- Tracy Young, co-founder of PlanGrid, shares the founding story of the construction software platform
- Started with the problem of constantly changing blueprints in construction projects
- Founded PlanGrid to solve this issue and now have over 10,000 paying customers and 200,000 projects built
- PlanGrid is the largest digital Blueprint repository in the world with over 17 million Blueprints in their cloud
- PlanGrid is a team of 92 people and growing
- Tracy Young shares the story of how they recruited their technical co-founder and team members
- Unfortunately, one of the co-founders passed away from cancer, but they continue to build the company in his memory
- Tracy shares the best advice she received from the late co-founder: "Life is short, make the best of it"

- The speaker emphasizes the importance of taking care of loved ones while pursuing professional goals.
- They advise picking up the phone and reaching out to family members, even if there is limited time.
- The speaker encourages trying new things and not being afraid of taking risks.
- They highlight the importance of doing something that makes you happy and passionate.
- The speaker shares advice they would give themselves from four years ago, including the importance of hard work and patience.
- They mention the need to avoid complaining and instead focus on working hard and being patient.
- The speaker discusses the beaver as a metaphor for working hard, being patient, and obsessing over details.
- They emphasize the need to constantly iterate and improve in order to achieve success.

- The speaker compares the beaver constantly rebuilding its dam to their company constantly improving their software.
- They initially ran their company with no titles or management structure, but eventually implemented a structure as they grew.
- The speaker advises being brave like a honey badger and standing up for oneself.
- They mention facing competition from larger companies but emphasize their unique functionality, ease of use, and customer support.
- The speaker talks about the importance of supporting each other within their company.
- They encourage others, especially women, to start their own companies and be leaders in their fields.
- The speaker concludes by urging listeners to channel the perseverance and bravery of the beaver and honey badger in their own lives.

- Tracy Young, co-founder of PlanGrid, shares the founding story of the construction software platform
- PlanGrid solves the problem of constantly changing blueprints in construction projects
- PlanGrid has over 10,000 paying customers and 200,000 projects built
- PlanGrid is the largest digital Blueprint repository with over 17 million Blueprints in their cloud
- Tracy Young shares the story of recruiting team members and the impact of a co-founder's passing
- Importance of taking care of loved ones while pursuing professional goals
- Encouragement to try new things, take risks, and do something that makes you happy
- Advice on the importance of hard work, patience, and avoiding complaining
- The beaver as a metaphor for working hard, being patient, and constantly improving
- Implementation of titles and management structure as the company grew
- Facing competition from larger companies, but highlighting unique functionality and customer support
- Importance of supporting each other within the company
- Encouragement for women to start their own companies and be leaders
- Channeling the perseverance and bravery of the beaver and honey badger in life.

Tracy Young speaks at Y Combinator Female Founders Conference 2015.

Tracy is a former construction engineer who cofounded PlanGrid, a company that makes beautiful software for the construction industry. She once worked for one construction superintendent and now she works for thousands of superintendents. Tracy is obsessed with building beautiful, effective things and providing great customer success. Nothing makes her more happy than fairness, hard work and a simple reliable app. She is also a vegetarian who believes her spirit animal is the beaver.

I'm a construction engineer, new graduate with a construction management degree, and I'm on my first construction project.

It's 400,000 square foot of new medical office space, and I need my clicker that I don't know how to use, but we'll figure that out.

And I've got a hard hat, safety boots, orange vest, safety glasses.

And 1 of the first things you're tasked with as a construction engineer is QAQC on the job site.

Very much like software QAQC, it's just about making sure the right thing got built.

So for construction, you basically look at the blueprints and you look at what was built and then you mark down the issues.

And even though I'm 100 pounds of solid muscle, it's still a little heavy for me.

So I just physically can't carry them 10 hours a day out on site.

So my boss gets me this nice little cart for me to put my blueprints on.

And I'm wheeling it through the job site like a shopping cart because I don't stick out like a sore thumb already.

Yeah, so I'm marking down these issues, and I'm noticing there are a lot of issues.

We have built the wrong thing everywhere.

And it turns out we're not actually incompetent builders.

It just turns out the blueprints are constantly changing.

And it's really easy to build off of outdated drawings.

So we were experiencing this problem out in the field.

And we were the first ones to do something about it.

