The collaborative nature of modern design, especially for the built environment, requires professionals from different disciplines to work together seamlessly. However, the professionals who design and run our built environment still wrestle with software from the pre-internet era.
Existing tools are not only expensive, heavy and overly complex, but because they mainly work with proprietary files saved offline on your local desktop computer, they represent a barrier to teamwork.
This is why we are excited to back Rayon, a Paris-based company that provides online design software, enabling users anywhere to draw, share and work together on floor plans directly in their browser. Founded in October 2021 by Bastien Dolla and Stanislas Chaillou, Rayon’s team brings together deep experience in browser-based technologies, Artificial Intelligence, Real Estate, and Architecture.
Rayon’s mission is to create tools that support the way that space design increasingly functions: in teams, at a fast pace, and in constant dialogue with other disciplines and expertise. Its software is 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 the design, manufacturing construction and real estate industries.
By speeding up the design phase, gathering teams around a single source of truth, and replacing time-consuming cross-platform workflows, Rayon’s current users have experienced working up to three times faster than previously.
Bastien Dolla, co-founder at Rayon says:
“There are more than 30 millions people working on floor plans every day. Currently, most of them are stuck with static pdf files that they cannot edit, measure and or update in real time. We believe we can do much better than that! Our goal is for Rayon to become the fastest and simplest way to work on floor plans as a team”.
Stanislas Chaillou, co-founder at Rayon adds:
”Rayon places today a bet: building the next generation of space design platform. Laying out today the foundation for an online ecosystem is to us the stepping towards offering tomorrow the best technology can offer to our industry (API integrations, smart drawing tools, community-curated content, and more)”.
On why we invested, our Partner Tom Wilson comments:
“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 teamwork in this industry.”
We are excited to lead Rayon’s pre-seed round alongside Foundamental, 20VC, and Kima, joined by an exceptional cohort of business angels which includes, Ralph Gootee, co-founder of plangrid (acquired by Autodesk); Joe Thomas co-founder and CEO of Loom, and Jonathan Widawski founder and CEO of Seedcamp portfolio company Maze.
Rayon plans to use the funding to grow its team, refine its product and launch its offering in October of this year.
To learn more and sign up for early access, visit rayon.design.