Whywhywhy was an app for visualizing and sharing data. It was founded in early 2021 by Matt Holden and David Kjelkerud.

We closed the doors in December 2022 after not finding traction. If you want to know about our lessons learned, check out the epilogue.

Our browser extension upgraded the BigQuery/Snowflake SQL editor by adding quick sharing features. In a click you could visualize and share any result without leaving the editor.

A core idea of Whywhywhy was to upgrade your existing tools. We believed data and charts should live where your team makes decisions.

Whywhywhy integrated into Notion and Slack to embed rich interactive charts in your docs and conversations. Our browser extension let you quickly embed images of your charts in any productivity tool.

Whywhywhy had a web based editor inspired by Jupyter and the computational notebook. One of our guiding ideas was to bring the notebook and its design principles to more people.

The main unit was a “card”, which combined a query, table and visualization into a sharable object. A card answered a single question.

Users manipulated data by direct manipulation or using actions in the inspector, inspired by dplyr. Viewers could inspect and remix shared cards to answer their own questions.

A big thanks to our early users and investors who supported us as we created Whywhywhy.

Whywhywhy was made by: Matt Holden, David Kjelkerud, Ian White, Mark Sherer and Jeff Roche.