So my co-founders and I founded PlanGrid, a construction software platform to solve the issues we were experiencing.

We were part of Y Combinator's Winter 2012 batch and we are now the construction industry's favorite construction app We have over 10,000 paying customers Over 200,000 projects have been built with plan grid So when you guys become wildly successful and need to build your own office buildings, I hope that you will remember PlanGrid, because we will help you build your building on time and on schedule, and we'll be able to save you a boatload of money, so don't forget about us.

And we're now the largest digital Blueprint repository in the world, with over 17 million Blueprints in our cloud.

And PlanGrid is a team of 92 people and growing.

So the founding story starts with blueprints.

This is actually $100,000 worth of blueprints.

So I'm in a meeting, in a coordination meeting, talking about these issues with the architect and engineers and subcontractors.

I was working for the general contractor at the time.

And we're looking at my blueprints, we're huddled, we're talking about this issue, and then someone reaches over and tries to mark up my blueprints.

So if you ever keep really detailed notes, like really detailed notes, like it's not okay for someone to reach over and write in your notebook.

And it's even worse for someone to write on your blueprints.

I was really shocked that these people didn't have their own blueprints.

And so I was like, hey, do you want me to get you your own set?

Cause like not cool to write on my blueprints.

And I ordered them blueprints, and we met up 2 days later.

And then a week later, I get the bill, and it's $27,000.

And I almost fell off my chair because I had no idea how I was gonna pay for this.

So I have dinner with my good friend from college, Ryan Sutton G, who's also in construction, and I tell him, I was like, I have no idea where to pay for this and I'm totally gonna be in trouble.

And he, this moment, I remember this moment so well, he slams his hand on the table and he's like, that shit is ridiculous.

And we should be able to access it through this iPad 1 I have.

And this little box comes up on his iPad 1.

And we look at each other and Ryan's jaw is like completely dropped and he said, we should build this.

And I remember just nodding and saying, yeah, I think we can do it.

Except that we're 2 domain experts without a technical co-founder.

So we go to our good friend Antoine Hersen.

And Ryan was actually roommates with him for several years.

He was studying his masters in computer science while we were getting our construction engineering management degrees.

And we said, hey, you want to join our startup?

And, you know, we went through what Ryan calls the saddest story in Silicon Valley, which is 2 domain experts, great fucking idea, no technical cofounder.

And at this time, I've been dating Ralph Goudy for several months now.

We're at this point where we share Google calendars.

And he says, Why is it that you meet with Ryan every Thursday For something called subject peanuts and it's 4 hours every Thursday night It's very awkward conversation to have Yeah, and so I told him I was like hey, there's just like we got this great idea We're working on it's funny because like you would be perfect for it.

And he looks at me, he's like, do you know who I am?

I write these beautiful Android and iOS apps.

And I was like, do you want to join the company?

And I was like, yeah, man, you can be CTO.

When Antoine found out that Ralph had joined our startup, Antoine had become friends with Ralph and they were writing a lot of fun, shitty games on the side.

And Antoine said, okay, I'm in, and I would like to be chief mad scientist.

Antoine then goes to the best engineer he's ever worked with, Kenny Stone, and recruits our fifth co-founder.

And I know you're looking at this picture right now, and there's only 4 of us, so like, where's Antoine?

Well, Antoine is unfortunately not here with us anymore.

So this is Antoine, our co-founder and chief mad scientist.

And he went through chemo, it was really hard on him.

And so When his cancer came back, he made a conscious decision to not put his body through that again.

And, you know, he really wanted to be part of Y Combinator.

He really wanted to build PlanGrid with us.

We wanted to build this company together.

And you know, like, life, the reason why this is so hard is because life doesn't stop just because you're trying to do the hardest thing you've ever done before.

It doesn't stop for me, it didn't stop for my co-founders, it didn't stop for any of us.

But we have the opportunity here to realize our best friend's dreams in memory of him.

And Obviously it was a rough time, but we got through it.

So for the next 20 minutes, I want to share with you the best advice that's ever been given to me and the advice I'd give myself 4 years ago.

The best advice that's ever been given to me was actually from Antoine.

Being several years older than me, he had always given me life lessons, unsolicited most of the time.

But the best advice and the best lessons he gave me was actually the last conversation we had together before he passed.

