Tracy Young: Why Work for You?

I'm kind of astounded that you have this ability to attract incredible talent. Talents, everything. Right at the end of the day, there's a massive talent war here in Silicon Valley. Even at a global level, you've got these super sexy companies of the Airbnbs of the world, et cetera, et cetera, and Slack. How do you recruit for a construction company? Rob's been really successful in doing that. What's the magic?

Something like 20% of PlanGrid comes from an architectural, engineering and construction background. So by the time we meet them, they sort of understand the problem that we're trying to solving and what we're trying to do. And so that means the other 80% does not come from a construction background. And so there's a lot of selling to do. I think we've gotten better at it over the years. You know, we've had six years of practice now of selling our company and the company's evolved and it's much more compelling to sell. But I think there's three things that we try to do when talking to people that we want to recruit. Number one is explaining in an incredibly clear way the problem that we're trying to solve and why it's so bad of a problem. Number two, why our product and why our company is going to be the leader in the space. What we're doing today, that makes it the best product and what we're doing tomorrow, that's going to keep us ahead of everyone. And three, helping them understand the market size and how big the opportunity is for their careers, because that's all we care about them today. It's what's in it for me. And so if we can nail those three things in a conversation, it's a good thing.