#130 - Tracy Young and Kat Manalac

Y Combinator

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.
Kat Manalac is a Partner at YC.
You can find Tracy on Twitter @Tracy_Young and Kat is @KatManalac.
The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.
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/

***
Topics
00:00 - Intro
00:46 - How Tracy got into the construction industry
2:51 - What convinced Tracy and her cofounders to build PlanGrid?
3:31 - Finding a technical cofounder
6:26 - Tracy still sees herself as an engineer
7:16 - PlanGrid's MVP and their first customers
11:56 - Their sales process
13:46 - Product breakthroughs
17:21 - Not firing fast enough
20:31 - What does she look for when hiring someone?
26:01 - Tim Cook's closing statement at WWDC
28:46 - Fredi Fernández asks - Does Tracy track wellness levels of the team?
29:26 - At what point did Tracy hire an office manager?
30:16 - How does Tracy take care of herself?
31:46 - Founding a company with a partner
33:31 - Managing a company as a new parent
35:46 - Seyed Rasoul Jabari asks - What's your big plan to go from 1.5 to 10 million projects?
36:46 - Holly asks - What has been your single largest influence in helping you scale?
38:06 - Why do some executives not work out?
38:56 - What skills did Tracy have to work on when scaling?
42:41 - What do a lot of startups get wrong?
46:21 - Tracy's recommended books
48:01 - What Tracy wishes she knew when she started out