an IPO, the company eventually went public in March 2012 (NYSE: ET). On June 4, 2013, Salesforce announced its acquisition of ExactTarget for approximately $2.5 billion in cash — at the time, Salesforce's largest acquisition. ExactTarget became the foundation of what is now Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and Dorsey ran that unit briefly before stepping away to start High Alpha.

The acquisition turned a meaningful number of ExactTarget alumni into Indianapolis-based capital and operating talent. The four High Alpha co-founders all trace through ExactTarget or its acquired subsidiaries: Dorsey as ExactTarget's CEO; Fitzgerald as a long-time operator before and through ExactTarget (and Compendium, the content-marketing platform Oracle acquired in 2013); Tobias through iGoDigital, which ExactTarget acquired in 2012; and Andersen through design-firm work for ExactTarget and the broader Indianapolis SaaS scene before founding Studio Science. The firm was conceived from the start as a vehicle to reinvest the operational lessons and the relationship network from that exit into the next generation of Indianapolis-headquartered B2B SaaS companies.

The lineage extends beyond the founding partnership. ExactTarget alumni populate the founder rosters of several High Alpha-launched studio companies and several capital-arm portfolio companies; the firm's Navigators Network and Founders in Residence programs are explicit channels for re-engaging that talent. The longer “Salesforce Indy” cohort — ExactTarget, Interactive Intelligence (acquired by Genesys, 2016), Aprimo (sold by Teradata to Marlin Equity, 2016), Compendium, iGoDigital — is the broader backdrop against which High Alpha operates. The firm is not the only outcome of that exit window, but it is the most-active builder in the city, and its studio-plus-capital model is the most distinctive shape any of the alumni-founder vehicles has taken.

High Alpha in the Indianapolis SaaS scene

High Alpha is the most-active builder of B2B SaaS startups in Indianapolis, and many of the city's software-employer roster rows trace back to it — Opendate, Tenon, Anvl, Zylo, Casted, Bolster, Metaimpact, Encamp, Authenticx, Lessonly (now Seismic), Logik.ai (now ServiceNow). The firm's office on Massachusetts Avenue anchors the Bottleworks District's startup density; the recurring Sprint Weeks, Flight Schools, and XO Summit run there.

For visitors arriving here from a Mungomash Brief about an Indianapolis-area Series A or Series B led or co-led by High Alpha, the page is the “who runs this firm and what does it do” anchor that the Brief itself doesn't carry inline. The Opendate Brief (January 2026, published June 2026) is the first such cross-reference, and the structure is built so that every future High Alpha-portfolio Brief on the Indianapolis board can cite this page as a primary site link.

High Alpha is not the only Indianapolis-area venture capital firm — Elevate Ventures, Allos Ventures, Foundry, and IU Ventures also lead and co-lead rounds for companies the site tracks — but it is the most-prominent in the studio model and in the B2B SaaS thesis specifically. Whether to publish parallel leadership pages for the other local firms is an open question; this page is the precedent.

Read these primary sources

Everything on this page traces back to the URLs below. The firm's own website is the canonical place to verify partner roster, portfolio, and fund-launch announcements. SEC EDGAR is the canonical place to verify fund vehicles and filing dates. Local IBJ and Inside Indiana Business coverage carries most of the contextual reporting on individual rounds and exits.

High Alpha's own surfaces

Firm overview, the published Studio and Capital recipes, the canonical team and portfolio rosters, the news index for date-stamped funding and exit announcements, and the blog for partner-authored long-form posts.

# Firm overview and about-page timeline
https://www.highalpha.com/about

# Canonical team roster (partner tier + operating leads)
https://www.highalpha.com/team

# Canonical portfolio roster
https://www.highalpha.com/companies

# Two-arm model — published recipes
https://www.highalpha.com/studio
https://www.highalpha.com/capital

# Funding announcements, partner additions, exits
https://www.highalpha.com/news
https://www.highalpha.com/blog

SEC EDGAR — Form D filings for every High Alpha fund vehicle

The Studio I-III and Capital Fund I-IV vehicles cited on this page each filed Form D with the SEC when they accepted commitments. The full-text search returns the complete filer list; the per-CIK pages link directly to the primary documents.

# Form D full-text search (all "High Alpha" filers)
https://efts.sec.gov/LATEST/search-index?q=%22High+Alpha%22&forms=D

# Seed Fund (Fund I), 2015 · CIK 0001643024
https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001643024

# Capital Fund II, 2018 · CIK 0001734120
https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001734120

# Capital Fund III, 2020 · CIK 0001838624
https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001838624

# Capital Fund IV, 2024 · CIK 0002008923
https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0002008923

ExactTarget acquisition — the founding context

Salesforce's June 4, 2013 acquisition of ExactTarget (~$2.5B) is the founding context for High Alpha. The press release and Salesforce's 8-K filings carry the deal mechanics; ExactTarget became the foundation of Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

# Salesforce press release — June 4, 2013 acquisition announcement
https://www.salesforce.com/news/press-releases/2013/06/130604/

# Salesforce 8-K filings (CIK 0001108524)
https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001108524&type=8-K

Long-form local reporting

Indianapolis Business Journal (IBJ) and Inside Indiana Business are the canonical outlets for High Alpha coverage, partner additions, exits, and broader Indianapolis-cohort context that the firm's own announcements don't carry.

# IBJ — search "High Alpha"
https://www.ibj.com/

# Inside Indiana Business — search "High Alpha"
https://www.insideindianabusiness.com/

I keep this static and sourced. Partner roster verified against High Alpha's team page; fund history cross-checked against the firm's about-page timeline and against the SEC EDGAR Form D record; portfolio names verified against the firm's companies page and recent news. Where a value-bearing claim could not be sourced to a primary document, it is flagged inline rather than asserted.

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Shipped 2026-06-05 by Europa — new page; primary-sources block reshaped to matched-set recipe.