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Raycast founder Thomas Paul Mann on iOS, community, and quality
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In this episode of the Distributed podcast, host Jack Hannah chats with Thomas Paul Mann, cofounder and CEO of Raycast, the native productivity tool and extendable launcher. They cover how Raycast leverages community, ships such high quality product consistently, and approaches hiring. Jack actually spoke with Thomas the day after Raycast released their iOS app, so the episode starts with a pretty raw reflection on this major milestone before diving into the rest.
Highlights:
- Thomas’s reaction to releasing iOS
- How Raycast leverages community over data
- What it takes to sustain Raycast’s biweekly shipping cadence and
- How dogfooding drives product polish and reliability
In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) – Opening the conversation with Thomas Paul Mann
(01:18) – Launching iOS with zero pre-hype
(07:19) – Why iOS came before Windows
(09:53) – Going remote during COVID
(14:27) – Building an effective remote team
(16:09) – Why 80% of Raycast is product
(17:45) – Hiring in waves to avoid overgrowth
(19:54) – The power of referral-based hiring
(21:50) – How feedback beats metrics at Raycast
(27:24) – Inside their biweekly shipping rhythm
(32:55) – Using nightly builds to polish UX
Where to connect further:
Connect with Thomas Paul Mann on X
Follow Raycast on X or join the Slack community
Follow Tuple
Want to hear more? Check out distributed.fm
Connect with Jack Hannah
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