Zach Lloyd

Founder & CEO, Warp at independent

Reviewed Updated Jul 31, 2026

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Location New York, NY
Last Verified Investment Continua (Seed) — Aug 12, 2025
Social @zachlloydtweets LinkedIn
Stage Focus
pre-seed seed series-a series-b
Sector Focus
developer-tools ai-ml enterprise-software infrastructure productivity

Background

Zach Lloyd is the founder and CEO of Warp, a Rust-based developer terminal launched in June 2020 12. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University in 2002, graduating with distinction and a secondary major in Mathematics 34.

Lloyd spent nearly a decade at Google as a Principal Engineer, where he led engineering on Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides 25. His work at Google included patented contributions to spreadsheet technology, dating back to Google Spreadsheets in 2007 3. After Google, he served as interim Chief Technology Officer at TIME magazine and co-founded a startup called SelfMade before launching Warp in 2020 56.

Warp has raised more than $73 million in disclosed funding, including a $6M seed led by GV in 2021, a $17M Series A led by Figma CEO Dylan Field in April 2022, and a $50M Series B led by Sequoia Capital in June 2023 17. Warp’s own cap table also includes angel investors Sam Altman, Marc Benioff, Jeff Weiner, and Elad Gil 1.

Lloyd is based in New York and maintains a personal blog at thezbook.com 34.

Stated Thesis

Lloyd has not published a formal investment thesis. He is a personally active founder-angel rather than an institutional investor, and does not raise or deploy outside capital. His public writing and podcast appearances focus on developer productivity, the terminal as an interface for AI, and how AI is reshaping software engineering 785.

In his own descriptions of what motivates him professionally, he has said: “I’ve been a developer for a really long time. I wanted to build something for developers to help them ship stuff faster” 8. That developer-tools orientation is consistent with the visible pattern in his angel checks.

Inferred Thesis

Lloyd’s angel activity is limited in volume — five publicly documented checks across 2023–2025 — so any percentage breakdown would be misleading. The qualitative pattern is clear, however:

  • Overwhelmingly developer- and engineer-facing tools. Four of five documented investments (Cerbos, Daytona, Workbrew, Warp-adjacent Granola aside) target developers, DevOps, or platform engineering audiences directly 9101112. The one non-dev-tool check (Continua) is an AI product built by a former Google Distinguished Engineer 13.
  • Founder overlap with his own network. Multiple investees are founded or co-founded by people who overlap with his ex-Google or ex-developer-tools orbit — Continua by former Google Distinguished Engineer David Petrou 13, Workbrew by the Homebrew maintainers 1411.
  • Stage: predominantly seed and pre-seed, with one growth-stage check. Three of five investments are seed or pre-seed rounds (Cerbos $7.5M seed, Daytona $2M pre-seed, Continua $8M seed); one is a Series A (Workbrew $5M); and one is a growth-stage Series B (Granola $43M) 910111213.
  • Consistent co-investor community. He appears alongside other founder-angels from developer-tools companies — Zach Holman (early GitHub), Charity Majors (Honeycomb), Paul Copplestone (Supabase), Christian Bach (Netlify), Tom Preston-Werner (GitHub), Guillermo Rauch (Vercel), Amjad Masad (Replit), Tobi Lütke (Shopify), Karri Saarinen (Linear), and Dan Shipper (Every) 910111213.
  • Geography: US and UK. Cerbos is UK-based; the remaining four investees are US companies 15.

The sample is too small to compute reliable percentages, and check sizes are not publicly disclosed. Lloyd is best understood as a small-volume founder-angel who backs peers building tools for developers and engineers.

Portfolio

Company Year Stage Source
Cerbos 2023 Seed ($7.5M) 9
Daytona 2023 Pre-Seed ($2M) 10
Workbrew 2024 Seed ($5M) 11
Granola 2025 Series B ($43M) 12
Continua 2025 Seed ($8M) 13

In Their Own Words

On why he built Warp — and the problem he cares about:

“The terminal is truly archaic. I thought, What if I could take this old school basic interface of just text in and text out and really improve it?” — Zach Lloyd, Sequoia Capital Spotlight, 2024 7

“This might sound obvious, but I realized it’s really important to me to be working on a problem that I care deeply about.” — Zach Lloyd, Sequoia Capital Spotlight, 2024 7

On the terminal as the natural interface for AI:

