swimm Secures $27.6M Series A to Revolutionize Coding Documentation

The Importance of Developer Documentation and Swimm's Solution

Effective documentation is essential for every software development team, facilitating the onboarding of new developers and maintaining a clear record of project details. When creating an external API, comprehensive implementation instructions become even more crucial, though maintaining such documentation is often a task programmers find challenging.

Introducing Swimm: A Documentation-Focused Startup

Swimm, an Israeli startup, addresses this pain point by providing a solution that encourages developers to include documentation, simplifies its creation, and proactively identifies outdated information. The company recently announced a $27.6 million Series A funding round to further develop and expand its offerings. Swimm is also now available in beta.

Funding Details and Investors

This funding round was spearheaded by Insight Partners and Dawn Capital, with participation from existing investors Pitango First and TAU Ventures. To date, Swimm has secured a total of $33.3 million in funding.

Addressing the Documentation Gap

Oren Toledano, CEO and co-founder of Swimm, explains that developers frequently prioritize coding over documentation. The company’s aim is to integrate documentation more seamlessly into the coding workflow, making it less burdensome.

“Swimm’s objective is to provide developers with a straightforward method for creating documentation closely linked to the code itself. Critically, once code and documentation are connected, Swimm can track code changes and alert users to documentation that requires updating,” Toledano stated.

How Swimm Integrates into the Development Pipeline

Swimm integrates directly into the development process, functioning through the IDE or on GitHub. It flags changes as they occur, similar to track changes in a word processor, allowing developers to accept or modify them as needed. The platform is language-agnostic, supporting all code types.

Toledano emphasizes that the company views documentation as an integral part of the codebase.

Documentation as Code

“Documentation resides alongside the code within the user’s repository and is treated as code. When code is pushed, Swimm documentation is also pushed, undergoing the same CI [continuous integration] pipeline and deployment processes as the code itself. This allows us to ensure documentation remains current,” he explained.

Company Growth and Diversity Initiatives

Currently, Swimm employs 30 individuals, with a small presence in the U.S. and Berlin, and the majority based in Tel Aviv. The company reports that over 40% of its workforce is female, and they are committed to increasing that proportion to 50% through strategic hiring practices.

“We are focused on building the infrastructure to attract a diverse pool of candidates,” Toledano said. “Once we achieve our diversity goals, we will actively seek to include underrepresented populations in Israel’s high-tech sector by partnering with relevant organizations.”