19. Scott McCorkle – hitting the ExactTarget at MetaCX

Paleo Ad Tech

Scott McCorkle was a long-time leader and visionary at ExactTarget, a pioneering ESP and mar-tech hub that was acquired by the mighty Salesforce in 2012. He’s currently the CEO and co-founder at MetaCX, an outcome-based collaboration tool for software buyers and suppliers.

As Scott tells his former employee (full disclosure), Jill, and his former tough-minded Gartner analyst assessor, Marty, in this charming episode — the first mar-tech episode in this thus far ad tech-focused podcast, — he originally nurtured dreams of playing professional baseball, abandoned them rapidly for computer science at Ball State University and an MBA at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business.

He joined firms such as Eli Lilly in product roles and ended up at IBM in 1997 when they acquired an artfully-named firm called Software Artistry, where he was V.P. of Engineering. A subsequent startup called Mezzia rode the dot-com boom up and then had a somewhat lackluster exit but still lives on in a facilities planning suite, an exhibit of stamina of which Scott remains justifiably proud.

Having met for a number of years with the co-founders of another Indianapolis-based startup called ExactTarget — Scott Dorsey and Chris Baggott, — Scott segued to a role as as President of Technology and Strategy in 2005. He was part of the team that brought ExactTarget public in 2012 and sold the company to Salesforce in 2013 for a reported $2.5 billion. He was CEO of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud until 2016, when he left to build his new journey (get it? BUILD his JOURNEY? heh heh ? … heh? … is this thing on?).

In this episode, the Indiana-based McCorkle tells Jill and Marty how he grew up in a rural area with “modest means” but loved to play around with his Apple 2e; why he never actually moved his home away from Indianapolis (and why that wasn’t actually a problem); why Salesforce made its move in 2016; and what’s so special about the time period of 2007-2008.

That latter point is one we’re going to explore in future episodes, not all of which will be about email. Enjoy!