Announcing Rayon’s Pre-Seed
We now publish in our in-house blog. Read this article there! 💫
We are thrilled to announce Rayon’s pre-seed round, led by Seedcamp, alongside Foundamental and 20VC, as we start our journey to provide the space design world with the next generation of collaborative, creative software.
Rayon Brings Space Design to the Browser
Rayon was built on a simple observation: increasingly our work happens online, yet space design still does not. And if “online” rhymes with collaborative, lighter, and faster tools, the 30 million people working on floor plans every day still wrestle with software from the pre-internet era. In the words of Tom Wilson, Partner at Seedcamp:
“Space Design is fundamentally collaborative, but the current CAD software offering is not: these tools are not only expensive, heavy and too complex, but they also represent a barrier to team work in this industry”.
As space design increasingly happens today in teams, at a fast pace, and in constant dialogue with other disciplines, our conviction is that tools should adapt to support this reality.
To that end, Rayon today allows users anywhere to draw, share and work together on their floor plans directly in their browser. Patric Hellermann, General Partner at Foundamental, maybe best sums up our strategy:
“Rayon is betting on a more accessible way to design spaces and floor plans: 2D over 3D, browser-based over desktop-based, and multiplayer over single-player. That’s the way to go for space design!”
All in all, the state of legacy software and the dire need of designers for a smarter, more collaborative tool give us the confidence that our industry is poised for change.
That is why, thanks to our pre-seed round, Rayon places a long-term bet: to become the fastest and simplest way to work on floor plans as a team. By laying out today the foundation for a fully online ecosystem, Rayon is building the stepping stone towards offering tomorrow the best technology can offer to the built world (API integrations, smart drawing tools, community-curated content, and more).
For the time being, our next milestone will be the official public launch of the app in late-October of this year. We cannot wait to finally place our tool in the hands of designers worldwide!
Our Company
Rayon was co-founded in October 2021 by Bastien Dolla and Stanislas Chaillou. Our founding team brings together deep experience in browser-based technologies, Artificial Intelligence, Real Estate, and Architecture.
Currently, in closed-beta, Rayon is already in the hands of category leaders, such as Wojo — one of Europe’s coworking leaders — , Colonies — France’s coliving leader — and others. Rayon is today deployed across diverse use-cases (commercial real estate, housing, interior space planning, furniture manufacturing, asset management, etc.), demonstrating that user-friendly, collaborative and fast space design tools are a dire need for a broad crowd of individuals across our industry and beyond.
More on this topic in our Manifesto!
Our Venture Partners
Rayon is fortunate to be backed by world-class investors — Seedcamp, 20VC, Foundamental, Kima — and an amazing cohort of business angels such as Ralph Gootee, co-founder of plangrid (acquired by Autodesk), Joe Thomas co-founder and CEO of Loom, Thibaud Elziere founder of eFounders, Kyle Parrish VP of Sales at Figma, Nicolas Steegmann co-founder of Stupeflix, Riggs Kubiak founder of Honest buildings (acquired by Procore), Jonathan Widawski founder & CEO of Maze, and others.
Get in touch
For any inquiry, please write to contact@rayon.so
More about Rayon on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, or our website…and subscribe to our Medium Publication!