“Large language models are essentially command-line interfaces, and the terminal is kind of the ideal way to interface with them.” — Zach Lloyd, Sequoia Capital Spotlight, 2024 7

On product-market fit and measuring success:

“Do the users that we have retain? Do they engage? Are people using it three days a week, five days a week, seven days a week?” — Zach Lloyd, Changelog Interviews #555 8

On growth strategy:

“Most of our growth at Warp comes from people telling their friends about it. We don’t really do paid marketing.” — Zach Lloyd, Changelog Interviews #555 8

On what he learned from Google Sheets about building products:

“If you built something that was significantly different, significantly better, really improved people’s productivity, it could be a game changer.” — Zach Lloyd, The Room Podcast, January 2026 5

Advice he has given publicly to founders:

“Don’t try to follow the success strategy, but try to get rid of the failure strategy.” — Zach Lloyd, The Room Podcast, January 2026 5

What Founders Say

No independently sourced founder testimonials found. Lloyd is a small-volume founder-angel and there is no public record of portfolio founders describing his post-investment support in detail.

Sources

  1. Wikipedia, “Warp (terminal),” accessed July 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warp_(terminal) ↩↩↩

  2. Sequoia Capital, “Zach Lloyd” founder page, accessed July 2026. https://sequoiacap.com/founder/zach-lloyd/↩↩

  3. Zach Lloyd LinkedIn profile, accessed July 2026. https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachlloyd↩↩↩

  4. Zach Lloyd personal website, “thezbook,” accessed July 2026. https://thezbook.com↩↩

  5. The Room Podcast, “Scaling Warp and Supercharging Developers with AI with Founder Zach Lloyd,” January 20, 2026. https://theroompodcast.medium.com/scaling-warp-and-supercharging-developers-with-ai-with-founder-zach-lloyd-0823d3446ad4↩↩↩↩↩

  6. The Twenty Minute VC, “Warp Founder & CEO, Zach Lloyd: The Startup Adding $1M ARR Every Week,” accessed July 2026. https://www.thetwentyminutevc.com/zach-lloyd↩

  7. Sequoia Capital, “Transforming the Command Line at Warp Speed,” accessed July 2026. https://sequoiacap.com/article/warp-spotlight/↩↩↩↩↩

  8. Changelog Interviews #555, “Back to the terminal of the future with Zach Lloyd, Founder & CEO of Warp,” accessed July 2026. https://changelog.com/podcast/555↩↩↩↩

  9. Cerbos press release via GlobeNewswire, “Cerbos Supercharges the Ability to Manage and Enforce Authorization Policies at Limitless Scale, Closes $7.5 Million in Seed Funding,” April 12, 2023. https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2023/04/12/2645616/0/en/Cerbos-Supercharges-the-Ability-to-Manage-and-Enforce-Authorization-Policies-at-Limitless-Scale-Closes-7-5-Million-in-Seed-Funding.html↩↩↩↩

  10. Daytona blog, “Daytona Raises $2M in Pre-Seed,” November 6, 2023. https://www.daytona.io/dotfiles/daytona-raises-2m-in-pre-seed↩↩↩↩

  11. Workbrew blog, “Workbrew 1.0 and $5M in Funding for Secure Software Delivery,” November 19, 2024. https://workbrew.com/blog/workbrew-1-↩↩↩↩↩

  12. The SaaS News, “Granola Raises $43 Million in Series B,” May 14, 2025. https://www.thesaasnews.com/news/granola-raises-43-million-in-series-b/↩↩↩↩

  13. The AI Insider, “Former Google Distinguished Engineer David Petrou Launches Continua, a New Vision for Social AI,” August 15, 2025. https://theaiinsider.tech/2025/08/15/former-google-distinguished-engineer-david-petrou-launches-continua-a-new-vision-for-social-ai/↩↩↩↩↩

  14. TechCrunch, “Workbrew makes open source package manager Homebrew enterprise-friendly,” November 19, 2024. https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/19/workbrew-makes-open-source-package-manager-homebrew-enterprise-friendly/↩

  15. Tracxn, “Zach Lloyd — Portfolio & Founded Companies,” accessed July 2026. https://tracxn.com/d/people/zach-lloyd/__cz4vPaxMqbnYTGgrxCYy3gfMDnOuRqNctwe0g61PS08↩