What an incredible and inspiring story... truly the highest highs and the lowest lows.
Some take always that really resonated with me:
- Life is is short and it isn’t. Don’t waste time working on “trivial bullshit.”
- A small “family” can take on a bigger, better funded copycat because the small, nimble team obsesses over the sticks.
- Sometimes you’ve gotta just “man up.” I thought it was interesting Tracy used that language, but you can just tell that she doesn’t have time for the bullshit. Be the honey badger.
- If you don’t find joy in what you do say to day, you’re doing the wrong thing.
Amazing job and congratulations! This acquisition votes YES on YC's approach to build user experience, on the fact that the real incumbent exists only in your users's hands.
On the other hand, PlanGrid could be worth quite a bit more than this acquisition pays. I don't buy their argument of 100 billion TAM in one of the Medium posts[1], but it surely had greater potential than what is realized in this deal, had it expand into nearby territories.
[Ask HN: When people tell founders that you need to convince investor that yours will be a billion dollar company, do they mean a billion dollar in revenue, or a billion in valuation? There's likely an order of magnitude difference here hence I wonder which is the default during a normal conversation without further qualification on the number.]
Third, video says it had 10k paying customers in 3 years of launch, while at 12k 4 years later when acquired. Was it saturating the market, or was it fighting considerable churn after raising its B round？ Always amazed by the team's ability to sell the service at this price level, that says how much of a pain PlanGrid is solving.
> This is a big deal: this is by far the biggest acquisition of a YC startup with a female founder/CEO.
I feel I may be ignorant, but doesn't drawing attention to her gender like this only work to diminish her accomplishments? I feel as though she did an amazing job, and siloing it into "best of..." as opposed to letting it stand on its own seems only to lessen the significance of her work.
Maybe I am naive and do not appreciate the difficulties of being a woman in tech, or perhaps I am too idealistic to think that we should not acknowledge the tribulations of achieving this as a female...but to me it seems to cheapen it rather than strengthen it. It's drawing attention to her gender rather than the accomplishment itself.
I am aware of who I am replying to, and I truly am not trying to sling mud here and I fear I may derail this comment thread when it really should just be a celebration of what Tracy Young has done, but then again if I never ask I'll never learn.
It would be awesome if we lived in a world where VCs, investors, and the tech industry in general just invested in people who deserve it. But we're so far from that world right now (just google vc investment in women-founded cos).
I think what JL is bringing up here is important because there is no room for naysayers with this exit. It's a monumental achievement, (for anyone!) but particularly a big F YOU to all the rampant misogny and boys-club culture that persists in tech among investors.
I don't speak for women, but I will say as a mostly-white dude, I have never thought "are there even CEOs or founders that look like me?" whereas I have, through the years, heard that many many times from women and POC.
What Tracy and her team have done is really fantastic. The fact that she's a woman is important only in that it begins the process of shutting up the old boys club, and (hopefully) a sign of things to come for those people who haven't traditionally been given the benefit of the doubt.
> I feel I may be ignorant, but doesn't drawing attention to her gender like this only work to diminish her accomplishments?
How would it diminish her accomplishments? As a woman founder, the deck was stacked against her, so her accomplishing this makes it even more impressive.
I fully agree with you. Welcome to the world of identity politics where every achievement must fill a narrative based on you gender//religion//sexual orientation.
The worst in all of this is that people pushing this are the ones that want to eradicate racism and sexism, which is a very brave goal but by attracting attention to all those external factors, They only create more racism and sexism.
> I feel I may be ignorant, but doesn't drawing attention to her gender like this only work to diminish her accomplishments?
Please watch the video. Every now and then she mentions her own gender as a very rare-to-find CEO, and clearly use it to her own advantage. I'm not judging whether its good or bad just merely stating the fact.
I had the pleasure of being employee #38. I wrote the visual diff sheet compare feature, among others. I left about two years ago when the company had grown to 200 people.
Tracy, Ralph, and Ryan are authentic people. They really cared for everyone who worked there. (I can remember Ryan pestering me to take more vacation time).
Their success is well-deserved. I’ve spoken personally to customers who didn’t even have a computer or smart phone - the first piece of modern technology they used was an iPad for PlanGrid.
This acquisition is a testament to the moat PlanGrid built in the field. Competitors tried their hardest to sell to the CxOs/head office, only to find out no one in the field wanted to use it. (There are parallels to iPhone in the enterprise space.)
Know your customers and build something they want to buy. Always good advice :)
How much does employee #38 make from his/her vested equity these days? I understand this is a very nosy question, but nonetheless having one more datapoint on the financial outcome from an early employee in a company that exited at ~$1B would be valuable. It truly couldn’t get better than that (assuming the funds were raised at ok-ish terms), so I assume your number must be in the multiple 7 figures at least!
Using a throwaway for obv. reasons. I'm employee lower thirties in a company that recently went public with a similar valuation. Unlike gp, I am still with this company, and really like it there.
