Hi friends,

I’m coming to you with some exciting news: I’ve joined the brilliant team at Charm to lead business and growth initiatives!

Wait, woah, what?! 

Quick FAQ:

Charm? Say more.

Charm was founded by Toby Padilla and Christian Rocha in late 2019. It has since made a strong name for itself in the open-source and developer community as the creator of next-gen command line tools. Charm aims to be that one-stop-shop for all developers, servicing individuals and companies, fully enabling their creativity and productivity. In two short years, the startup has, in impressive fashion, racked over 24,000+ GitHub stars across their array of products.

It’s been a crazy first two weeks. Charm hit #1 on Hacker news, was highlighted by Github to their 2.2M+ followers and featured on Microsoft’s “The Download” as the latest best developer find.

What made you take the leap from VC (back) to operating?

Team. Product. Vision. In that order.

I worked alongside Toby and Christian when I was Head of Finance for a portfolio company. We still recall fondly the day they filled out incorporation paperwork for Charm whilst sitting next to me, asking me which box to fill for proper compliance. I remember walking home that day thinking: “Wow, Day One. Anyone would be so lucky to work with these guys.”

In the two years since, I’ve been fortunate to witness that brilliance with front row access. I saw each product launch be promptly welcomed by developers, particularly given its strong product design focus on encryption and not tracking users.

With the likes of Github and Hashicorp acting as trailblazers built  by the robust open-source community, I’m excited to join Toby and Christian’s vision, to build that “one-stop-shop” modern terminal experience for developers.

What will you be doing at Charm?

I’ll be focused on all business and growth initiatives of the company. 

Product-wise, Charm’s products are free-to-use.With the introduction of our newer products, such as Soft Serve, as well as others currently in development, we’ve received inbound enterprise partner opportunities we’re excited about! 

That also means for my VC friends: talk soon. 🙂

Any considerable learnings from Betaworks?

Where to start?

My time at Betaworks, which spanned the full gamut of operating to investing, has been the most professionally rewarding experience of my life. I’m so grateful for the memorable learning experiences to prepare me for my leadership role at Charm. While I’m tempted to share now, I’ll save that for a separate post.

After 4.5 years of building and investing at Betaworks, I want to thank the movers and shakers who’ve shown me a new world. In particular, John Borthwick, Jon Chin, Danika Laszuk, Matt Hartman, Peter Rojas, Sam Mandel, Fahim Abouelfadl, Nicole Ranucci, Analisa Svehaug, Sarah McBride…and many more colleagues and mentors.

With Team Betaworks x Team Charm (co-founder Christian):

What a time to build,

JZ