
Founder Stories: Tracy Young of PlanGrid (YC W12) - katm
http://blog.ycombinator.com/founder-stories-tracy-young-of-plangrid-yc-w12
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wdewind
PlanGrid just seems like one of those companies that every time I hear about
it, even knowing nothing about the construction industry, just makes sense.
They solve a hard problem and they charge money for it. I like those simple
(conceptually!) businesses. I am rooting for them.

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giarc
I really like founder stories. I just finished reading Jessica Livingston's
Founders At Work which has many similar stories, although they are typically
further along in their careers. Reading founder stories at an earlier point is
just as interesting I think.

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tyoung
Thanks for the comment! To clarify, yes blueprints are large. But just like
people were happy to give up the inconvenience of fold-up paper maps for
google maps, construction folks are almost universally excited to give the
inconvenience of cumbersome paper plans for a tablet and an app.

Interestingly, this question is the exact first question PG asked us during
our initial YC interview in 2011.

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iamshs
In Canada, on active construction sites superintendents/engineers are not even
allowed to carry cellphones, so how does Plangrid get around that law? I guess
it is for office use only, whenever super wants to compare some ISOs.Or do
people use it on site/field too?

Blueprints are extremely large. CWPs, EWPs depending upon the job easily run
into thousands of pages occupying precious shelf space and searching them is
not easy.

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giarc
Really? I've been on sites many times and have seen supers answer their cell
phone. Is this province specific?

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iamshs
I am in AB. Actually it is company specific, generally fab shops do not allow
supers to carry cellphones while working on modules.

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ajju
I still remember the dinner when we found out that Antoine Hersen had passed
like it was yesterday.

I think it is safe to say that the entire YC batch took home the advice
Antoine gave to the Plangrid team that night.

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ilamont
I knew nothing about construction until a business consulting gig got me very
involved in a build-out of an office space that had once been a wet lab. I
became acquainted with the giant rolls of blueprints that get passed around,
often with minute annotations and special symbols (for instance, for the
electricians) on different versions of the plans.

It seems to me that there are a number of parties that would have to be
brought on board to make mobile software work -- besides the supervising
construction engineer/company, certain subs (millwork, HVAC, electrical,
etc.), furniture suppliers (who really need accurate plans), architects, and
the clients. I would expect different learning curves for the different groups
... maybe architects are more used to working with blueprint software while
some subs are more old-school.

Good luck!

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rcarrigan87
"Assuming they have some kind of beta, do whatever it takes to figure out
sales by yourself....After YC, we brought on a VP of Sales, but he couldn’t
sell the product."

I agree, the founding team should be intimately involved with the sales
process early on. CEOs as sales reps is a common theme amongst start-up
success stories.

It's also really important to understand the difference b/t start-up vs.
corporate sales people. It sounds like they hired a corporate sales person
i.e. someone who can't deal with the uncertainties of selling a new product.

Mark Suster explains the difference much better than I can.

[http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2014/04/03/helping-
startu...](http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2014/04/03/helping-startups-
understand-salespeople-the-sales-culture/)

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clairity
i spent 2-3 days a week for 9 months volunteering at habitat for humanity so i
could learn construction. i loved it when we unrolled the blueprints and
discussed the work for the day. changes were constant due to so many little
unanticipated issues (bugs) and we sometimes temporarily marked up the
drawings by hand with notes from the architects/engineers rather than waiting
for official blueprint updates. plangrid seems like a great solution for this
use case. my concerns would be around the fragility of tablets on a
construction site and of adoption and use by construction workers. plus it was
so fun to turn those huge pages and see a whole new perspective on the
project. =)

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nathan-muir
> Who better to sell the product than the founding team?

and

> You can't rely on others to sell the product you built.

Agree 100%, we had the same epiphany a 6 months ago; actually _selling your
product_ is one of the most important jobs as a founder.

Also, I don't think you can [reasonably] pay someone a salary, and expect the
same level of understanding & drive that the founders posses. And, it also
seems that understanding & drive are much more important than clever marketing
plans when selling B2B software.

Funnily enough, we're selling to the same market, although we help with the
estimating & quantifying side of dealing with Blueprints -
[https://groundplan.com/](https://groundplan.com/)

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supahfly_remix
Is their selling point revision control for blueprints, or is it viewing them
on mobile devices? On the latter point blueprints are very large, so I can't
see how viewing them on a mobile device is useful.

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afoot
I think 'mobile device' in the case of construction sites may be a rather
broader term.

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supahfly_remix
Typical US blueprint sizes are 18" x 24" or 24" x 36". Are you suggesting they
have a large monitor or a printer onsite?

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jacquesm
That is one hell of a story.

