Matt DiMaria's son came to Nashville to pursue a music career. Because of that, DiMaria now has realized success on Nashville's business stage.
DiMaria is CEO of Mindful, a software company that automates and enhances what happens when customers of some 400 companies — ranging from Walmart, Comcast and Prudential to Bank of America, Delta and AT&T — call those businesses for service or other help.
DiMaria began coming to Nashville when his son was attending Belmont University. He moved Mindful's headquarters from Ohio to Brentwood in 2018, and moved his family from Silicon Valley to Middle Tennessee in the process.
Now, after consecutive years of doubling revenue, Mindful is being acquired by San Francisco-based Medallia.
In an interview, DiMaria said he sees many of the same dynamics in Nashville that he saw when he moved to Silicon Valley in the late 1980s. "A young, pro-business, enthusiastic, creative dynamic," as he put it.
"Nashville has now established itself as a compelling destination for technology," DiMaria said. "That was a little more novel in 2018. People's eyes have opened a lot in the last several years."
He added: "Part of what inspired me to move was not just what Nashville was, but what Nashville will be in 10 or 15 years' time. What I can say with high confidence is technology will be an extremely powerful part of Nashville’s future and the economy. The seeds are in the soil right now."
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. It's set to close in the third quarter, pending approval from the Federal Trade Commission.
Mindful has about 20 employees at its Brentwood headquarters, which is 13% of a workforce that's scattered in Ohio and other states.
Medallia has offices worldwide. The company briefly was publicly traded, reporting close to $480 million of annual revenue in its 2020-21 fiscal year. In mid-2021, investment firm Thoma Bravo bought Medallia for $6.4 billion cash and took the company private again.
"There already have been early indications of their desire to increase the footprint here," DiMaria said. "And by the way, they love Nashville."
Mindful's origins date back about a quarter-century, when it was known as Virtual Hold Technology. The company created a virtual call queue for people calling customer service, allowing them to hang up and get a call back when it was their turn in line, as opposed to staying on hold for long stretches of time.
The Mindful cloud-based software modernizes that process and extends it to a company's app, chat bot and website. If, for example, a chat bot can't answer a question, the system has the customer pick a day and time to receive a phone call.
"They decide when they want to interact, and the brand reaches out to the consumer. It completely flips around the relationship," DiMaria said. "Brands save money because they don't have to tie up a lot of [call center] agents, waiting for people to call in."
DiMaria joined the company when California-based Alpine Investors bought Virtual Hold Technology in 2018. The San Francisco-based private-equity firm installed DiMaria as CEO. (Alpine Investors is the party now selling Mindful to Medallia).
As for DiMaria's son, Nick? He hit it big too. He met Devin Dawson during their freshman year at Belmont and wound up playing lead guitar on Dawson's platinum single, "All On Me." Nick DiMaria toured the world with Dawson, opening for the likes of Blake Shelton, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, Willie Nelson, Maren Morris and more.
"A whole bunch of former musicians," Matt DiMaria noted, "are in the software business."
