WorkPatterns launches out of beta!

Adam Berke

Our people management app is now available to all Intentional leaders and ambitious teams

Charma launches out of beta and is now available cartoon spaceship launching into the sky

Charma helps managers and their teams achieve peak performance and build strong relationships no matter where people are physically located. We provide a purpose-built toolkit for 1:1s, recurring group meetings, feedback, and recognition and are supported in our mission with funding from Pathfinder (Founders Fund’s early stage vehicle,) Javelin Venture Partners, Merus Capital, and a host of fantastic angel/operators.

It’s always exciting to publicly announce your company, but this announcement feels especially meaningful given the moment we’re living in.

Over 2 years ago, we started developing a product that would help teams operate more effectively, fairly, and with greater connection, even if people weren’t physically collocated. Our vision was that managers needed help implementing systems (or “patterns” if you will) that enabled them to stay aligned and connected with their teams in a world that allowed for flexible work arrangements and focused on results, not just signaling in the workplace.

For reasons we never anticipated, this vision has met the reality of the time. The years of work we put into product development are now having a tangible impact on helping people not only adjust, but also thrive in a fundamentally different operating environment. 

Our early adopters have included fantastic teams at companies across departments and industries including Adobe, BuildOps, Cordial, Dialpad, RepairSmith, and many others. Now, we’re thrilled to open the product up to help even more teams excel.

Frankly, the principles we’ve focused on around the manager-employee relationship (asynchronous workflows, clear alignment, timely feedback, employee recognition, and accountability) were all best practices before the world transitioned to remote work. But now, having a thoughtful system to ensure these best practices are followed, is business critical.

We can’t just rely on serendipitous encounters in the hallway anymore to give someone a thumbs up or to share some thoughts on their work. Teams now need purpose built tools to facilitate new ways of working, and that’s exactly what Charma is focused on.

The great news is that not only are we seeing companies survive given the inconveniences, we’re actually seeing the best managers and their teams exceed their previous limits. Let’s look at this data from across our platform as an example. 

Prior to the broad implementation of stay-at-home policies, action items within Charma tended to get done during a confined window of hours during the day. However, once people are given the flexibility to work on their own schedule, we see them take advantage of the broader window. The result on the aggregate is a wider window of activity throughout the day, and also individuals getting more done on a personal basis. 

And that makes sense! Why should a parent who could be spending time with their kids in the afternoon be forced to work on a task at 3pm that they could just as easily do after the child’s bedtime? If that parent can work on their own schedule, not only will they be happier about their lifestyle, but they’ll also feel less rushed and distracted doing the work so the output will be better!

To be clear, this is not the same thing as allowing work to creep into every hour of life. The key to unlocking this type of productivity requires a new way of working and a new breed of tools. Instead of focusing on face time and misleading signals like who speaks the most in a meeting, managers need to align clearly on expectations and outcomes. And those outcomes need to be documented to create alignment. That type of workflow is just one of many best practices that Charma enables. Let’s look at a few more through the lens of the old way of operating:

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It’s been incredible working closely with our early adopters to help them adapt to the new way of doing things, and we’re thrilled to open up the platform to anyone who wants to try it. We’ve made the entire suite of functionality free for the first 30 days, and special launch pricing of $7/user for teams of 5 and more after that.

In addition to making Charma generally available, we’re also excited to announce funding from some of the top technology investors in the world which will help us see through our vision into the future. Most recently, we closed a round led by Javelin Venture Partners which adds to a previous round led by Pathfinder (Founders Fund’s early stage vehicle), Merus Capital, and notable angel investors including Frank Blake (former CEO of Home Depot,) Auren Hoffman (founder of LiveRamp,) Michael Stoppelman (former SVP of Eng at Yelp,) Josh Jones (HMC INQ,) and PLG Ventures.

We look forward to helping more teams thrive in a new business paradigm and are inspired by the resiliency and ingenuity we’re seeing every day. There’s plenty more to come from Charma and we’re thrilled to continue improving the product and supporting our customers’ evolution into the future!

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