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Autodesk to Acquire PlanGrid (YC W12) to Accelerate Construction Productivity
- jl 8y agoThis is a big deal: this is by far the biggest acquisition of a YC startup with a female founder/CEO. If you want to get an idea of how formidable Tracy Young is, watch her talk at the 2015 Female Founders Conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pKR212H5vQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pKR212H5vQ
- HorizonXP 8y agoAbsolutely, Tracy and the rest of the founding team are a force. Their YC story was awe inspiring and emotional. Tracy was one of the first people to believe in me, and encourage me to apply to YC. Glad to see this wonderful news for PlanGrid, and hope to see many more big things coming from them now that they’re at AutoDesk!
- benatkin 8y agoI prefer biggest exit, don't want to always assume acquisitions.
- Judgmentality 8y ago> This is a big deal: this is by far the biggest acquisition of a YC startup with a female founder/CEO. I feel I may be ignorant, but doesn't drawing attention to her gender like this only work to diminish her accomplishments? I feel as though she did an amazing job, and siloing it into "best of..." as opposed to letting it stand on its own seems only to lessen the significance of her work. Maybe I am naive and do not appreciate the difficulties of being a woman in tech, or perhaps I am too idealistic to think that we should not acknowledge the tribulations of achieving this as a female...but to me it seems to cheapen it rather than strengthen it. It's drawing attention to her gender rather than the accomplishment itself. I am aware of who I am replying to, and I truly am not trying to sling mud here and I fear I may derail this comment thread when it really should just be a celebration of what Tracy Young has done, but then again if I never ask I'll never learn.
- joering2 8y ago> I feel I may be ignorant, but doesn't drawing attention to her gender like this only work to diminish her accomplishments? Please watch the video. Every now and then she mentions her own gender as a very rare-to-find CEO, and clearly use it to her own advantage. I'm not judging whether its good or bad just merely stating the fact.
- DoreenMichele 8y agojl is Jessica Livingston, the only female founder of YC. I, personally, see nothing wrong with her adding this detail. It is insider info on YC alumni that I'm guessing isn't in the article and probably can't be found any other way. She is a reliable source.
- SandersAK 8y agoIt would be awesome if we lived in a world where VCs, investors, and the tech industry in general just invested in people who deserve it. But we're so far from that world right now (just google vc investment in women-founded cos). I think what JL is bringing up here is important because there is no room for naysayers with this exit. It's a monumental achievement, (for anyone!) but particularly a big F YOU to all the rampant misogny and boys-club culture that persists in tech among investors. I don't speak for women, but I will say as a mostly-white dude, I have never thought "are there even CEOs or founders that look like me?" whereas I have, through the years, heard that many many times from women and POC. What Tracy and her team have done is really fantastic. The fact that she's a woman is important only in that it begins the process of shutting up the old boys club, and (hopefully) a sign of things to come for those people who haven't traditionally been given the benefit of the doubt.
- jjeaff 8y agoIt's more than just shutting up the boy's club, and you alluded to it. I think it is important to shed light on the fact that she is a female founder because there are lots of young girls out there that need to see that someone like them, at least in one respect, can achieve something like this.
- avip 8y agoWow that talk was just amazing. Instead of your usual success BS, she just stands there and tells her story in a natural voice. Truly inspiring.
- xenadu02 8y agoCan confirm, Tracy is the real deal.
- aliston 8y agoWhat an incredible and inspiring story... truly the highest highs and the lowest lows. Some take always that really resonated with me: - Life is is short and it isn’t. Don’t waste time working on “trivial bullshit.” - A small “family” can take on a bigger, better funded copycat because the small, nimble team obsesses over the sticks. - Sometimes you’ve gotta just “man up.” I thought it was interesting Tracy used that language, but you can just tell that she doesn’t have time for the bullshit. Be the honey badger. - If you don’t find joy in what you do say to day, you’re doing the wrong thing. Congrats to PlanGrid!
- lemiant 8y agoIf I remember right, this is also the second largest YC acquisition of any kind :)
- Pristina 8y agoThe implication, of course, if that if the founder had been a male, this would be a less big deal?