It's 4 sentences because he was pretty weak by then.

It's something that I think about every day.

It's something that has helped me through my journey at PlanGrid, and I hope that you will find it helpful as well.

And Antoine doesn't mean it in the you might get cancer at 27 kind of way.

He means it in the way Seneca describes it on the shortness of life 2 millennia's ago.

We actually have a lot of time here, but life is short because we piss away a lot of it focused on trivial bullshit, But in a much eloquent way, of course.

And you know, like, our time here is short, and we just have to make the best of it.

So I've taken the liberty of editing this to take care of the ones you love.

This company of ours has been all consuming.

Every waking and sleeping moment we've been focused on Plangrid.

And it's really, really easy to just, like, blame it on the company.

It's just like, ah, I'm so busy, I'm not going to shower for several days or brush my hair for 3 years.

You know, I'm just going to cut my hair when it gets tangled.

But not hang out with my family for 3 months at a time, like that's unacceptable.

And I remember I would feel so guilty for not seeing my family for months at a time and like thinking how much it probably hurt my mother.

And you know, what I learned very recently is that, you know, as soon as you, like, recognize that you should probably hang out with your loved ones and you just really don't have time, pick up the phone.

Pick up the phone and say, hey, mom, Hi, dad, I'm still alive.

And that is literally a five-minute phone call and then you just get rid of all that guilt and then you can just get back to work.

So like don't forget the ones you love even though you love your company a lot, because the people that you love are way more important.

Third advice, don't be afraid to try new things.

I am living proof that if I was afraid to try new things, I wouldn't be talking to you right now.

I'm a construction engineer turned startup founder.

And never do anything that makes you unhappy.

Founding PlanGrid has been 1 of the most rewarding things I have ever done in my life.

The highs are so high and the lows are so low.

And you can actually experience the highest of highs and the lowest of lows in the same hour.

And in those lowest of low moments, you know, even with 3 co-founders here to support me and an amazing husband, it's hard, it's hard, man.

You know, when I'm not in sync with my cofounders, when our release is delayed, when I'm so tired that I don't think I can do it anymore, I ask myself, is this really what I want to be doing with my life?

And the answer to that question has always been, yes.

I get to lead this amazing team of people on a mission to make an industry more efficient.

There's no 1 that cares about the construction industry more than me and PlanGrid.

And we can build beautiful and simple software for the field workers so that they can finish their job on time and go home and hang out with their families.

This has to be the answer to this question.

Because if it's not, then you're not passionate about what you're doing.

And you will compromise too much and you will kill yourself doing it.

The advice I'd give myself 4 years ago, How should I say this?

Well, basically the last 4 years, I've done 2 things.

And I've watched a lot of BBC Nature documentaries.

The first piece of advice I'd give myself is be a beaver.

Like, their name is misused all the time.

But really, they're just nice vegetarian builders, just like me.

They're really small, but they're the largest rodents.

They've got a lot of predators, and people are trying to trap them and skin them to make stupid hats out of them.

So the way the beaver protects themselves is they build these massive dams so that they can put their little beaver family in their beaver den that's buffered by water so that the predators can't swim in and eat them.

So this is a picture of a beaver taking a little beaver break.

Because beavers are small, they have little beaver hands.

But they have to take down these massive big trees because they need something to build their dams out of.

And so it's taking a break and it's thinking, man, I've been gnawing at this tree for fucking ever.

But the beaver is going to work hard, and it's going to be patient, because it doesn't want to die.

Like, everything takes way longer than you expect it to.

For us, you know, building a simple usable software that requires no training takes a long time.

Finding bugs and fixing them takes a really long time.

Talking to users takes a really long time.

Selling that user and getting them to pay you takes a long time.

And all of this, like, the only way to get through all of this is just hard work and patience.

There is nothing that you can replace hard work and patience with.

And if you guys figure out there's a shortcut way, please email me at Tracy at PlanGrid because I haven't figured it out yet.

I've also learned from the beaver to not complain.

So the beaver gets a tree down and it has to drag that branch and that tree back to the river where it's going to build its dam.

And you can see the beaver has been gnawing at the tree all day.

It's wet, it's cold, it's in the snow, it's really hard to trudge through snow.

If the beaver complains, it's gonna drop that branch.

