Meet Don & Charpie
Hi, we’re Don MacKinnon and Matt “Charpie” Charpentier—engineers, designers, founders, and developer advocates on a mission to make powerful, flexible search accessible to every team.
We created Searchcraft, a blazing-fast vertical search engine built in Rust and designed for front-end developers. If you’ve ever been frustrated by bloated, backend-heavy search tools—or struggled to give users relevant, typo-tolerant, lightning-fast results—we’ve got something you’ll want to see.
Don is a seasoned software engineer with deep roots in the publishing world, having led engineering efforts at Condé Nast, Reuters, and Time Magazine. Over the years, he saw firsthand how inadequate search tools were holding back teams—and decided to do something about it. With a passion for systems design, fast infrastructure, and developer ergonomics, Don architected Searchcraft to give developers more control, more performance, and less backend pain. He’s fluent in Rust, obsessed with relevance scoring, and always hunting for ways to make things both smarter and simpler.
Charpie is a builder at heart—of teams, products, and companies. Before Searchcraft, he ran Chalk, a Colorado-based dev shop known for punching above its weight. With years of experience leading engineering orgs and launching products, he brings a pragmatic, people-first approach to scaling tech. When Don pitched the idea that became Searchcraft, Charpie jumped in with both feet. Now he’s leading the charge to bring modern, flexible search to platforms that need it most. He believes in shipping fast, talking to users early, and giving developers superpowers.