Tracy Young Speaks at Female Founders Conference 2015

Hi everyone! It's an honor to be here today. My name is Tracy Young. I'm one of the co-founders of PlanGrid.

So, I need your help picturing 2010. 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 feet of new medical office space, and I need my clicker, which I don't know how to use, but we'll figure that out. And you know, I've got a hard hat, safety boots, an orange vest, and safety glasses. One 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. Blueprints are really, really heavy, and even though I'm 100 lbs 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; it's like, "What is wrong with us?" 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incompetent builders; it just turns out the blueprints are constantly changing, and it's really easy to build off of outdated drawings.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. And we are now—let's see, let's click—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, and over 200,000 projects have been built with PlanGrid. 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. PlanGrid is a team of 92 people and growing. Yes, we're hiring!

So the founding story starts with blueprints—lots of them. This is actually $100,000 worth of blueprints! I mean, this is insane; this is more than a Tesla Model S. So I'm in a meeting, a coordination meeting, talking about these issues with the architect, 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.

If you ever keep really detailed notes—like really detailed notes—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. Like, that is not okay! So I was really shocked. I was really shocked that these people didn't have their own blueprints. I was like, "Hey, do you want me to get you your own set? 'Cause like, not cool writing on my blueprints!"

I ordered them blueprints, and we met up two days later. I was a hero! Then a week later, I get the bill, and it's $227,000. Yeah! What? I know that's what I said! I almost fell off my chair because I had no idea how I was going to 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 like, I have no idea where to pay for this. I'm totally going to be in trouble." And this moment—I remember this moment so well—he slams his hand on the table and he's like, "That is ridiculous! It should be in the cloud! It's 2010, and we should be able to access it through this iPad 1 I have!"

So we take it down off of an FTP site; we take down the blueprints and we load it onto that iPad 1, and this little box comes up on his iPad one, and it says "out of memory." 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."

So that was the start of PlanGrid, except that we're two domain experts without a technical co-founder. So we go to our good friend Antoan Hen, and Ryan was actually roommates with him for several years. He was studying his M.S. in computer science while we were getting our construction engineering management degrees, and we said, "Hey, you want to join our startup?" And he said, "That's a great idea; great problem to solve. You guys should learn how to program."

Like, "Alright, okay!" And, you know, we went through what Ryan calls the saddest story in Silicon Valley, which is two domain experts, great idea, no technical co-founder. At this time, I've been dating Ralph G for like several months now; he's my boyfriend. Our relationship is going steady; 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 four hours every Thursday night?" It's a 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." He looks at me, and he's like, "Do you know who I am? Do you know what your boyfriend does? I work for Pixar Animation. I'm a full-stack engineer. I write these beautiful Android and iOS apps!" Seriously! And I was like, "Do you want to join the company?"

And he said, "Yeah, can I be CTO?" And I was like, "Yeah, my man, you can be CTO!" So we were a team of three people. Now when Antoan found out that Ralph had joined our startup, Antoan had become friends with Ralph, and they were writing a lot of fun, sh***y games on the side. And Antoan said, "Okay, I'm in, and I would like to be Chief Mad Scientist." So we were a team of four.

Antoan then goes to the best engineer he's ever worked with, Kenny Stone, and recruits our fifth co-founder. So we were a team of five. And I know you're looking at this picture right now, and there's only four of us, so like, where's Antoan? Well, Antoan is unfortunately not here with us anymore.

Sorry, so this is Antoan, our co-founder and Chief Mad Scientist. He was diagnosed with cancer at 27. It happens sometimes. And, you know, he went through chemo; it was really hard on him. 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, and we were in full support of that. We wanted to be with him; 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 four 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. And it's four sentences because he was pretty weak by then, and 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.

So the first lesson: Life is short! 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 two millennia ago. It's that we actually have a lot of time here, but life is short because we piss away a lot of it focused on trivial things—in a much more eloquent way, of course.

And you know, like our time here is short, and we just have to make the best of it. Take care of Ralphie. I know what you're thinking: "Who the hell is Ralphie?" So I've taken the liberty of editing this—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 three years!" And that's the truth! You know, I'm just going to cut my hair when it gets tangled; it's cool!

But you know, like not hanging out with my family for three 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. There's a camera in here somewhere—hi, Mom! She's live-streaming this right now! I love you! 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, totally cool! I'm just busy right now, and I love you!"

And that is literally a five-minute phone call, and then you just get rid of all that guilt and 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—the construction engineer turned startup founder. And it was terrifying both times!

And never do anything that makes you unhappy. Founding PlanGrid has been one of the most rewarding things I have ever done in my life—it's super rewarding! The highs are so high, and the lows are so low, and you can actually experience the highest of high highs and the lowest of lows in the same hour. It's insane!

And in those lowest of low moments, you know, even with three co-founders here to support me, an amazing husband—it’s hard! It's hard, man! You know, when I'm not in sync with my co-founders, 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? Does PlanGrid make me happy?" And the answer to that question has always been yes!

Yeah, PlanGrid makes me happy! I get to lead this amazing team of people on a mission to make an industry more efficient. There's no one 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. Absolutely, PlanGrid makes me happy!

