From the Nigeria Magazine Desk
Tracy Young, a technology entrepreneur and co-founder of construction software company PlanGrid, has built an inspiring business legacy, rising from humble beginnings to become one of the notable women in technology entrepreneurship.
Young’s story is deeply connected to the experiences of her parents, who fled the Vietnam War in 1977. According to a LinkedIn post by Jenny Stojkovic, her parents, who were Chinese-Vietnamese refugees, spent eight days on a fishing boat with hundreds of other refugees before eventually reaching safety in the United States.
After settling in California, her father worked as a taxi driver, while her mother took shifts building ships. They later established a food distribution business and worked to provide their three children with university education.
Young went on to study engineering and began her career in the construction industry. Her experience on construction sites exposed her to a problem that would eventually inspire her entrepreneurial journey.
While working on a hospital project, she encountered the difficulty of managing hundreds of rooms using heavy paper blueprints. The process was cumbersome and expensive, prompting her to recognise an opportunity to improve how construction professionals managed project information.
In 2011, Young co-founded PlanGrid with the aim of replacing traditional paper blueprints with digital tools that could be accessed on mobile devices.
Building the company was not without challenges. The startup faced financial constraints, and its team had to demonstrate its product in conference hallways when it could not afford exhibition booths. Young also experienced personal loss when her co-founder, Antoine, died in January 2012 after being diagnosed with a rare form of cancer.
Despite these setbacks, she continued building the business. By 2018, PlanGrid had grown to approximately 500 employees, generated $100 million in annual recurring revenue and supported more than one million projects across 195 countries.
That year, software company Autodesk acquired PlanGrid for $875 million, marking a major milestone in Young’s entrepreneurial career.
In 2021, Young co-founded another technology company, TigerEye, with her husband and former PlanGrid co-founder, Ralph Gootee. The company raised $35 million to develop artificial intelligence tools designed to help businesses analyse data and improve decision-making.
TigerEye was subsequently acquired by homebuilder Lennar in January 2026, according to Stojkovic’s account.
Young’s journey stands out because she built her career in construction, an industry traditionally slow to adopt technology and historically dominated by men. Rather than coming from a conventional technology background, she identified a practical problem in her field and developed a solution with global applications.
Her story demonstrates how personal experiences, industry knowledge and a willingness to solve everyday problems can become the foundation of successful businesses.
It also highlights the importance of resilience, innovation and persistence in entrepreneurship, particularly for women seeking to build companies in industries where they remain underrepresented.
Young’s achievements offer an important lesson for aspiring entrepreneurs: some of the most valuable business ideas emerge from problems people encounter in their everyday work.