Ignoring taxes, vested comes in at about 1 mill. I'll pay about half that in taxes. I have a few hundred k in unvested from subsequent awards.
I've hit the start up lotto, but I will not likely pocket 7 figures from equity for a long while, assuming continual equity awards. Well, if the stock does really well, I could pocket 1M, but it needs to go up quite a bit. Honestly, I would likely have made more over these many years in aggregate at a FAANG. But I've enjoyed myself and still look forward to work every day.
I'm blessed and lucky. But the startup lotto is not as good as you might think. Never count equity in a start up. Go for the salary.
If I had stayed the full four years I would have vested between $600-$800k; I only vested around half that.
The only people who hit low seven figures are very early employees, maybe #1-3. The exceptions are the really unique unicorns like Google or FaceBook, which print so much money everyone gets rich.
PlanGrid has (or had?) "unlimited" vacation time. Unlike some places they really encouraged people to use it. There was no issue with liabilities on the books since you weren't banking vacation days; it didn't make any financial difference to PlanGrid if you took 0 vacation days or 5 weeks.
Ryan was trying to make sure I wasn't over-working myself and I appreciated the thought (it just so happens I was waiting to take a long Christmas vacation).
Also vacation is a liability on the company's checkbook. Many companies stop adding vacation days after certain amount is reached to force you to take them.
From an iPad App that made it easier to read blueprints to $875M. Amazing.
I had the fortune of listening to Tracy Young while at YC and the story of the company and her other founder was inspiring. I wonder if this is the shape of what will happen with other companies like Remix (former TransitMix).
Good luck to PlanGrid. Eventually the corporate bureaucracy causes enough frustration to make the best people want to leave after the handcuffs have expired. I hope Autodesk has learned lessons from its prior acquisitions and can integrate them effectively.
I remember an anecdote from the current CEO of Autodesk. A few years ago, while having dinner with his wife at a San Francisco restaurant, he was seated next to a group of PlanGrid employees who proceeded to talk about their strategy. At the time, he said he was unimpressed with PlanGrid. Times have changed!
And be careful where you have your public conversations.
Congrats Plangrid. I was your neighbor back in 2014. I remember when you guys needed to expand your office and you were looking to start using some of the space we were subletting all the way back when.
Ironically, 2 years after that I got in to YC and now run our company from Japan. Time flies!
If it's any consolation I got headhunted by PlanGrid earlier this year. I knew of them in a professional context and was ready to sign on the dotted line after the recruiter's opening salvo. Turns out the hiring manager and recruiter were completely disorganized and seemed more interested in playing games than actually hiring. PlanGrid basically snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
Reading this news blurb resulted in a bit of mixed emotions for me. Earlier this year, prior to my run-in with PlanGrid, I walked away from a decent chunk of unvested stock options in a rather well known publicly traded company. I suppose they deserve each other.
It's maybe not up to Google/FB/etc standards, but given my experience level and the company's size at the time I considered it generous. It was equivalent to ~2 years worth of the offer's salary at today's price.
Wow this definitely raise the stakes in the construction software market. Autodesk is going all-in and poised to become the incumbent in construction software. They are seeing what many other companies are failing to see, but there are many other formidable platforms pushing hard too, including Procore, all the Oracle offering which includes the recent acquisitions of Aconex and Textura and many niche players.
The difference is if the Superintendent doesn’t want to use the software it doesn’t matter. Construction businesses live and die by the super, something these other players never seemed to understand.
The people working in the field love PlanGrid. More than one company has been forced to abandon a competitor because the field crew refused to use anything else.
Know your customers. Your real customers. Build something they want to buy. When big players enter your territory be a honey badger :)
Readit News
If you want to get an idea of how formidable Tracy Young is, watch her talk at the 2015 Female Founders Conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pKR212H5vQ
Some take always that really resonated with me:
- Life is is short and it isn’t. Don’t waste time working on “trivial bullshit.”
- A small “family” can take on a bigger, better funded copycat because the small, nimble team obsesses over the sticks.
- Sometimes you’ve gotta just “man up.” I thought it was interesting Tracy used that language, but you can just tell that she doesn’t have time for the bullshit. Be the honey badger.
- If you don’t find joy in what you do say to day, you’re doing the wrong thing.
Congrats to PlanGrid!
Tracy was one of the first people to believe in me, and encourage me to apply to YC.
Glad to see this wonderful news for PlanGrid, and hope to see many more big things coming from them now that they’re at AutoDesk!
On the other hand, PlanGrid could be worth quite a bit more than this acquisition pays. I don't buy their argument of 100 billion TAM in one of the Medium posts[1], but it surely had greater potential than what is realized in this deal, had it expand into nearby territories.
[Ask HN: When people tell founders that you need to convince investor that yours will be a billion dollar company, do they mean a billion dollar in revenue, or a billion in valuation? There's likely an order of magnitude difference here hence I wonder which is the default during a normal conversation without further qualification on the number.]
