About

Charged was an independent publisher writing about the intersection of technology and the impact it has on the world—we wrote about technology for over ten years, between 2014-2024. We publish a blog, daily briefing, weekly newsletter and more, designed to save you time and get you up to date without the need to keep up with noisy tech sites—or wade through advertising.

In 2016, Charged evolved into an independent blog, briefing, newsletter and podcast, which reaches over 250,000 unique readers and listeners each month. We’re all about making technology accessible for everyone, with our readers coming from many backgrounds: venture capitalists, high school teachers, mechanics, accountants, software engineers, designers and more.

Who started Charged? This site was founded by Owen Williams, a developer and design leader that works at the intersection of technology and words, most recently at Stripe.

Owen has written for many of the largest technology publications, including Techcrunch, The Next Web, The Verge, and had a weekly column, DEBUGGER, for Medium's OneZero publication.

What makes Charged different?

Owen, Charged's founder, has worked across the technology industry as an infrastructure engineer, developer, product manager, journalist and design leader, so knows what it takes to write great stories, and what events in technology actually matter.

At The Next Web, he wrote articles that reached more than 1.5 million unique readers every month, in a space where few writers have a real background in technology. Before founding this site, he was head of digital at VanMoof in Amsterdam and a freelancer for companies like IKEA, DigitalOcean, HP, Intercom, Spotify, and more. Now, he's a design leader at Stripe.

The podcast was born later, in 2016, in collaboration with John Edgar, former Chief Strategy Officer at DigitalOcean. We realized the opportunity in podcasts, and the value of providing a medium that didn't demand your full attention. In 2018, John focused on his company and we welcomed two new co-hosts, Zach and Frederique, onto the show regularly.

Thank you

In 2026, Charged was put into archive mode. While the site and podcast are no longer being produced, I want to thank you for reading, commenting, and being a part of the Charged community over the years. We had some amazing supporters, who backed us enthusiastically, and sometimes financially, as we experimented.

I'm deeply grateful for you reading—and who knows, maybe Charged will reboot again one day. Until then, you can find Owen on his website.