What the business is
Browser-based collaborative design tool for the architecture, engineering and construction industries: draw walls and doors, annotate floor plans, manage object libraries and export PDFs.
The bet
Architects and designers will move floor-plan drawing to a browser-based, multiplayer-first tool with free viewers, the way designers moved to Figma.
Starting capital
$4.2M seed (EUR 4 million) co-led by Northzone and Foundamental, following a $1.9M (EUR 1.75 million) pre-seed.
How it started
Founded in 2021 by a French team taking the collaborative design playbook into architecture, engineering and construction, with Seedcamp and Foster + Partners among early backers.
What happened
The seed round brought back existing investors Seedcamp and Foster + Partners and added angels Rasmus Andersson (Spotify, Figma), Adam Wiggins (Heroku co-founder), David Basulto (ArchDaily founder) and David Apple (Typeform, Notion).
What has to be true
The free-viewer model turns every shared plan into a distribution channel.
Architects' collaboration still happened by email and printouts that the browser kills.
Norman Foster's fund investing is category validation money cannot otherwise buy.
Angels who built Figma, Heroku and Notion signal the playbook maps across verticals.
What can be applied
When a category's workflow is single-player, porting Figma's link-to-collaborate mechanic is the wedge — charging editors but not viewers is what makes the links spread.
Aftermath
As of the 27 September 2023 report, Rayon was early-stage and exploring how to differentiate further from legacy software; TechCrunch flagged community-generated content as a possible direction.
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