The Immigrant Journey Behind A Silicon Valley Success Story

Immigrants, we get the job done. Today we're sitting down with one of the best founders of a generation, Tracy Young, co-founder of PlanGrid, which sold to Autodesk for 875 million dollars, who's back with her new startup called Tiger Eye. But today, since it's AAPI Heritage Month, we're talking about a different kind of origin story, one that reaches back into our family immigrant stories. Let's get started.

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Thank you. Tracy's parents came to the country in precarious circumstances, escaping the ravages of the Vietnam War. "My parents are refugees of the Vietnam War. They were children when the war started in Vietnam, and I think by the time they waited it out, by the time the war ended, it was very clear to them it was not going to be a country they wanted to raise their baby daughter and my older sister. They saw a lot of horrific things, like children getting murdered in front of them, and they're just like, 'We need to get ourselves out of here.' So, you know, no one wants to leave the home they were born in unless they really had to, especially not on a small fishing boat with hundreds of other people."

Here was Tracy's father, mother, and older sister, who was one year old at the time. People were crammed on a boat, hoping to reach another land, to freedom. "The boat goes to destination nowhere. It's just trying to get the hell away from Vietnam, and communist Vietnam specifically. And they were on the boat starving by that point for at day eight, and they got really desperate. None of the coast guards wanted to pick them up; no one wanted hundreds of Vietnamese refugees. They convinced an oil rig boat to sink their boat, and it's just sort of this… It was maritime law at the time in the area where to be good human beings, we can't let our fellow human beings sink in front of us without saving them. So they paid off and bribed the oil riggers; they sunk their boat and let them go on board theirs, and they called the Malaysian Coast Guard, who had to pick them up, and they got dumped in a refugee camp in Kuala Lumpur. They were there for a little shy of a year."

A Lutheran priest out of San Bruno, California, sponsored my family: my mom, my dad, and my sister to live out of the church. Coming to the United States without being able to speak the language and wanting to make a better life for your children, that was Tracy's parents’ experience. They landed in the SF Bay Area and found work in Silicon Valley. "They worked a lot of jobs. My mom actually worked the swing shift to build ships, and it's like physically demanding jobs. Her eyes are actually completely wrecked now because you have to look through these microscopes and, like, I don't know, solder things together, and my father worked in grocery stores. They eventually saved enough money to build their own restaurant distribution business."

So it's a very simple business; it's an honest simple business. "You buy a bunch of goods, you mark it up, and then you sell it to restaurants and you deliver it." And they did that for 40 years, ABC Wholesale. "That was something they were really proud of. I mean, that business helped, you know, fed all of us, it housed all of us, and it sent all three of us to college."

As the child of immigrants, you see your parents struggle so hard to try to make a life for you and your siblings. "Maybe that's why it's so common for children of immigrants to go on to start companies themselves, just like Tracy did. I mean, being a founder is just hard in a way that all other founders know; it's emotionally challenging, it's mentally challenging, it's, uh, it's not for the faint of hearts. Every single day sucks, and you just have to get past that. Every single day, you'll be thrown, you know. There's just like, there's so much to build, there's not enough people to do it, but it still has to happen. Your customers are mad at you, and then you have to make them happy, rinse and repeat the next day over and over and over again."

"I think it never mattered how hard I worked in my company, my last company, PlanGrid, and now my new company, Tiger Eye, because it can't be worse than what my parents had to do. And part of it is just getting through each day without complaining, and I think my parents really instilled that in me. Like, I never had to be in a warzone; I never had to see people die; I never had to pack up my stuff and go to a destination nowhere, hoping for a better life. I mean, it's kind of crazy that the most important decision of my life was not made by me. It was made by my parents. I would have had a much different life if I was born and raised in Vietnam versus California."

