Warp formally launched with its blazingly fast modern command-line terminal
so that entire development teams can be more productive at building, running
and debugging code. Tens of thousands of developers have signed up for the
waitlist for the private beta since last summer, and thousands of developers
use the application daily. The product is in public beta starting today.
"It's crazy that one of the two main apps that every developer
uses daily doesn't support any of the modern UI and collaboration features that
have become standard across all productivity software over the past 10 years.
On the same computers that are running Figma and Google Docs, developers are
still using terminals familiar from 1980s hacker movies for many of their core
workflows. Warp modernizes the terminal, making it collaborative and
team-friendly, bringing it into the 21st century," said Zach Lloyd, founder and
CEO of Warp.
The terminal is used by every developer every day to write,
build, run, debug and deploy software, including most of the software that
powers the cloud. However the terminal has not been meaningfully improved in
the last 40 years. As a result, developers waste countless hours trying to
learn, use and collaborate in an archaic tool that could otherwise be spent
building and shipping software.
Warp's founder and CEO Zach Lloyd sought out to modernize the
terminal, enabling every developer to be as productive as a command-line
expert. He leveraged his experience leading engineering on Google Docs, which
fostered a similar transformation in office productivity software. Together
with a team of productivity software veterans, including Shikhiu Ing who led the
design team on Google Docs, Warp has reinvented the terminal, connected it to
the cloud and made it work for teams.
Warp is a super-fast application, built natively in Rust, with
an interface tailored to modern workflows. Warp changes the basic interface
primitives of the terminal - text input and output - to adapt to the way
developers work today. Input works like a modern text-editor, and output works
like a data notebook. Moreover, Warp works out-of-the-box to make terminal
input delightful and powerful by suggesting commands for commonly used tools
and providing built-in workflows to save developers time.
Besides building for the individual developer, Warp is also
building for the fundamentally collaborative nature of modern development
teams. Whereas the regular terminal is a single-player app, Warp is introducing
features that enable developers to help each other, debug outages together and
share knowledge.
Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger, who is working at a new
startup in stealth, said: "I have been using Warp every day at work. My
favorite thing is the speed: both in terms of how fast it works and also how
fast you feel while using it, especially the excellent typeahead and search.
Warp brings terminals into the modern day and I can't wait to see where they
take Warp."
Warp Raises $23
Million in Seed and Series A Funding
Warp has raised $6 million in a seed round led by GV with participation from Neo and BoxGroup and a $17 million Series A round
led by Dylan Field, co-founder and CEO of Figma. Other participants include
Elad Gil, Silicon Valley's biggest solo venture capitalist, Jeff Weiner's Next
Play Ventures and Marc Benioff's TIME Ventures.
"Warp is making a 10x better, multiplayer terminal and the
opportunity is enormous," said Dylan Field, co-founder and CEO of Figma. "Like
design, we will never look back."
"There are few tools as widely used by developers as the
terminal, and there is a need for dramatic improvement. Warp takes a
groundbreaking approach to rebuild the CLI with a modern, collaborative UX that
resonates with distributed development teams," said Erik Nordlander, General
Partner at GV and Warp Board Member. "GV is excited to support Zach Lloyd and
the Warp team as they reinvent one of the most important developer tools."
"We are delighted to once again partner with a great
entrepreneur, Zach Lloyd," said Marc Benioff. "Developers will
greatly benefit from the genius of Warp.dev."
Warp plans to use the money to grow its engineering team and
continue to advance its product as it goes to market in 2022.