Tracy Young
Showing 1–5 of 5 transcripts.
- Y Combinator1 min
Tracy Young on the importance of representation and recognizing unconscious bias.
The speaker addresses the impostor syndrome stemming from a lack of visible female and Asian founders in Silicon Valley, which fueled a belief that their identity was incompatible with leadership. This self-doubt was rooted in systemic biases formed through childhood representation and gendered language, leading to a mistaken assumption that they had deceived others into accepting their role. After recognizing these misconceptions as factually incorrect, the speaker has corrected their internal narrative to acknowledge their rightful place as a founder.
- Y Combinator12 min
The Immigrant Journey Behind A Silicon Valley Success Story
Tracy Young, co-founder of PlanGrid and founder of the new venture TigerEye, reflects on her family's refugee journey from Vietnam to the San Francisco Bay Area, where her parents built a successful distribution business after overcoming immense hardship. Drawing strength from their resilience, Young discusses the intersection of her immigrant heritage, gender bias, and impostor syndrome while arguing that immigration is vital for sustaining economic stability in nations facing declining birth rates. She further advocates for societal support of immigrants and promotes senior women in sales through her monthly newsletter, Predictable Growth.
- Y Combinator50 min
Tracy Young on Scaling PlanGrid to 400+ People with YC Partner Kat Manalac
Tracy Young, Kat Manalac, Craig Cannon, Fredi Fernández, Seyed Rasoul Jabari, Holly
Founded in the 2012 Y Combinator batch by Tracy Young and Ryan Sutton, PlanGrid digitized construction workflows by deploying an iPad-based platform that utilizes overlay technology and version control to prevent blueprint errors. The company bypassed traditional enterprise sales channels by targeting field workers directly, growing organically to 450 employees before being acquired by Autodesk. Now integrated into Autodesk's 1,200-person construction division, the startup focuses on international expansion to eliminate billions in annual industry waste while maintaining a founder-led culture centered on authenticity and role clarity.
- a16z33 min
a16z Podcast | Construction Under Tech -- Info Flows
Greg Lynn, Gina Neff, Tracy Young, Hanne Tidnam, Hannah
The construction industry faces a severe productivity crisis driven by fragmented supply chains, low profit margins, and a disconnect between complex 3D design models and simplified field execution. To counter declining efficiency, the sector is pivoting toward robotics, off-site prefabrication, and augmented reality for real-time localization to streamline workflows and reduce costs. However, rapid innovation is currently hampered by slow regulatory cycles and a highly decentralized market structure that favors manual labor over technological adoption.
- Y Combinator27 min
Tracy Young Speaks at Female Founders Conference 2015
Founded in 2010 by Tracy Young and Ryan Sutton Gee, PlanGrid evolved from a Y Combinator-backed concept into a construction software platform serving over 10,000 customers and processing 200,000 projects. The San Francisco-based team, currently expanding its 92-person workforce, attributes its resilience and market dominance to a culture of deep mutual support and strategic pivots that turned early hardware limitations into a global digital blueprint repository. Young's leadership narrative also underscores the legacy of late co-founder Antoine Hersen and advocates for increased female representation in engineering sectors through the company's rapid structural scaling from a flat hierarchy to a formalized organization.