WorkPatterns raises $4.2m in new funding to further develop the leading people management toolkit

Relative to tools built for other functions, software to support People Management hasn’t done much to actually make Managers better at their jobs. 

Sales people have tools that use predictive algorithms to help them target the highest potential accounts and present those prospects with the most relevant collateral. These products help them close more deals and own larger books of business.

Marketers have automation tools and ML-powered targeting that help them identify the ideal prospects and personalize messaging at a scale impossible to achieve manually.

However, when we look at People Management, which is the most fundamental capability of any high functioning organization, there have been no such breakthroughs. 

That’s because the software developed for People Management during the entire digital revolution has pretty much just taken old pen and paper processes, and moved them to the cloud. That’s a nice first step, but taking an old performance review form, and putting it online doesn’t actually make the process any less painful for a manager or any more helpful for their direct reports.

At Charma, we believe there’s a far greater opportunity to use technology to augment a manager’s ability to be proactive, build strong relationships with their direct reports, and to lead high performing teams.

To achieve that, we’re designing product experiences from the end user’s point of view. Instead of starting with a list of features that could have existed on a clipboard in the 1980’s and 90s, we’re asking the question “what do managers and their direct reports actually need on a day to day basis to operate effectively and to build a strong working relationship in the digital first, hybrid work era?”

This approach has yielded compelling results, and we’re thrilled to have thousands of intentional leaders using the product with their teams to thrive and gain an advantage in the most dynamic and challenging business environment we’ve seen in decades.

Here are just a few of those leaders:

“There are no surprises in my one-on-ones anymore and my team shares more with me now because they feel more comfortable writing what's going on. Can't say enough good things about Charma, I will use this forever.”

Lindsey Boggs, Global Director of Sales Development, Quantum Metrics

“Charma allows me to reference coaching conversations, goals, and action items for a very large team with a few clicks instead of digging through G-Drive hunting for notes. Consistency is key to rapid fact-finding and Work Patterns make it simple to hold everyone to the same standard.”

Chase Demelio, Director of Sales Development, SalesHive 

“Charma is the best choice I made to build an impactful staff community and improve clarity at work. As a person working closely with a fully remote team for the first time, I realized Charma can make a long-distance relationship fruitful.”

Chaithra L, Revenue Operations Specialist, Dialpad 

“Charma provides the perfect structure for a first time manager. It’s intuitive and allows for easy adoption by managers and employees.”

Jill Joseph, Controller, AVL Growth Partners 

To see through the next phase of our vision, we’re thrilled to announce a new $4.2m round of funding led by our existing investor Javelin Venture Partners, with super pro rata participation from other existing investors Founders Fund (who led our first round), Zoom, and Merus Capital.

We’re also excited to welcome new investors GTMfund, 10xFounders, Shorewind Capital, Moving Capital, Leblon Ventures, Mana Ventures, and Gaingels. 

In addition to growing our engineering and go to market teams, this new funding will give us the opportunity to build increasingly advanced tools that augment a person’s ability to be a great manager. This will involve:

• Continued improvement to our core one-on-one and group meeting experience
• More robust coaching features including AI assisted feedback, team recognition, and goal setting
• ML driven suggestions on which activities to prioritize for a specific team member in order to improve management effectiveness, deepen working relationships, and ultimately drive better business results

We’ve been purposefully scrappy in building the company, and have scaled to thousands of users with a team of just 8 people. It’s now time to add the next group of team members that will help us get to our next set of milestones. 

If you’re interested in making a tangible contribution to the improvement of workplace relationships, see our careers page here.

If you are a People Manager yourself who wants to take steps to develop your craft and become the leader that your team raves about, you can try out Charma for free here. 

We’re incredibly grateful to the customers who’ve given us the opportunity and feedback to improve the product to where it is today, and we look forward to truly amazing you with what we build in this next chapter.