Swell AI: Revenue, team and how it was built
Swell AI (AI writer for podcasts and videos, United States): US$10K a month as retold from founder interviews, March 2023. Evidence grade D: reported, not verified. Team: 2 co-founders in 2022; 10 employees in May 2024 (Latka, from a video interview). Launched September 2022; still running.Added 5 November 2026
- Outcome
- US$10K a month as retold from founder interviews, March 2023
- Evidence
- D reported, not verified
- Launch
- September 2022
- Status
- Still running
- Team
- 2 co-founders in 2022; 10 employees in May 2024 (Latka, from a video interview)
- Outside funding
- None reported; the founders paid for it themselves (Startup Founder Stories)
- Main channel
- Cold outreach
What is not verified
The headline figure of US$10,000 a month in March 2023 rests on one source: Startup Founder Stories, which retells the founder's podcast interviews; the original interview with the date was not found. The US$1,000 a month in November 2022 comes from the same list. The US$250,000 ARR after 12 months comes from a profile site's summary of the founder's career data. Latka's US$1.1 million a year for September 2025 is Latka's own estimate, marked EST, on a page that says the company has not published revenue; it is shown only as context. The team size of 10 rests on Latka citing a video. A reader could look for a payment-processor profile, a founder interview that states revenue with a date, or a statement by the company. The headline number is grade D: one claim or one estimate, with no second source. Aiolum shows it because the story is useful, and marks it so that it is not mistaken for a verified figure.
Swell AI turns a podcast episode or a video into written content. The user uploads an audio or video file, and the service makes a transcript, a written record of every spoken word, and then writes show notes, blog posts, newsletters and social posts from it with a large language model, a program trained on large amounts of text that writes new text from an instruction. It also cuts short video clips and audiograms, short audio pieces shown as a moving sound wave for social media. The founder described it in 2023 as "an AI writer for podcasters" and a wrapper around the OpenAI API.
Cody Schneider, a growth marketer, started it with his co-founder Max; the two had worked together at Rupa Health. In a September 2023 interview Schneider said that they built Swell in September 2022 and that it "took off" in January 2023. Startup Founder Stories, which retells his podcast interviews, reported that the first version was a shared Google Drive folder for 10 podcaster friends, that revenue passed US$10,000 a month in March 2023, and that growth came from cold email to about 100,000 people a month. A profile built from his public career data said that he bootstrapped Swell AI to US$250,000 in ARR, annual recurring revenue, the yearly value of all running subscriptions, in 12 months.
The headline figure, US$10,000 a month in March 2023, six months after the start, is reported by Startup Founder Stories from the founder's podcast interviews; no second source states it, so the story is graded D, reported and not verified. Latka, a database of software company revenue, estimated US$1.1 million a year in September 2025, but its page says the company has not published revenue, so that number is Latka's own estimate and only context here. Latka also listed 10 employees in May 2024.
How much revenue does Swell AI make?
Each row shows the evidence grade and the source numbers from the list at the end of this page. The grades are explained in How Aiolum verifies.