- fipple 8y agoIt’s also cool that this is a female founder in an industry that is thought of as characteristically male. It’s not like Spanx.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- __ethan 8y agoAmazing job and congratulations! This acquisition votes YES on YC's approach to build user experience, on the fact that the real incumbent exists only in your users's hands. On the other hand, PlanGrid could be worth quite a bit more than this acquisition pays. I don't buy their argument of 100 billion TAM in one of the Medium posts[1], but it surely had greater potential than what is realized in this deal, had it expand into nearby territories. [Ask HN: When people tell founders that you need to convince investor that yours will be a billion dollar company, do they mean a billion dollar in revenue, or a billion in valuation? There's likely an order of magnitude difference here hence I wonder which is the default during a normal conversation without further qualification on the number.] Third, video says it had 10k paying customers in 3 years of launch, while at 12k 4 years later when acquired. Was it saturating the market, or was it fighting considerable churn after raising its B round？ Always amazed by the team's ability to sell the service at this price level, that says how much of a pain PlanGrid is solving. Anyway, job well done! [1] https://medium.com/plangrid-technology/plangrid-answers-daniel-gross-4397fa76d8c3 https://medium.com/plangrid-technology/plangrid-answers-dani...
- xenadu02 8y agoI had the pleasure of being employee #38. I wrote the visual diff sheet compare feature, among others. I left about two years ago when the company had grown to 200 people. Tracy, Ralph, and Ryan are authentic people. They really cared for everyone who worked there. (I can remember Ryan pestering me to take more vacation time). Their success is well-deserved. I’ve spoken personally to customers who didn’t even have a computer or smart phone - the first piece of modern technology they used was an iPad for PlanGrid. This acquisition is a testament to the moat PlanGrid built in the field. Competitors tried their hardest to sell to the CxOs/head office, only to find out no one in the field wanted to use it. (There are parallels to iPhone in the enterprise space.) Know your customers and build something they want to buy. Always good advice :) Anyway congrats to the whole team!
- deanmoriarty 8y agoHow much does employee #38 make from his/her vested equity these days? I understand this is a very nosy question, but nonetheless having one more datapoint on the financial outcome from an early employee in a company that exited at ~$1B would be valuable. It truly couldn’t get better than that (assuming the funds were raised at ok-ish terms), so I assume your number must be in the multiple 7 figures at least!
- strtup-lotto 8y agoUsing a throwaway for obv. reasons. I'm employee lower thirties in a company that recently went public with a similar valuation. Unlike gp, I am still with this company, and really like it there. Ignoring taxes, vested comes in at about 1 mill. I'll pay about half that in taxes. I have a few hundred k in unvested from subsequent awards. I've hit the start up lotto, but I will not likely pocket 7 figures from equity for a long while, assuming continual equity awards. Well, if the stock does really well, I could pocket 1M, but it needs to go up quite a bit. Honestly, I would likely have made more over these many years in aggregate at a FAANG. But I've enjoyed myself and still look forward to work every day. I'm blessed and lucky. But the startup lotto is not as good as you might think. Never count equity in a start up. Go for the salary.
- ArtWomb 8y agoCongrats! PlanGrid is a terrific concept.
- yinyinwu 8y agoCongrats Tracy!
- freddier 8y agoFrom an iPad App that made it easier to read blueprints to $875M. Amazing. I had the fortune of listening to Tracy Young while at YC and the story of the company and her other founder was inspiring. I wonder if this is the shape of what will happen with other companies like Remix (former TransitMix).
- nikisweeting 8y agoAh crap, I had an offer from them a few years back with good equity comp, guess I should've taken it haha... They seemed like a really great company with mature management.
- reneherse 8y agoI'm really curious, how much equity is considered a good offer?
- nikisweeting 8y agoIt's maybe not up to Google/FB/etc standards, but given my experience level and the company's size at the time I considered it generous. It was equivalent to ~2 years worth of the offer's salary at today's price.
- inferiorhuman 8y agoIf it's any consolation I got headhunted by PlanGrid earlier this year. I knew of them in a professional context and was ready to sign on the dotted line after the recruiter's opening salvo. Turns out the hiring manager and recruiter were completely disorganized and seemed more interested in playing games than actually hiring. PlanGrid basically snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Reading this news blurb resulted in a bit of mixed emotions for me. Earlier this year, prior to my run-in with PlanGrid, I walked away from a decent chunk of unvested stock options in a rather well known publicly traded company. I suppose they deserve each other.
- coastal-fiesta 8y agoCurious about the details here. What games were the recruiters playing?
