Developing the next-generation tool for collaborative design in the built environment, Paris-based startup Rayon has just announced a raise of more than €1.9 million
Design work, particularly for the built environment is inherently a collaborative process. It requires a holistic approach, sharing of ideas and multidisciplinary input. With the aim to make software that facilitates more collaboration for space designers, Rayon has picked up about €1.9 million in a pre-seed funding round.
The investment was led by Seedcamp alongside Foundamental, 20VC and Kima. They are also joined by a cohort of business angels including, Ralph Gootee, co-founder of plangrid (acquired by Autodesk); Joe Thomas co-founder and CEO of Loom; Thibaud Elziere and Quentin Nickmans founders of eFounders; Nicolas Steegmann co-founder of Stupeflix; Riggs Kubiak founder of Honest buildings (acquired by Procore); Jonathan Widawski founder & CEO of Maze, as well as many others.
Whilst design is fundamentally collaborative, existing software is not. The tools currently on the market are expensive, heavy and overly complex, and because they mainly work with proprietary files saved offline on your local desktop computer, they represent a barrier to teamwork. As a result, the professionals who design and run our built environment still wrestle with software from the pre-internet era. Urgent digitalisation is needed to keep up with growing design demands, and Rayon is aiming to fill this market need.
Bastien Dolla, co-founder at Rayon said: “There are more than 30 million 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”.
Founded in 2021 by Bastien Dolla and Stanislas Chaillou, Rayon’s tech solution is built on deep experience in browser-based technologies, Artificial Intelligence, Real Estate, and Architecture. The company provides online design software that allows users anywhere to draw, share and work together on floor plans directly in their browser. This supports the way that space design increasingly functions: in teams, at a fast pace, and in constant dialogue with other disciplines and expertise.
By speeding up the design phase, gathering teams around a single source of truth, and replacing time-consuming cross-platform workflows, current users have experienced working up to three times faster than previously.
Stanislas Chaillou, co-founder at Rayon added: ”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)”.
The French startup’s tool is able to be deployed across diverse use cases, including commercial real estate, housing, interior space planning, furniture manufacturing, asset management, and so on – 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.
Tom Wilson, Partner at Seedcamp commented: “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.”
This pre-seed investment will be used to fuel the growth of the team, refine the product offering and prepare the startup to launch in October 2022.
via https://www.AiUpNow.com
June 15, 2022 at 02:33AM by contact@bcurdy.com, Khareem Sudlow