| Fact | Value | Grade | How we know | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Latka's revenue estimate, September 2025 (context, not evidence) | US$1.1 million a year, estimate | D | Latka's own estimate, marked EST, not a reported figure. The page says: "Swell AI has not published its revenue." Startup Founder Stories repeats the figure and names Latka as the source. | [2, 1] |
| Run rate from the March 2023 figure | US$120,000 a year | calc | Calculated: US$10,000 times 12. This is the headline value on this page. | [1] |
| Annual recurring revenue after 12 months | US$250,000 | D | A personality-profile site's summary of the founder's public career data: "He previously founded Swell AI, bootstrapping it to $250k ARR in 12 months." No date is given beyond the 12 months. | [3] |
| Revenue per month, March 2023 (headline) | US$10,000 | D | Startup Founder Stories' milestone list, retold from the founder's podcast interviews: "$10K MRR", 8 months after the July 2022 idea. No second source. | [1] |
| Revenue per month, November 2022 | US$1,000 | D | Same milestone list. First customer listed in August 2022. | [1] |
| Founders | Cody Schneider and his co-founder Max | C | The founder in September 2023: "My co-founder, Max, who I'm building Swell AI with... we met at Rupa Health." Max's surname is not given in any source read for this page. | [4, 1] |
| Start | September 2022 | C | The founder in September 2023: "we built Swell in September of last year". His career profile lists Swell AI from 9-2022. Startup Founder Stories places the first idea in July 2022. | [4, 3, 1] |
| Team, May 2024 | 10 employees | D | Latka: "Swell AI had 10 employees in May 2024, according to YouTube." Startup Founder Stories also gives a 10-person team at the US$1.1 million figure. | [2, 1] |
| Cold email volume | about 100,000 people a month | D | Startup Founder Stories. It also reports cold messages to about 300,000 US podcasts that had published in the last 30 days, paid ads on Facebook, LinkedIn and Google display, and thousands of AI-written blog posts for search traffic. | [1] |
| AI model | OpenAI API | C | The founder in September 2023: "it's an API wrapper around OpenAI", with Tailwind components for the interface. The 2026 pricing page lists "GPT-3.5 writing". | [4, 7] |
| Prices, May 2026 | free, US$29 and US$49 a month | C | xpay's read of the pricing page on 6 May 2026: Hobby, Studio and Agency. | [7] |
| Outside funding | none reported | D | Startup Founder Stories: the founders turned down venture investors and paid for the company from earlier ventures. | [1] |
| Spin-out product | DraftHorse AI, at US$10,000 a month in 30 days | D | Startup Founder Stories: built in a weekend from Swell's code, for search-engine articles. The founder discussed it in September 2023 as 45 days old. | [1, 4] |
| Founder's later role | Swell AI 9-2022 to 12-2024; Graphed from 7-2025 | D | The career profile lists him as co-founder and CEO of Graphed, an AI data-analysis tool. A podcast page of February 2025 still called him CEO of Swell AI. | [3, 6] |
| Time from start to the headline figure | 6 months | calc | Calculated: September 2022, the start date the founder gave, to March 2023. Counted from the July 2022 idea, as Startup Founder Stories does, it is 8 months. | [4, 1] |
How to read this table: grade D is a single report that no second source confirms: a third-party estimate, a retelling of interviews, or a profile built from public career data. Grade C is the founder's own words in a recorded interview, or a price read from the company's page by a reviewer. An "X" value was computed on this page. No value is grade A or B.
| Plan | Per month, billed yearly (US$) | Per month, billed monthly (US$) | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hobby | 0 | 0 | 1 upload a month |
| Studio | 29 | 300 minutes of transcription a month | |
| Agency | 49 | 600 minutes of transcription a month |
xpay read the page on 6 May 2026 and reported monthly or annual billing with a two-month discount for annual plans; it gave no annual price, so the yearly column is empty. Every plan lists unlimited "GPT-3.5 writing", unlimited video clips and unlimited audiograms; the paid plans differ by transcription minutes. Older reviews from 2023 show other plan names and prices.
When did Swell AI launch, and how did it grow?
From a shared folder of MP3 files in 2022 to a subscription product with a free plan, as reported by interviews and directories. Each entry carries its grade.
- July 2022DOn a road trip, Schneider stays with Max, a former Rupa Health colleague, and asks if podcast repurposing can be automated. Max builds a first version within 24 hours, according to Startup Founder Stories. [1]
- 2022DThe first product is a shared Google Drive folder: 10 podcaster friends upload MP3 files, the founders run the software on their laptops and email the results back. [1]
- September 2022CThe founder later dates the building of Swell to this month. [4, 3]
- November 2022DUS$1,000 a month in revenue, as listed by Startup Founder Stories. [1]
- January 2023CAfter ChatGPT appears in December 2022, "Swell just basically took off", the founder said. [4]
- March 2023DUS$10,000 a month in revenue, as listed by Startup Founder Stories. [1]
- September 2023CIn an interview the founder describes Swell as an OpenAI API wrapper with Tailwind components, and DraftHorse AI as a new 45-day-old product built on the same technology. [4]
- May 2024DLatka records 10 employees. The founder appears on The Startup Ideas Podcast as co-founder of Swell AI. [2, 6]
- 23 September 2024CInterview on the Marketing B2B Technology podcast as co-founder and CEO of Swell AI. [5]
- December 2024DThe founder's role at Swell AI ends, according to his career profile; he co-founds Graphed in July 2025. [3]
- September 2025DLatka estimates revenue at US$1.1 million a year; its page says the company has not published revenue, so this is Latka's own estimate. [2]
- May 2026CThe pricing page shows a free plan and paid plans at US$29 and US$49 a month, as read by xpay. [7]
Why did Swell AI work?
