// startup autopsy

Swivel

Pioneered data visualization for the masses, then ran out of time.

timingSlow Death

Years-long decline before final shutdown · Fatal mistake: Built a freemium public data platform without a credible monetization path, then ran out of runway before enterprise demand for data visualization tools matured.

Founded	2005
Closed	2010
Country	USA
Sector	Saas

50%

Key Events Timeline

2005-01

FOUNDING

Swivel founded in the USA with a vision to democratize data publishing and visualization for the general public.

2006-09

PRODUCT LAUNCH

Swivel launched publicly, quickly gaining media attention as 'YouTube for data' with thousands of datasets uploaded.

2007-04

FUNDING

Raised $2M in funding to expand the platform, marking the last capital injection the company would receive.

2009-01

PIVOT

Attempted pivot toward enterprise data analytics clients as consumer monetization failed, but market adoption remained too slow.

2010-06

SHUTDOWN

Swivel shut down after exhausting its funding, unable to monetize its innovative but ahead-of-its-time data visualization platform.

Full Analysis

Analyst plan

Documented cause

Swivel was a data visualization and sharing platform that pioneered public dataset publishing before the market was ready. With $2M raised and last funding in 2007, it ran out of capital unable to monetize free...

data sharing or compete with free tools like Google Charts. The startup faced a critical market timing problem—it operated in a pre-data democratization era when demand for public dataset publishing

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€4M

Peak valuation

HypeCycle · MoatType · ResearchTags

Swivel raised €2M before built a freemium public data platform without a credible monetization path, then ran out of runway before enterprise demand for data visualization tools matured. ended it. See the documented cause, verified lesson and all failure signals.

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