New High Alpha startup Stitch offers software consulting
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Indianapolis-based venture studio High Alpha has launched its latest startup—software consulting firm Stitch.
Stitch, which had its public launch this week, was founded in July by Michael Burton, Ryan McCambridge and Bobby Tichy. All three previously served in key roles at another local software consulting firm, Indianapolis-based Lev. Lev was acquired by New Jersey-based Cognizant in 2020.
Burton, former Lev CEO, now serves as Stitch’s CEO. McCambridge, the former senior vice president of strategy and channel at Lev, is now Stitch’s chief strategy officer. Tichy, who was one of Lev’s co-founders and its former regional vice president of enterprise sales, is Stitch’s chief solutions officer.
Stitch’s exclusive focus will be consulting with customers who use products made by Twilio, a publicly held San Francisco-based company whose platform allows its customers to develop applications to communicate with their customers.
Twilio customers, for instance, can use the platform for software applications that notify diners when their restaurant table is ready, connect potential buyers to real estate agents or embed video capabilities into applications, among other things.
“We’re a marketing tech consultant,” Burton said. “We are focused on helping marketers get the most out of Twilio.”
Stitch’s target customers are marketing and digital officers at mid-market and enterprise-sized companies, Burton said. He defined mid-market companies as those with between 200 and 2,000 employees, and enterprise companies as those with more than 2,000 employees.
Based in Indianapolis, Stitch has about 20 employees, Burton said. He expects that to grow to 150 to 175 employees over the next three years. Most of those employees will be Indianapolis-based, Burton said, because the city is a hub for marketing-tech companies and therefore a good source of marketing-tech talent.
Burton said the relationship between Stitch and Twilio should help both companies grow. Twilio can refer its customers to Stitch, and Stitch in turn can help Twilio’s customers see value in the Twilio platform—and maybe upgrade their Twilio software subscriptions along the way to tap into extra capabilities. Stitch expects to get most of its customers from Twilio referrals.
“It’s a win-win as we’re feeding off of each other,” Burton said.
Burton said the idea for Stitch grew out of his time at Lev, which focused its efforts on Salesforce products. Some people he had known at Salesforce left that company for Twilio, which in recent years has been expanding into marketing-tech with its acquisitions of SendGrid and Segment.
Burton saw an opportunity to build a company that could work with Twilio in the same way that Lev worked with Salesforce.
“It’s a very similar play to what we did when I was at Lev.”
After pitching the idea to Twilio and getting a positive response, Burton and his co-founders moved ahead with their idea.
Twilio and High Alpha also see promise in Stitch’s business model.
“As we look toward the future of what customer engagement means for Twilio, our partnership with Stitch and their focus on marketers will be invaluable,” said Kevin Harris, who heads Twilio Segment’s global business development and alliances, in a prepared statement.
High Alpha Partner Eric Tobias said in a statement that the venture studio is “thrilled to invest in Stitch as they grow alongside Twilio.”
