This content was created by GHION.AI . This content was uploaded by GHION.AI . This is a YouTube video titled "Tracy Young: Insights of a Young CEO" (created 2017-04-19). The excerpt is a first-person spoken segment by Tracy Young, a founder/CEO associated with PlanGrid, reflecting on his transition from engineer to founder, how an all-engineer founding team (5 co-founders: 2 construction engineers and 3 software developers) approached problems, the importance of surrounding himself with complementary leaders and a strong executive team, and the need for continuous personal and professional growth as a CEO. The content is an interview/talk-style reflection on startup leadership and self-improvement.
Chapters
So I'm trained as an engineer, and I think as a founder, there's just so many problems to solve. Actually, our skill sets translated nicely into being the founder of Plangrid. 5 co-founders were all engineers, 2 construction engineers and 3 software developers. And so we sort of look at problems and our challenges, and we just slice them up into smaller things that we can tackle. And there's this funny side effect that happens if you have any success at all as a startup, especially as a first-time CEO. It's that I am constantly in the biggest job I've ever done before. And so surrounding myself with people who can shore up in every way I'm weak on was key to my ability to being able to do the job. Having 4 other co-founders to help take the load, Now we have— I mean, our executive team is quite awesome. They're— I'd go to war with them any day. And in a lot of ways, running a company feels like we are going to war. And so making sure I'm surrounding myself with people that I can learn from, people that can lead, and they are sort of my medium to lead the company through. I think we are the average of everyone we surround ourselves. With. And then there's also this need to understand that if I don't grow, I won't be PlantGrid CEO a year from now. And so I have to believe in myself and I have to make the effort, however painful it is, to grow as an executive, to grow as a CEO, to grow professionally, personally, to dive into areas that I don't understand at all and try to become an expert at it. And so there's this need for change and growth and it starts with acknowledgement. I mean, I think I would have been an okay or decent CEO for 6 to 8 months ago. And so just constantly working at that. And I think it's the will and whatever it is we're trying to grow on, it's like a muscle. I mean, it's like running. You run enough, you can run 10 miles. You do enough push-ups and however shaky and painful it is, you're gonna be able to do that 15 push-ups in a few months from now. Yeah.