Like, Plangrid's doing well, but things are not perfect.

And it's really easy to want to complain.

But the moment we stop and complain is the moment someone else is gonna come in, work harder than us, and just kick our ass.

So it's sort of like in our culture to just work hard and be patient and not complain.

Early on, I remember very specifically that we, you know, we needed to get users, but it's 2011, no 1 has iPads, especially not field workers.

We were like, man, no 1 has iPads, no 1 can use our software, complain, complain.

And then we said, you know what, fuck it, we're gonna buy iPads and we're gonna load our software on them and then we're just gonna give it to them.

So we went to the Apple store And we maxed out our savings and our credit cards, and we bought probably 16 iPads.

And it was everything we had, everything.

And so we were at the house in Sunnyvale.

I mean, we were in the nice part of Sunnyvale, but for some reason I thought that for sure we were going to get robbed that night.

And so, you know, I convinced my cofounders that this was going to happen.

And so we started hiding the iPads in the kitchen.

And then I think 1, like, Ryan put it in the microwave and Ralph had it on top of the fridge, and I was like, what if the robber's tall?

Like we have to hide it in the cabinets under the pots.

Okay, so we didn't actually get robbed after all.

So what you're looking at right here are like sticks that beavers had cleaned the barks off of with their teeth.

So to build their dam, they're going to use the best material possible.

And that's why they obsess over every single piece of stick.

For us, the founders of Plangrid and actually our team now obsess about everything.

We give the best customer support to our users.

We do crazy unscalable things for them because we're so obsessive about it.

We're obsessive about our product and what we release to our users.

But oh, and we also obsess on every internal policy that gets written.

Because All of this, although it takes time, are cultural reflections of our company.

And we feel that it is really important to the foundation of our beaver dam.

What I've learned from the beaver is that you do have to iterate and improve.

This photo actually gives me chills every time I see it.

Like the small beaver family was able to make this and divert millions and millions of waters on a day.

But the currents of the river will change over time and the flow will change.

So the beaver has to constantly swim back into its dam and tear down sections of the dam and rebuild it up so it can divert the water properly and keep their beaver family safe.

For us, I mean, we launched our product in 2011.

We are still working on the core of PlanGrid today because we want to keep PlanGrid as the best software for our construction clients.

There's a time, and this is actually not that long ago, we decided to run PlanGrid like Star Trek.

We said you're either in operations or you're in engineering and no 1 has titles.

And that might work when you're like 10 people max.

We took it to 20, we took that to 30, 40, 50, 60 before we implemented a structure inside PlanGrid.

And it was hard, but we had to tear down a lot of structure and rebuild it.

And actually, because we're growing so fast, every 6 months we're basically reinventing every single department because we have to.

The second piece of advice I'd give for myself is to be a honey badger.

Honey badgers are the most brave, courageous animals I've ever seen.

And what I've learned from them is to survive.

This is a honey badger eating a poisonous snake.

If he gets bitten by a poisonous snake, you will die.

But the honey badger gets bitten by a poisonous snake and it passes out for 8 to 10 hours.

And it'll just wake up and it will eat that snake.

And you know, like, Things are going wrong all the time.

In the early days, it was like we didn't even know if we could survive as a company.

We didn't have enough resources to do what we wanted to do.

You just survive like the honey badger survives.

I've also learned from the honey badger to stand up for yourself.

If you have any success at all, and PlanGrid has had some success, there will be giants coming in to just, there are a lot of copycats of PlanGrid now.

And these companies are much bigger than PlanGrid, with many more employees, much more money, and much more resources.

And they're just straight out ripping us off.

They can't copy the ease of use of our software.

And you might be looking at this photo and you're thinking, how the hell is that little honey badger gonna take down that lion king?

Well, that honey badger, when it attacks that lion, it's gonna run between that lion's legs and it's gonna bite it in its balls.

I was really scared to go into construction.

I was really scared to quit my job, move in with my parents and live off my savings and found Plangard with my cofounders.

But it forces you to ask yourself, is this what I want to be doing day in and day out?

And you just man up and you just be brave and you just bring the honey badger in you.

You know, when you don't have a beta, you don't have revenue, or you don't have a product market fit, What we had always for PlanGrid was each other.

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Tracy Young Speaks at Female Founders Conference 2015