Today I'm launching Swarm, an AI user testing platform, and announcing that we've raised over $100K from Afore Capital, LeapYear and Launch Chapel Hill, powered by KPMG. Swarm sends AI personas through your product like real users and shows you where they get stuck, confused or give up.
This is how it started.
8am, on a job site
About seven months ago, I was driving to construction job sites at 8am to watch people use software I had built.
I'd stand off to the side and watch. A worker would open the app, tap around, and then do something I never designed for. Skip the screen I was proudest of. Work around a button instead of pressing it. Give up on a flow halfway and go back to doing it the old way.
Every one of those moments told me something, and none of them showed up in my analytics. The only way to see them was to be there, in person, for hours. I spent whole mornings watching just to answer one question: why aren't they using this the way I built it?
That question followed me home every time. It still does.
The problem every builder runs into
Here's what those mornings taught me. Building software is fast now. Understanding how people use it is still slow.
You ship a flow. The numbers look off. To find out why, you have to put the product in front of real people and watch them use it. Finding those people takes weeks, the sessions take more weeks, and by the time you know what went wrong, you've already shipped the next version on top of it. So most teams skip it. They ship blind and hope.
I didn't want to drive to another job site to learn something a computer could have told me before lunch.
What is Swarm?
Swarm is an AI user testing platform. You point it at your product and describe who your users are; Swarm sends AI personas through the flow in a real browser and reports where they drop off, misread the interface or give up. You get feedback from hundreds of simulated user sessions in minutes, without recruiting a single real user.
Each persona has its own goal, device, patience and habits. One is a first-time buyer on a phone who skims everything. Another reads every word before clicking anything. Watching them go through the same flow side by side is exactly what I was doing on those job sites, except now it takes minutes instead of mornings.
It works in three steps. You ask a question, like "Can new shoppers check out?" Swarm turns it into a test plan and sends the swarm, recording every step. Then you read the findings: a verdict, ranked issues with the evidence behind each one, and fixes you can send straight to your issue tracker.
Simulated users don't replace talking to your customers. They catch the obvious breaks, confusing labels and dead ends before a real person ever sees them, so the time you spend with customers goes to the questions that matter. I wrote more about that line in what synthetic personas can and cannot prove.
Who founded Swarm?
Swarm was founded by me, Aryan Aladar, while I was a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I'd been building software for a while and kept hitting the same wall: there was no fast way to see a product through a user's eyes. Swarm was founded in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and is based in San Francisco.
Swarm at a glance
Who invested in Swarm?
Swarm's funding came from Afore Capital, LeapYear and Launch Chapel Hill powered by KPMG, who together invested over $100K. All three back founders at the very beginning, before there's much traction to point to, which is exactly where we were.
Afore Capital is a San Francisco venture firm that invests in founders before they have traction, often before the company even exists. LeapYear funds students, dropouts and recent graduates to spend a year building something ambitious. Launch Chapel Hill, powered by KPMG is an accelerator run by Launch Chapel Hill with KPMG that helps early startups go from an idea to paying customers. Thank you for betting on us this early.
What's next for Swarm?
The money goes into making Swarm's personas more realistic and its findings easier to act on, and into putting it in front of every product team that's still shipping blind. No job sites. No waiting weeks for user data. No guessing.
We're also hiring. If you're great at what you do and want to work on something exciting, we want engineers and go-to-market people. Email us at hi@useswarm.co.
Your first test is on us. Try Swarm free.
Update, April 21, 2026
GrepBeat profiled Swarm after we went through Launch, Powered by KPMG. The piece covers how Swarm builds its personas, either from a database of roughly one million demographic profiles or from a company's own analytics, and notes that KPMG bought Swarm licenses for the startups in its accelerator cohorts.
When they asked me why early teams use Swarm, I put it simply: "We give early validation before you have to do that and waste money."