- inferiorhuman 8y agoThe recruiter rescheduled the phone screen the day of, went radio silent for the rest of the week — not even an OOO autoresponse (Burning Man was that weekend, go figure). When I got a response the following week the recruiter was unwilling to go into any significant details including some sort of expected salary range. At best the impression I was left with is one where Plangrid is a company where communication is wholly unimportant and not valued. It didn't seem worth my time to pursue them.
- ukd1 8y agoAwesome, congrats - amazing seeing this hard work pay off!
- anonadsk 8y agoGood luck to PlanGrid. Eventually the corporate bureaucracy causes enough frustration to make the best people want to leave after the handcuffs have expired. I hope Autodesk has learned lessons from its prior acquisitions and can integrate them effectively. I remember an anecdote from the current CEO of Autodesk. A few years ago, while having dinner with his wife at a San Francisco restaurant, he was seated next to a group of PlanGrid employees who proceeded to talk about their strategy. At the time, he said he was unimpressed with PlanGrid. Times have changed! And be careful where you have your public conversations.
- inferiorhuman 8y ago> I hope Autodesk has learned lessons from its prior acquisitions and can integrate them effectively. They haven't.
- whoisjuan 8y agoWow this definitely raise the stakes in the construction software market. Autodesk is going all-in and poised to become the incumbent in construction software. They are seeing what many other companies are failing to see, but there are many other formidable platforms pushing hard too, including Procore, all the Oracle offering which includes the recent acquisitions of Aconex and Textura and many niche players.
- xenadu02 8y agoThe difference is if the Superintendent doesn’t want to use the software it doesn’t matter. Construction businesses live and die by the super, something these other players never seemed to understand. The people working in the field love PlanGrid. More than one company has been forced to abandon a competitor because the field crew refused to use anything else. Know your customers. Your real customers. Build something they want to buy. When big players enter your territory be a honey badger :)
- cronix 8y agoNot to mention what they are doing with drones and software. It's quite amazing. They did quite a bit of work with 3D Robotics. https://forge.autodesk.com/customer-stories/3dr https://forge.autodesk.com/customer-stories/3dr
- chaostheory 8y agoI used publicly available data on the people behind PlanGrid as a test for my project (data's probably out of date by now). Still, if anyone wants a quick overview of the some of the people behind PlanGrid, here you go: https://theymadethat.com/organizations/so3/plangrid https://theymadethat.com/organizations/so3/plangrid
- saltedonion 8y agowere the financial terms of the acquisition disclosed?
- athampy 8y ago"Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK) has signed a definitive agreement to acquire PlanGrid, a leading provider of construction productivity software, for $875 million net of cash." https://adsknews.autodesk.com/pressrelease/autodesk-to-acquire-plangrid https://adsknews.autodesk.com/pressrelease/autodesk-to-acqui...
- seattle_spring 8y agoWith a per-share price ranging from $0 to $250.
- my_username_is_ 8y agoWhat does it mean that some of their shares are valued at $0? Is this typical? I'm not too familiar with the details of acquisition accounting
- a_w_king 8y agoCongrats Tracy! PlanGrid is a great company lead by a fantastic and hardworking CEO. Very excited to see their success.
- Spinfusor 8y agoThey’ve done a great job with PlanGrid. I wonder what role Carol Bartz played in the deal (she’s been on the board for 2.5 years and was Autodesk’s CEO for 14 years).
- nraynaud 8y agoGood luck to the current customers, I guess the documentation and UI will become a nightmare while the price goes up.
- wheelie_boy 8y agoSeems like a better fit than Socialcam
- davidjnelson 8y agoExciting news. Huge fan of Autodesk and YC. Congratulations to PlanGrid!
- agibsonccc 8y agoCongrats Plangrid. I was your neighbor back in 2014. I remember when you guys needed to expand your office and you were looking to start using some of the space we were subletting all the way back when. Ironically, 2 years after that I got in to YC and now run our company from Japan. Time flies!
- mattlong 8y agoBig congrats to Tracy, Ralph, and the whole team!
- kentf 8y agoCongrats! A fantastic app, and fantastic team.
- wlesieutre 8y agoCongrats to them, but personally not surprised. Buying literally everything construction related is Autodesk’s schtick. Some parts will stay great, some parts will stuff in half-baked FBX format support to pretend their independently developed products all interoperate.
- rurban 8y agoSo it's iOS (Swift or Obj-C), Android (Java) and Windows (Java or C++), but I see python in the eng team. Can you do all three with python alone?