Goodbye 🐳 Swelly

We launched Swelly in August 2016 to help people make better decisions.
And today it's time to announce the hardest decision of our life so far:
Shut
Down
Swelly

Swelly is shutting down on May 22nd 2021.

Statement - CEO Pete:
The little whale was inspired by the 🌊 waves of Venice Beach and became famous on Facebook Messenger and the big stage of Facebook's F8 conference in 2017.

It's crazy to end a journey after such a long time. Especially one that took us from Vienna to Los Angeles and all the way back.

I want to say thank you to every single one of our 10 Million users.
The biggest decision-making community on the internet is ending today.
Thank you to my friends Philipp & Manfred who have been building with me for the last 6 years.

Thank you to every single one of our team members, from interns to freelancers to employees and influencers we partnered with.

A special thank you to all of our investors - you trusted in a bunch of 20-something year olds who had no idea what they were doing and how difficult this would be.

I want to thank some communities in particular who supported us:
Austrian Startups, Chatbot Community, the Kin Community, Europeans in LA, Expert Dojo in Santa Monica, and everyone in and around Lemmings.

You've probably noticed that it's been quiet around Swelly over the past couple of months. There is a reason for that.

Phil, Fred, and I have been fighting to give this story a happy ending.
We had to make countless hard decisions including giving up our dream home in LA, letting go of our amazing team, and focusing on creating returns for everyone involved.
And the most difficult one: Shutting down Swelly.

Today I am
A: 🥲 sad to say goodbye to 🐳 Swelly.
B: 🔥 proud to announce that we paid out our investors earlier this year and every shareholder made a swell deal. 🚀

Life's still Swell.
Pete