Four causes, in the order they mattered. Each one is a reusable lesson.
Test the work by hand before the product
The first version had no website and no payment system, according to Startup Founder Stories: friends put MP3 files in a shared folder and the founders sent the written content back by email. This showed that podcasters wanted the output before any interface was built.
One recording, many outputs
A podcaster already has the raw material. One upload gives a transcript, show notes, a blog post, a newsletter and clips. The customer pays for time saved on work they know they should do, and the model cost per episode is small next to a monthly subscription.
Many channels at once
Startup Founder Stories reported cold email to about 100,000 people a month, cold messages to podcasters, paid ads to the same lists, and AI-written articles for search. The founder's stated idea was that a person who gets a cold email then sees the brand everywhere on social media.
Reuse the code for a second product
The same transcription and writing technology became DraftHorse AI, a tool for search-engine articles, built in a weekend according to Startup Founder Stories.
How it was built
These details come from the founder's interviews and from directories. They are grade C or D. [4, 1, 7]
- The text generation calls the OpenAI API; the founder called the app "an API wrapper around OpenAI" in 2023, and the 2026 pricing page still names GPT-3.5.
- The interface uses Tailwind components, a ready-made set of page elements for the Tailwind CSS library, according to the founder.
- Startup Founder Stories lists Node.js, the OpenAI API, Apollo.io for contact lists, Google Drive, Stripe, and Facebook and LinkedIn ads as its tools.
- The first version ran on the founders' laptops, with files exchanged through Google Drive and email.
- Input is audio or video only; the founder said in 2023 that it does not accept plain text.
- Billing is self-serve with a free plan and two paid plans, according to xpay.
Tools named in the sources
Each one opens its page in the Tools tab, with every story that uses it.
Who tried this before Swell AI, and why did they fail?
Five companies in our database of failed startups promised to help people create, curate or redistribute content more easily. The values below are from that database and are not independently verified.
Pixelpipe
The promisePost photos, videos and audio to many networks and blogs at once.
Why it diedFacebook, Twitter and the other platforms built their own cross-posting, and no clear business model was found.
Pressly
The promiseA content curation platform for brands to collect and distribute content.
Why it diedLarger marketing suites added curation, and competitors offered broader integrations.
Trapit
The promiseAI-picked content feeds for marketers to share.
Why it diedIt could not set itself apart from free and cheaper tools, while Google and Facebook improved their own content algorithms.
Hyperink
The promiseLet experts publish niche e-books quickly, with marketing and distribution.
Why it diedSelf-publishing on Amazon gave authors more reach at lower cost.
ReelSurfer
The promiseClip and share short segments of online videos.
Why it diedYouTube and Facebook built clipping and sharing into their own products.
The failed startups come from our database of 1,749 dead startups, retold here in our own words. Its entries are AI-assisted summaries of public sources, so these cards carry no evidence grade.
What changed
The earlier companies sold a step in the content process that the large platforms could add for free, and most of them had to do the hard part, the writing or the editing, with people or simple rules. Each was overtaken when a platform built the same feature.
Swell AI started when language models could write a usable blog post or show notes from a transcript in seconds, so the work that used to need a writer became a cheap API call. Two founders could then run a product with a free plan and low monthly prices. The same risk remains: model makers and podcast hosts can add the feature themselves, and the 2026 pricing page still names an older model.
Can one person copy Swell AI now?
Partly. The product is easy to build; the growth method is not for everyone.
A transcript-to-content tool is now a common product, so the opening of late 2022 is gone. What can be copied is the order of work: deliver the result by hand to ten people first, then build the product, then reuse the code for a second product. The cold outreach at large volume that Startup Founder Stories reported needs care with spam laws and email provider rules, and many founders will not want to do it.
Where it is still open: Other recorded formats with an unused archive: webinars, sales calls, conference talks and internal meetings, where the founder said in 2024 that Swell was getting traction with webinar hosts.
- 1Find a repeated content task that you already know from a job, such as podcast show notes.
