You’ve heard the story before. A developer is asked to take over and continue someone else’s code. They look at the code and the half-assed documentation, get severely pissed off, usually botch the job, and it all ends up being a big waste of time. Israeli startup Swimm, which automates smart documentation for developers, closed a $5.7 million Seed round. The investment was led by Pitango First, with TAU Ventures, Axon Ventures, and Fundfire also participating in the round - which was also backed by private investors, including the founders of Snyk and Orca Security.

Seamlessly diving into new code

Swimm develops a platform that enables developers to create and synchronize smart documentation on the source code itself. The system helps free companies from worrying about code documentation and maintenance, in addition to allowing other team members to contribute info. Swimm tells that the platform seamlessly integrates into each organization’s development environment, even allowing users to create tutorials - as mentioned by CTO Omer Rosenbaum: “The algorithm tracks the code history on Git, analyzes changes, and updates the tutorials. This can be done while reading the tutorial, or as part of the company’s CI. By bonding documentation to the source code, users can find relevant Swimm files for their problematic code and understand which code segments have actually been documented.”

Rosenbaum adds that the Swimm application is installed on the organization’s computers and supports all programming languages, on various development environments (GitLab, GitHub, BitBucket), and on different operating systems, with the caveat being that the customer code is saved to Git.

According to Rosenbaum, Swimm’s platform is relevant to users anytime they approach new code - whether during the onboarding process, or when joining an open-source project, or whenever approaching unfamiliar code.

Rosenbaum also explains that due to the Coronavirus crisis and move to remote work, the need for a remote onboarding solution significantly increased: “It’s a constant need for both experienced and rookie developers alike and in many companies, the problem is intensified through high human turnover.”

Swimm was founded in 2019 by CEO Oren Toledano, CTO Omer Rosenbaum, CPO Gilad Navot, and CBO Tom Ahi Dror. The company employs a team of 12, which are split between New York and Tel Aviv offices.