Tracy Young on Scaling PlanGrid to 400+ People with YC Partner Kat Manalac

Tracy Young is a cofounder and the CEO of PlanGrid. PlanGrid makes mobile construction productivity software. They were acquired by Autodesk in 2018 and were part of YC’s Winter 2012 batch.

https://twitter.com/Tracy_Young
https://www.plangrid.com/

Kat Manalac is a Partner at YC.

https://twitter.com/KatManalac

The YC Podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.

https://twitter.com/craigcannon

Y Combinator invests a small amount of money ($150k) in a large number of startups (recently 200), twice a year.

Learn more about YC and apply for funding here: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/

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Topics

00:15 – How Tracy got into the construction industry

2:20 – What convinced Tracy and her cofounders to build PlanGrid?

3:00 – Finding a technical cofounder

5:55 – Tracy still sees herself as an engineer

6:45 – PlanGrid’s MVP and their first customers

11:25 – Their sales process

13:15 – Product breakthroughs

16:50 – Not firing fast enough

20:00 – What does she look for when hiring someone?

25:30 – Tim Cook’s closing statement at WWDC

28:15 – Fredi Fernández asks – Does Tracy track wellness levels of the team?

28:55 – At what point did Tracy hire an office manager?

29:50 – How does Tracy take care of herself?

31:15 – Founding a company with a partner

33:00 – Managing a company as a new parent

35:15 – Seyed Rasoul Jabari asks – What’s your big plan to go from 1.5 to 10 million projects?

36:15 – Holly asks – What has been your single largest influence in helping you scale?

37:35 – Why do some executives not work out?

38:25 – What skills did Tracy have to work on when scaling?

42:10 – What do a lot of startups get wrong?

45:50 – Tracy’s recommended books

47:30 – What Tracy wishes she knew when she started out