CEO and Co-Founder, San Francisco, CA
Please introduce yourself and describe your career. What do you do for a living?
My name is Tracy Young, and I am the CEO and co-founder of TigerEye. I am helping sales, marketing and finance leaders take a pulse of their business to mitigate risk and accelerate growth. TigerEye extends RevOps with personalized AI to deliver planning, segmentation, and revenue management.
My company launched in March after building a platform in stealth for close to two years. I previously led PlanGrid to $100M in ARR, and have always created tools to improve my past jobs. PlanGrid was my dream as a construction engineer; TigerEye is what I needed as a founder to drive and predict growth.
After I ended my watch at PlanGrid and Autodesk in 2020, I got to work at Y Combinator for two batches. Female startup founders focused on enterprise were scarce. This, combined with the effects of the pandemic on women in the workplace, inspired me to get back into building.
As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I was always building with Lego blocks, so being a builder was something I wanted to do early on.
What did you study? How much schooling do you think is required to get into your role? What could you have skipped?
I have a B.S. in construction engineering management from California State University, Sacramento. I was trained as an engineer and had zero CEO experience, so I had to learn on the job. I surrounded myself with an experienced executive team who taught me their domains and business. It would have been nice to have had an MBA or higher degree, but I did okay without it.
Was your path hard or smooth getting to where you are in your career? (Can you briefly describe what it was like on your journey so far?)
I cut my teeth in the construction industry as an assistant to a foreman, then worked for a chief estimator bidding jobs, and spent another four years in the field managing construction of large hospital projects. From these experiences, I saw firsthand how complex construction projects are — they require sophisticated coordination between many different organizations. And yet, data was shackled in legacy, paper blueprints. PlanGrid, my last startup, got everyone on the same page across any device. In between PlanGrid and starting TigerEye, I served as a visiting partner at Y Combinator (Winter 2020, 2021).
Tracy and her TigerEye co-founder Ralph
Walk us through your typical work day—when do you start, end, and do all day? (Where do you work from?)
I work from home thanks to an incredible childcare network consisting of my family who live with me (mom and dad) and nannies. The only way I can be successful as a co-founder, CEO and mother of three is having a partner who shares 50 percent of the child care duties with me.
I cannot stress enough how important equality is in the workforce and in the household. We’ll all be impacted by sickness and aging, and we’ll need to care for loved ones at some point in our lives, which is why we embrace time flexibility at TigerEye. We devote our most energetic hours to the most intellectually demanding work tasks and take care of family as needed. We share core hours so we can be available to each other and work as a team. We only have a handful of standing recurring meetings, and we believe a five-minute phone call can resolve most problems.
TigerEye is also remote-first. Ten years ago while at PlanGrid, I wouldn't have believed it was possible to run a company remotely, but a worldwide lockdown showed me that a better quality of work and life can be achieved. With good communication architecture and well-defined rules of engagement, decisions can be made quickly on Zoom or a phone call. There are trade-offs to remote work, but to us, the benefits outweigh the negatives.
What are some questions someone should really ask themselves if they want to get into your industry / career path?
I like to solve problems that I have experienced. TigerEye comes from my experience running a fast growth company for ten years. When we reflected on our PlanGrid journey, we asked ourselves a few questions: What would have accelerated growth? What would have made the difference between us still running PlanGrid today versus needing to sell? TigerEye is that product. This is a scientific tool that would have helped us grow more efficiently, be more profitable, and would’ve enabled us to be more courageous in our decision-making by providing extra validation.
So for a person considering being a founder, focus on solving a real problem that is worthy of decades of your life (if you’re lucky). Keep an eye out for things that are so painful it makes you wince — you want to build software to solve it right that minute. It takes years to build a lasting company. Focus on solving a real problem that carries significant value for you and will make a huge difference for customers.
What do you enjoy most about your career?
Working with really smart, talented people and being inspired by them.
What tools/resources do you frequently use? (Books, podcasts, mentors, wellness habits, software, etc.)
Oura ring, Spotify and green tea.
What is something you do when things get difficult? How do you handle stress/ challenges?
I focus on breathing. It works for me.
What advice would you give to someone who is trying to figure out what they want to do (for work) in general?
“Never do anything that makes you unhappy.” One of PlanGrid’s co-founders told me this shortly before he died of cancer, and it’s words that I live by today.
Do you have any mentors or key pieces of career advice that helped you get to where you are today?
I would have never become a construction engineer and I would have never become a founder had I not had role models like Karen Hansen (a builder) and Julia Hartz (a founder). I looked at them and thought, “I’d like to do that too.” My goal is to inspire more female entrepreneurs to solve real problems and start their own companies. If even one woman starts a company because of me, it's all worth it. My aim is for a chain reaction of inspiration and change as one woman inspires another.
What excites you about the future OR what's up next for you in the near future? (Could be career-related, life-related, or even a future career pivot / path)
I want to be a good mom, partner, daughter and teammate. This takes continuous work.
Where can readers find/connect with you if they have questions? How can we support you?