Side question. If you wrote it as a side-project while at Facebook, doesn’t that work belong to them? How did you launch a business on this idea, did you strike an agreement with them or are you taking the do-first-ask-permission-later approach?
Launch HN: Raycast (YC W20) – CLI-inspired desktop app for non-coding tasks
21–30 of 81 posts
Re: Launch HN: Raycast (YC W20) – CLI-inspired desktop app for non-coding tasks
#22How is this different from workflows in Alfred?
Our main differentiator from Alfred is provide much deeper and richer integrations with other services. One of the goals for Raycast is to keep you away from browser that can distract you from work. Also we have a lot of plans for team features that Alfred lacks of. And yeah, there's certainly going to be an overlap :)
Re: Launch HN: Raycast (YC W20) – CLI-inspired desktop app for non-coding tasks
#23Side question. If you wrote it as a side-project while at Facebook, doesn’t that work belong to them? How did you launch a business on this idea, did you strike an agreement with them or are you taking the do-first-ask-permission-later approach?
It was a different tool and tight to the internal issue tracking system that Facebook is using. We realized there is value in having a tool that simplifies the interaction with overloaded web apps and it's crucial to cover many of them. Obviously, we didn't share any code and built Raycast after we left.
Re: Launch HN: Raycast (YC W20) – CLI-inspired desktop app for non-coding tasks
#24Side question. If you wrote it as a side-project while at Facebook, doesn’t that work belong to them? How did you launch a business on this idea, did you strike an agreement with them or are you taking the do-first-ask-permission-later approach?
[deleted]
Re: Launch HN: Raycast (YC W20) – CLI-inspired desktop app for non-coding tasks
#25Side question. If you wrote it as a side-project while at Facebook, doesn’t that work belong to them? How did you launch a business on this idea, did you strike an agreement with them or are you taking the do-first-ask-permission-later approach?
It was a different tool and tight to the internal issue tracking system that Facebook is using. We realized there is value in having a tool that simplifies the interaction with overloaded web apps and it's crucial to cover many of them. Obviously, we didn't share any code and built Raycast after we left.
Probably you mean you didn’t write any code or notes on the idea until after you left, so there was no copyrightable IP that you were under contract to share while you were employed? But I get the idea. Thanks that’s helpful.
Re: Launch HN: Raycast (YC W20) – CLI-inspired desktop app for non-coding tasks
#26Re: Launch HN: Raycast (YC W20) – CLI-inspired desktop app for non-coding tasks
#271. What are your plans for monetization. I hate start using and getting used to something and then monetization or tracking spoils things.
2. Is the app a native Macos App or some react-native/electron wrapper?
Re: Launch HN: Raycast (YC W20) – CLI-inspired desktop app for non-coding tasks
#28I want something like this, which is why I more or less have the skeleton and something that at least approaches this idea, built organically through time using various utilities. Rofi, some shell scripts, etc. This is a great idea in theory but much harder to do properly in practice. The idea is only really worthwhile as long as you can really extend it to a lot of things(no one cares about adding an Nth tool that c…
I totally agree with you that scalability is an huge point and that we need to tackle it. Two things:
1. We won't build all the integrations ourselves. There are just too many individual things. We'll provide an API that developers can use to cover their custom workflows. 2. Raycast doesn't replace your other tools. It makes the common interactions with them simple and fast. We believe that it shouldn't take plenty of clicks to create issues in Jira or update any statuses and that there is an huge opportunity to streamline this tasks. Think about it as a companion app for your web apps.
And to your last point: Yes, we got funded by YC.
Re: Launch HN: Raycast (YC W20) – CLI-inspired desktop app for non-coding tasks
#29I want something like this, which is why I more or less have the skeleton and something that at least approaches this idea, built organically through time using various utilities. Rofi, some shell scripts, etc. This is a great idea in theory but much harder to do properly in practice. The idea is only really worthwhile as long as you can really extend it to a lot of things(no one cares about adding an Nth tool that c…
> does the YC20 in the title means that someone has funded this idea?
It just means they are part of the Winter 2020 batch (the most recent one).
You are right about the interface getting really complicated if every feature is to be implemented. But, assuming the 80/20 rule is in effect - Most of the time we would only be using a few features. As long as they identify those features and only implement them well, this tool will have great value.
Anyone who has to use Jira on a daily basis will definitely want to try this out!
Re: Launch HN: Raycast (YC W20) – CLI-inspired desktop app for non-coding tasks
#30I want something like this, which is why I more or less have the skeleton and something that at least approaches this idea, built organically through time using various utilities. Rofi, some shell scripts, etc. This is a great idea in theory but much harder to do properly in practice. The idea is only really worthwhile as long as you can really extend it to a lot of things(no one cares about adding an Nth tool that c…
> I'm not into all this YC stuff, but does the YC20 in the title means that someone has funded this idea?
Yes, Y Combinator (ycombinator.com) is a top startup accelerator (and the owner of the site you are currently on).
They fund batches of 150+ startups twice a year. W20 means they were in the first batch of this year.