Being the children of immigrants gives founders a grit. "It's something that a lot of founders from similar backgrounds describe as something they can draw strength from. No matter how hard it might get, how bad it might get for you and your startup, it won't be as bad as what it was like for someone in the country trying to make something with absolutely nothing. You can forge ahead knowing even that is something you can endure. What might have been viewed as a weakness or a disadvantage, a trauma even, is actually a strength."

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PlanGrid was a tremendous success, one of the best startups of a generation, and seeing Tracy build that startup was an inspiration to me and many others. I asked Tracy what it was like for that journey to play out, to have her parents see her go into this experience and come out on top.

"So prior to founding my first startup, PlanGrid, I was a construction engineer. They were always against that. They're just like, it's a very Asian mom and dad thing to say, 'I don't think you, as a petite Asian woman, should work on a job site; a construction site, it’s for men.' And so when they found out I wanted to start a company, they're like, 'Yeah, go do that. Get yourself out of the job site,' which was really, really nice. It was nice to have my parents' support, and you know, they were also business owners and they were all about, 'Yeah, you should be your own boss,' and so I had a lot of support in that way, which I don't know if that is unique to my family or not."

"And then, as we saw some success, I think they were always just very—I know they were proud. I although I will say I don't think they've ever said those words to me, but I know, I know it. I know they are proud of me, and it's so, it's such like so funny. I have Catholic friends, and it feels like there are so many similarities between Catholic families and like really, really religious families in Chinese Vietnamese families where there are just certain things you don't talk about."

I asked Tracy what she wishes she knew when she was 18 or 22, just starting out in tech and startups. Here's what she had to say. "There were a lot of parts of myself that I just wanted to hide because it didn't feel like it fit into what I thought Silicon Valley and entrepreneurship was. I didn't think that founders looked like me; it's as simple as that. I thought that I had tricked everyone into believing that I'm a founder, and actually, I wasn't. And part of it is being a woman; part of it is being Asian. But it was—it's just like, it’s so not true. It was all in my head. I had made up the story, and I'm sure I didn't do it by myself because it starts when we're young; it starts with the representation that's being put in front of us. It starts with the words that we use with boys and girls that are different in school; it's unconscious bias, and all of that fed to an own image of what I thought leadership and founders look like. And again, at 18 years old, I didn't think it looked like me. And I know now that I was completely wrong about that."

"I'm so glad to be here to share this story with you because I think Tracy's story is ultimately an American story, that families can come here from anywhere in the world, that there's opportunity and free enterprise, and that across generations, social mobility is not a concept here but a reality; a reality we see unfold before our very eyes every single day. My story isn't unique to me; it's not unique to my family. My story is literally everyone's story in America if you go back far enough, and it's just a shame that it seems like the whole world right now, including this country, is a little bit xenophobic and anti-immigration because it's immigration that makes for a strong economy."

"Look who puts food on our tables; look who is delivering these foods to all the places we can buy them from. Look who is working in child care, in elder care, in hospitals. There is like a lot of immigrants that are working hard, paying taxes, contributing to our economy, especially for countries that are seeing a decline in birth rate. Immigrants, we get the job done. As the child of immigrants myself, I am deeply thankful for a country that values the ability to create something from nothing; that the human capacity for love for our fellow humans is much bigger than we allow for today, that our capacity for love is actually infinite. I mean, we saw this; my family saw this when they first landed in America. The religious community stepped up, and they helped these young Chinese Vietnamese refugees who had nothing, and they got them on their feet, and they're like so incredibly thankful, and they just work their asses off, contributing to the economy, contributing to their communities, and like raised really great kids out of it, and I would like to see that continue on for our country."

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I'm so grateful to Tracy for sharing her story and where she came from. To hear more from Tracy, connect with her on LinkedIn; follow her on Twitter at Tracy_Young; and subscribe to Predictable Growth, a monthly newsletter penned by Tracy that highlights senior women in sales driving revenue for their businesses. Link in the description for all of that. That's it for this week. If you're new to the channel, please click like and subscribe, and hit the bell icon. I'll see you next week.

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