This has to be the answer to this question every single time, even in the lowest moments, 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.

So those were the four pieces of advice from Antoine. The advice I'd give my four years ago—um, how should I say this? Well, basically, the last four years, I've done two things: I've worked on PlanGrid and I've watched a lot of BBC Nature Documentaries. So I think my advice reflects that.

The first piece of advice I'd give myself is be a beaver! Beavers get such a bad rep, man! Like, their name is misused all the time, all the time! But really, like, they're just nice, vegetarian builders just like me! And you know, they're like half blind basically; they're really small, but they're like the largest rodents, and so everything's always trying to eat them. They've got a lot of predators, and like, people are trying to trap them in and skin them to make stupid hats out of them. There's a point to all this—I promise!

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

So this is a picture of a beaver taking a little beaver break! Because the 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 forever, and I still have a long way to go!" I mean, look at this tree—it's so big!

But the beaver is going to work hard and it's going to be patient because it doesn't want to die. You know, it's funny; 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. Writing good code 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. You just have to get through it! And if you guys figure out like 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 like 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! And it’s not going to complain!

I mean think about it—if the beaver complains, it's going to drop that branch, and again, something's going to eat it! So you know, like, it is really hard! Like, things go wrong all the time—I promise you! Like, PlanGrid is 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 going to 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 one has iPads, especially not field workers. And we were complaining about that. We were like, "Man, like, no one has iPads! No one can use our software!" Complain, complain!

And then we said, "You know what? F*** it! We're going to buy iPads, and we're going to load our software on them, and then we're just going to give it to them!" And so that's what we did! So we went to the Apple Store, and we like 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, it wasn't like 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 because it was everything we had! Right? And so, you know, I convinced my co-founders that this was going to happen, and so we started hiding the iPads in the kitchen. And then, I think one—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 her in the cabinets under the pots!"

Okay, so we didn't actually get robbed after all! Obsessed about every stick! 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 obsess over customer support. 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!

And like, all of this stuff takes time, right? But oh! And we also obsess like 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 like 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're, you know, 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 was 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 one has titles, and there's no management structure."

And that, like, might work when you're like ten people max! We took it to 20; we took that to 30, 40, 50, 60 before we implemented, you know, a structure inside PlanGrid. And like, it was hard! But we had to tear down a lot of structures and rebuild it. And actually, because we're growing so fast, every six 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 like 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! Yes, a poisonous snake! If he gets like bitten by a poisonous snake, you will die! Me and you, we will die! But the honey badger gets bitten by a poisonous snake, and it passes out for 8 to 10 hours, and we don't know why. And it'll just wake up, and it will eat that snake! It’s really incredible!

And you know, like, things are going wrong all the time! We were— you know, in the early days, it was like we didn't even know if we could survive as a company. We were running out of money; we didn't have revenue; we didn't have enough resources to do what we wanted to do! But every time we just survived! You just—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!

So what they can do is copy our UI; they can copy the look of PlanGrid, but they can't copy our functionality! They can't copy the ease of use of our software; they can't copy our customer support! And you might be looking at this photo, and you're thinking, "How the hell is that little honey badger going to take down that lion?" Well, that honey badger, when it attacks that lion, it's going to run between that lion's legs, and it's going to bite it in its butt!

And you just have to be brave! You know, I was really scared! I was really scared to go into construction! I was really scared to quit my job and move in with my parents and live off my savings and like found PlanGrid with my co-founders! I was terrified! I actually wake up terrified every day! But it forces you to ask yourself, "Is this what I want to be doing day in and day out?" And you know, you already know my answer: Yes! I want to be doing this!

And you just— you just man up, and you just be brave, and you just bring the honey badger in you!

Support your family! I actually just really like this photo; I think it's really cute! 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! I had my co-founders! And even today, even with 92 people, you know, we don't have enough resources compared to other companies, but we have each other, and that is our one unfair advantage because we're so good at supporting each other!

These giants are looking in at us thinking, "How the hell is PlanGrid, you know, releasing such amazing products all the time? How are they able to get so much customer love, and we can't when we have way more money than them?" And really, it's because of our PlanGrid team! Because we're so good at supporting each other, and we're running full speed in the same direction as a group.

So don't forget to support your family! Founding a company is very hard! Just like nature—business is relentless; it’s unforgiving, but it’s also very beautiful! You know, I went into construction and I was scared, but I had an example, Professor Karen Hansen at Sacramento State University, who was a construction manager for many years, and she did it in a time where there were very, very few female construction engineers.

And she was an example for me! It was like, "Well, if she can do it, I can do it too!" So if you're like thinking about starting a company at all—if you're, if you know a problem that you know you can solve, do it! I am living proof that you can do it! Just a girl from campus went into construction and then now I get to lead this amazing Y Combinator company!

And like I'm telling you, if I can do it, you can do it too! Because this world does not have enough females as engineers or female founders, and that means this world is losing out on a lot of great structures, a lot of great companies, and a lot of great leaders! And I'm telling you, it will be rough! It's going to be rough; it’s going to be tough; it’s going to feel like everything is in shambles!

And when that happens, just remember to channel the beaver and the honey badger inside you! Thank you!