Third, video says it had 10k paying customers in 3 years of launch, while at 12k 4 years later when acquired. Was it saturating the market, or was it fighting considerable churn after raising its B round？ Always amazed by the team's ability to sell the service at this price level, that says how much of a pain PlanGrid is solving.
Anyway, job well done!
[1] https://medium.com/plangrid-technology/plangrid-answers-dani...
I feel I may be ignorant, but doesn't drawing attention to her gender like this only work to diminish her accomplishments? I feel as though she did an amazing job, and siloing it into "best of..." as opposed to letting it stand on its own seems only to lessen the significance of her work.
Maybe I am naive and do not appreciate the difficulties of being a woman in tech, or perhaps I am too idealistic to think that we should not acknowledge the tribulations of achieving this as a female...but to me it seems to cheapen it rather than strengthen it. It's drawing attention to her gender rather than the accomplishment itself.
I am aware of who I am replying to, and I truly am not trying to sling mud here and I fear I may derail this comment thread when it really should just be a celebration of what Tracy Young has done, but then again if I never ask I'll never learn.
I think what JL is bringing up here is important because there is no room for naysayers with this exit. It's a monumental achievement, (for anyone!) but particularly a big F YOU to all the rampant misogny and boys-club culture that persists in tech among investors.
I don't speak for women, but I will say as a mostly-white dude, I have never thought "are there even CEOs or founders that look like me?" whereas I have, through the years, heard that many many times from women and POC.
What Tracy and her team have done is really fantastic. The fact that she's a woman is important only in that it begins the process of shutting up the old boys club, and (hopefully) a sign of things to come for those people who haven't traditionally been given the benefit of the doubt.
It is insider info on YC alumni that I'm guessing isn't in the article and probably can't be found any other way. She is a reliable source.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/03/indra-nooyi-shares-a-work-re...
How would it diminish her accomplishments? As a woman founder, the deck was stacked against her, so her accomplishing this makes it even more impressive.
Dead Comment
This comment makes me so uncomfortable, I will probably close this tab and take a break from HN for a while.
The worst in all of this is that people pushing this are the ones that want to eradicate racism and sexism, which is a very brave goal but by attracting attention to all those external factors, They only create more racism and sexism.
Please watch the video. Every now and then she mentions her own gender as a very rare-to-find CEO, and clearly use it to her own advantage. I'm not judging whether its good or bad just merely stating the fact.
Deleted Comment
Tracy, Ralph, and Ryan are authentic people. They really cared for everyone who worked there. (I can remember Ryan pestering me to take more vacation time).
Their success is well-deserved. I’ve spoken personally to customers who didn’t even have a computer or smart phone - the first piece of modern technology they used was an iPad for PlanGrid.
This acquisition is a testament to the moat PlanGrid built in the field. Competitors tried their hardest to sell to the CxOs/head office, only to find out no one in the field wanted to use it. (There are parallels to iPhone in the enterprise space.)
Know your customers and build something they want to buy. Always good advice :)
Anyway congrats to the whole team!
Ignoring taxes, vested comes in at about 1 mill. I'll pay about half that in taxes. I have a few hundred k in unvested from subsequent awards.
I've hit the start up lotto, but I will not likely pocket 7 figures from equity for a long while, assuming continual equity awards. Well, if the stock does really well, I could pocket 1M, but it needs to go up quite a bit. Honestly, I would likely have made more over these many years in aggregate at a FAANG. But I've enjoyed myself and still look forward to work every day.
I'm blessed and lucky. But the startup lotto is not as good as you might think. Never count equity in a start up. Go for the salary.
The only people who hit low seven figures are very early employees, maybe #1-3. The exceptions are the really unique unicorns like Google or FaceBook, which print so much money everyone gets rich.
This is a very low bar for caring for an employee.
Ryan was trying to make sure I wasn't over-working myself and I appreciated the thought (it just so happens I was waiting to take a long Christmas vacation).
I had the fortune of listening to Tracy Young while at YC and the story of the company and her other founder was inspiring. I wonder if this is the shape of what will happen with other companies like Remix (former TransitMix).
I remember an anecdote from the current CEO of Autodesk. A few years ago, while having dinner with his wife at a San Francisco restaurant, he was seated next to a group of PlanGrid employees who proceeded to talk about their strategy. At the time, he said he was unimpressed with PlanGrid. Times have changed!
And be careful where you have your public conversations.
They haven't.
I wonder what role Carol Bartz played in the deal (she’s been on the board for 2.5 years and was Autodesk’s CEO for 14 years).
Ironically, 2 years after that I got in to YC and now run our company from Japan. Time flies!
They seemed like a really great company with mature management.
Reading this news blurb resulted in a bit of mixed emotions for me. Earlier this year, prior to my run-in with PlanGrid, I walked away from a decent chunk of unvested stock options in a rather well known publicly traded company. I suppose they deserve each other.
The people working in the field love PlanGrid. More than one company has been forced to abandon a competitor because the field crew refused to use anything else.
Know your customers. Your real customers. Build something they want to buy. When big players enter your territory be a honey badger :)