Raycast, a software program firm redefining productiveness, has raised a €27 million Collection B funding spherical to cut back office context switching and enhance focus. European investor Atomico led the spherical, alongside participation from Accel, Coatue, Y Combinator, Atlassian Ventures, World Innovation Lab and notable angels Guillermo Rauch (CEO of Vercel), Thomas Dohmke (CEO of GitHub) and Tobi Lütke (CEO of Shopify). As a part of this spherical, Atomico Companion Luca Eisenstecken will be a part of Raycast’s board.
Because the Data Age transforms the best way folks stay and work, the proliferation of software program instruments – which are supposed to improve productiveness and simplify lives – is in actual fact making work more and more complicated and fragmented. Information employees are actually always switching contexts between workflows and instruments, resulting in psychological overload and vital productiveness loss. A 2022 Harvard Enterprise Evaluation (HBR) research of mid and back-office employees at Fortune 500 firms discovered that the “value” of every context swap is about two seconds, with the common consumer toggling between totally different apps and web sites almost 1,200 occasions every day. Over a yr, this “toggle tax” added as much as 5 working weeks or 9% of annual time – misplaced time which damages productiveness and makes it laborious to maintain focus.
Raycast has been constructed to fight this digital fragmentation and assist folks obtain ‘Circulate’ – an idea central to its mission to assist data employees obtain an ideal state of productiveness. Performing as the final word shortcut to all the things, its platform permits customers to work together with totally different apps with out totally switching contexts, enabling them to take care of a state of productive move. Over 1500 open-source extensions can be found to customers to take advantage of apps like GitHub, Zoom and Notion with out dropping observe of their ideas.
Thomas Paul Mann, CEO and co-founder of Raycast, mentioned: “Our mission in founding Raycast was to redefine how folks work together with their computer systems. We consider that reaching a state of ‘move’ is essential to productiveness and job satisfaction. Raycast isn’t nearly saving time – it’s about by no means losing it. By permitting customers to carry out actions like sending Slack messages, checking notifications, or anything with out even opening the app, we’re serving to folks keep targeted and accountable for their digital atmosphere.”
Since its launch in 2020, Raycast has change into the go-to instrument for software program engineers, product builders and designers, constructing a 22k-strong group of builders who use and construct on the instrument. In complete, Raycast has tons of of 1000’s of each day energetic customers for its Mac capabilities, and after vital demand the corporate can be right now asserting that they are going to be launching upcoming iOS and Home windows variations quickly with customers capable of register their curiosity from right now right here.
Luca Eisenstecken, Companion at Atomico, added: “Thomas and Petr have constructed an unbelievable product that solves a vital drawback not solely superbly, but additionally successfully with a thriving open-source group of builders at its coronary heart. Raycast gives customers with just about limitless alternatives to construct a extremely personalised productiveness platform tailor-made to their distinctive workflows. I personally discover it indispensable for my each day work. That is additional underscored by the exceptional outcomes of our in-depth consumer analysis throughout due diligence, the place a staggering 98% of respondents reported a major improve of their Raycast utilization over the previous six months.”
Raycast’s platform is extremely straightforward and intuitive to make use of, with broad performance and repeatable instructions. That ease of use is amplified by the truth that it’s totally customisable – it integrates seamlessly with third-party extensions like Jira, GitHub, and Notion, alongside different generally used functions similar to Translate, Spotify, Linear, Google Translate, YouTube, and ChatGPT. Many of those integrations have been constructed by Raycast’s group of twenty-two,000 builders.
Moreover, Raycast Professional, its AI-enhanced instrument acts as a singular AI that may work together with all a consumer’s instruments in pure language, and permit them to create and reuse their very own AI prompts, additional enhancing the move state by lowering the necessity to context swap even for AI interactions. The funding is being put in the direction of investing in Raycast’s cross-platform imaginative and prescient, beginning with product improvement in Home windows and iOS and redefining productiveness with AI, and can embody plenty of key European hires throughout engineering, product and UX specialists in these platforms.
