Thomas Paul Mann (engineer at Facebook, Audi, and Fraunhofer Society) and Petr Nikolaev (iOS engineer at WhatsApp and Meta) met while working at Meta. Both were German and Russian developers based in London who were frustrated by the growing number of tools they needed to juggle daily. In January 2020, they left Meta to build Raycast.

The Long Free Period

Raycast launched in public beta in October 2020 with 130 daily active users. They raised a $2.7M seed from Accel and Y Combinator. For the next three years, the product was completely free. No premium tier, no monetization. Just relentless focus on making the fastest, most beautiful Mac launcher possible.

The strategy was deliberate: build something developers love so much they tell everyone about it. By October 2021: 11,000 daily active users. By 2024: hundreds of thousands.

The Extension Ecosystem

In 2022, they launched the Extensions API and Store. Within the first month: 100+ community extensions. By 2024: 1,000+ extensions built by 20,000+ developers. This created a flywheel — more extensions attracted more users, who built more extensions. The community became self-sustaining.

Monetizing After Trust

In 2023, three years after launch, they introduced Raycast Pro at $8/month — adding AI, cloud sync, custom themes, and translation. The paid tier worked because trust was already built. Their Series B ($30M, September 2024) included angels like GitHub's CEO Thomas Dohmke, Shopify's CEO Tobi Lutke, and Vercel's CEO Guillermo Rauch.

• Launch: October 2020 (130 daily active users)
• Free period: 3 years (2020-2023)
• Extensions: 1,000+ (20,000+ developer contributors)
• Pro launch: 2023 ($8/month)
• Series B: $30M (September 2024)
• All European team (London-based)