Charlotte Schmitt
Co-Founder & CEO of Octolens — social listening for the agent era
Charlotte built the social listening platform that Vercel, PostHog, Cursor, and Lovable use to catch every conversation about their brand — with a team of two. Before that she ran operations at crowd.dev through its acquisition by the Linux Foundation, and co-founded a Techstars-backed startup.
Zurich, Switzerland • hi@octolens.com
The story so far
Operator turned founder — Octolens exists because Charlotte had the problem herself.
- 2024 — today
Co-Founder & CEO, Octolens
Social listening for the agent era. One API for every mention across the internet — used by Vercel, PostHog, Cursor, and Lovable.
- 2022 — 2024
Chief of Staff → Head of Operations, crowd.dev
Developer community platform, acquired by the Linux Foundation. Tracking what developers said about the product across Reddit, Hacker News, and GitHub was her job — and the origin story of Octolens.
- 2021 — 2022
Co-Founder & Managing Director, SaveSpace
On-demand storage startup. Techstars Berlin Accelerator, class of 2022.
- 2019 — 2021
Associate Consultant, Prophet
Brand and marketing strategy consulting in Zurich.
What Charlotte cares about
The threads that run through her writing, talks, and podcast appearances — all first-hand, real numbers included.
Building a real company with two people
Octolens serves hundreds of devtool and AI companies — including Vercel, PostHog, Cursor, and Lovable — with a team of two. No sales team, no support hires, no ops department. What that actually takes, and what they deliberately don't do.
- The two-person operating system: what gets automated, what stays founder-owned
- Second-time founder: accelerator-track with SaveSpace (Techstars '22), lean this time
- Saying no — the features, channels, and customers a tiny team has to turn down
Founder-led support & staying close to users
Octolens exists because Charlotte needed to know what users were saying and had no tool for it. That instinct still runs the company: the founders answer support themselves, and it doubles as product research, retention work, and their best growth channel — word of mouth.
- Why founders should keep doing support far longer than conventional wisdom says
- Turning support conversations into roadmap and retention decisions
- Where automation genuinely helps a tiny team — and where it would kill the advantage
Operations: chief of staff to CEO
Before founding Octolens, Charlotte was Chief of Staff and then Head of Operations at crowd.dev — running the operational side of a venture-backed startup all the way through its acquisition by the Linux Foundation.
- What a chief of staff actually does at an early-stage startup — and when to hire one
- Operating through an acquisition: lessons from the crowd.dev → Linux Foundation exit
- The minimum viable ops stack for a two-person company
Bios, facts & assets
Quoting Charlotte in an article, introducing her on a podcast, or promoting an episode? Everything you need is below.
Charlotte Schmitt is the co-founder and CEO of Octolens, the social listening platform used by Vercel, PostHog, Cursor, and Lovable to track brand mentions across 15+ platforms — from Reddit to podcasts.
Before founding Octolens, Charlotte Schmitt was Chief of Staff at crowd.dev, a developer community platform acquired by the Linux Foundation. Part of her job was manually searching Reddit, Hacker News, and GitHub for conversations about the product — so in 2024 she built the tool she wished she'd had. Today hundreds of devtool and AI companies, including Vercel, PostHog, Cursor, and Lovable, use Octolens to monitor their brand everywhere their community lives. She's a second-time founder (Techstars Berlin '22) based in Zurich.
- Based in
- Zurich, Switzerland (CET)
- Company founded
- April 2024
- Platforms monitored
- 15+ — Reddit to podcasts
- Customers include
- Vercel, PostHog, Cursor, Lovable
- Previous exit
- crowd.dev → Linux Foundation
- Accelerator
- Techstars Berlin '22
- Languages
- English, German
- Recording setup
- Remote-ready, quality audio
Talk to Charlotte
Podcast or press inquiry, customer question, or anything Octolens — grab 15 minutes, or email hi@octolens.com.