Charles has been a venture capitalist since 1997 and has focused on early-stage business technology companies throughout his career. Charles co-founded Rally Ventures in 2012 with Jeff Hinck. Prior to co-founding Rally Ventures, Charles was a General Partner at El Dorado Ventures since 2000. He started his venture career as an associate at Scripps Ventures after working as an analyst at Piper Jaffray and earlier as a systems consultant at the Mayo Clinic, where he helped design a radiology information system.
Some of Charles’ notable investments include: Coupa Software which had a highly successful IPO in 2016 (Nasdaq: COUP); Compellent Technologies which held an IPO and was subsequently sold to Dell, returning more than 9x invested capital; NuSpeed, which was acquired by Cisco Systems returning 55x invested capital; Verodin; and Twistlock.
Charles founded and helps produce the Node Summit conference series, which focuses on the evolution and future of web application development. He serves on the boards of AnyRoad, BacktraceI/O, Blue Lava, Bugcrowd, DisruptOps and is Chairman of the Board of the Camp Chippewa Foundation. Charles received his MBA from Wharton and his BA from Colby College.
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