- 2Deliver the output by hand to about ten users from a shared folder before you build an interface.
- 3Charge a low monthly price with a free plan that allows one try.
- 4Reuse the same model pipeline for a second product aimed at another group of buyers.
What could go wrong for Swell AI?
The risks are the mirror image of the causes above.
What is not verified
The headline figure of US$10,000 a month in March 2023 rests on one source: Startup Founder Stories, which retells the founder's podcast interviews; the original interview with the date was not found. The US$1,000 a month in November 2022 comes from the same list. The US$250,000 ARR after 12 months comes from a profile site's summary of the founder's career data. Latka's US$1.1 million a year for September 2025 is Latka's own estimate, marked EST, on a page that says the company has not published revenue; it is shown only as context. The team size of 10 rests on Latka citing a video. A reader could look for a payment-processor profile, a founder interview that states revenue with a date, or a statement by the company.
Growth by bulk cold outreach
Startup Founder Stories reported that the founder cold emailed about 100,000 people a month and sent cold messages to about 300,000 US podcasts, and that he called these his "degenerate growth tactics". In a 2023 interview, speaking of work for another company, he described adding scraped industry email addresses to a podcast newsletter and called it "probably like a grey-hat spam email". These are reports of the founder's own marketing; the product itself works on the user's own recordings.
The dates of the US$1.1 million figure disagree
The body of the Startup Founder Stories article says Swell reached US$1.1 million in annual revenue by September 2024 with a 10-person team; the same page's header and Latka date the figure to September 2025. This page does not use either for the headline: the September 2025 figure is Latka's own estimate.
The founder has moved to another company
Schneider's career profile ends his Swell AI role in December 2024 and lists him as co-founder and CEO of Graphed from July 2025. No source read for this page says who runs Swell AI now or whether Max is still involved. The pricing page was live in May 2026.
An older model and a crowded market
The pricing page read in May 2026 still lists "GPT-3.5 writing", a model from 2022. Podcast hosts, editing tools and the model makers' own apps now offer transcripts and summaries, often for free.
The company's site could not be read
www.swellai.com answered our honest automated request with a bot check (HTTP 403) on 5 November 2026, and the Internet Archive answered with rate limits. Prices come from xpay's reading of the page in May 2026.
Sources
The grade next to each source is the best grade that the source can support. "Read in full" means that the text of the page was downloaded and the numbers were checked in it.
- D Startup Founder Stories: From Google Drive folder to $1.1M ARR: How we built Swell AI with degenerate growth tacticsRead in full (downloaded 5 November 2026). A retelling of the founder's podcast interview; names GetLatka as the source of the US$1.1 million figure. Source for the founding story, milestones, growth tactics, tools and team size.
- D Latka company page: Swell AI revenue 2025, US$1.1M estimateRead in full. A third-party revenue estimate marked EST, and an employee count credited to YouTube.
- D Humantic AI public profile: Cody Schneider, Co-Founder and CEO, GraphedRead in full. A profile built from public career data. Source for the US$250,000 ARR claim and the dates of his roles.
- C The Investor's Podcast, Millennial Investing MI293, 19 September 2023: Hacking Marketing & Growth w/ Cody Schneider (transcript)Read the transcript sections on Swell AI, DraftHorse AI and growth tactics. An AI-generated transcript of the founder's own words; source for the start date, the co-founder, the OpenAI API and the January 2023 growth.
- C Marketing B2B Technology (Napier), 23 September 2024: Interview with Cody Schneider - Swell AIRead the episode page in full (the audio was not transcribed). Source for his role as co-founder and CEO and the product description.
- C The Startup Ideas Podcast, 10 May 2024: A few $30k+/month startup ideas from the most manic/genius founder you've never heard of; and 17 February 2025 episode pageRead the May 2024 episode page and transcript sections that mention Swell; also read the February 2025 page (share.transistor.fm/s/35eb6833), which calls him Co-Founder and CEO of Swell AI.
- C xpay: Swell AI Pricing 2026, from a read of www.swellai.com/#pricing on 6 May 2026Read in full. A price tracker's copy of the company's pricing page; source for the plans and limits.
- C Database of failed startups, local exportLocal export. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors.
Run this company? Send corrections or a verified figure to aiolum@livyden.com