PlanGrid for $875 million. By 2021, she was ready to jump back in and do it all over again with a brand new startup: <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.tigereye.com//">TigerEye.

TigerEye builds AI-powered planning and revenue management software for businesses, combining AI and machine learning with a company’s own historical data to help them predict their future. It’s “Moneyball but for business,” as Tracy puts it. </p><p><strong>I recently sat down with Tracy to find out more about her, what drives her, and some of what she has learned along the way. We talked about:</strong></p><ul><li>Why she wanted to jump back in as a founder/CEO, and what sparked the idea for TigerEye</li><li>The YC interview that inspired her to focus on enterprise software</li><li>Why she and her co-founder spent months “dissecting the past” before starting another company, and what they’re doing differently this time.</li><li>The hard parts of joining a big company following an acquisition, her advice for new founders going through YC, and more!</li></ul><p><em>Find our conversation below, lightly edited for clarity and length.</em></p><hr><p><strong>You had a massive exit with PlanGrid. You took a couple of years and then jumped right back in to do it again with TigerEye. What drives you?</strong></p><p>That’s a really good question.</p><p>I think my kids drive me. I always need a project to work on; I’m a busybody that way.  I like working, and I like working with really smart, talented people.</p><p>But I also have a lot of energy and intensity, and my kids don’t need me all over them all the time. They have their own life, they don’t need founder-mom on top of them — because then I’m nitpicking every little thing. “Why are your toys out? Go pick that up!” <em>[laugh]</em></p><p>They don’t need that energy on them 24/7. So I output it into a startup.</p><p>But more than anything, I watched my parents work incredibly hard to give my siblings and me the life we have. They were refugees of the Vietnam War. They worked seven days a week for many years; they worked two jobs a piece just to make things work for our family. <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/library/JF-the-immigrant-journey-behind-a-silicon-valley-success-story/">It absolutely made me who I am today</a>, and I want my kids to see that you can dream, you can work hard, and you can do whatever you want as long as you’re passionate about it.</p><p><strong>What came first: the idea for TigerEye or the desire to keep building [after PlanGrid]?</strong></p><p>The desire to keep building.</p><p>[My co-founder] Ralph and I were actually working at YC in between PlanGrid and TigerEye — we were both Visiting Group Partners. We saw a lot of really cool technology come through during interviews, and while reading thousands of applications from all of these ambitious, talented founders.</p><p>It was really clear to us there was so much low-hanging fruit in enterprise, but the only people who would build solutions there… let me tell you a quick story: I remember interviewing a really, <em>really</em> talented engineer. He must’ve been only 18 years old, and he was building.. I don’t even remember, some kind of vague thing around video. We were looking at him and asked: you can build anything! Why don’t you solve real problems for real people’s jobs?</p><p>He looked at us and said: enterprise software is for old people. </p><p><strong>Oh jeez. What was your response?</strong></p><p>I laughed, but it got me thinking that the only people who would build great solutions in the enterprise world are the people who saw it firsthand. </p><p>We had this unfair advantage of having built a startup for almost 10 years, seeing it grow the whole time, and deploying every solution under the sun to make our company scale and work.</p><p>Then we got the privilege to be acquired into a public company, and to form a new construction business unit [within that company], where we then replaced all of our startup tools with the [big brand] winners — we were paying millions of dollars to buy the software each year, and then another several hundred thousand to deploy it and administer it.</p><p>It was so clear to us: we could take any category [of Enterprise software] between CRMs and ERPs and there were ten good startup ideas in there, right? But the only people who would build that type of software are people who saw it fail them for years.</p><p><strong>For those who don’t know, can you explain what TigerEye does? What was the pitch?</strong></p><p>When Ralph pitched me the idea of TigerEye, he said, “Remember all of those spreadsheets we’d have people make [when building PlanGrid], and they’d never actually answer our questions? I think I can build a business simulator — and automatically generate that data through simulation theory.”</p><p>In a past life he worked at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory using simulation theory and he felt strongly that it could be applied to business. That was really interesting to me.</p><p><strong>Can you give me examples of what TigerEye is simulating, and what it bases its simulations on?</strong></p><p>Something that’s interesting about, say, Salesforce, is that it’s a flat database. When a sales rep hits save on an opportunity, it overrides the history. There’s no version control.</p><p>But that history is interesting! Especially if you have a lot of it, because now we can understand rep behavior over time. So we go into the CRM and snapshot everything every 15 minutes. We pick up every minor change that’s happening over time and use a bunch of AI, machine learning, and advanced statistics to use their historical [data] to predict their future. We’re like Moneyball but for business.</p><p>It gets even more important at public companies, where you’re trying to figure out: where are we going to clock out this quarter, or this month? Where’s our business going to be? </p><p>You constantly have really smart people munging numbers on a spreadsheet to try to predict the future, and these spreadsheets don’t work.</p><figure class=\"kg-card kg-embed-card\"><iframe width=\"200\" height=\"113\" src=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.youtube.com/embed/5eYN7-l6d_A?feature=oembed\%22 frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen title=\"Introducing TigerEye\"></iframe></figure><p><strong>What was it like for you to go from running your own startup for 10 years, moving at your own pace, to being within a larger corporate environment?</strong></p><p>It really sucked for me. I think everyone knew this.</p><p>Startups move at such a velocity. To get inserted into a 40+ year old public company… there’s a cultural difference. There’s definitely decision-making differences, and I think that was the hardest part. I felt like I couldn’t sneeze without asking permission from five head-of-somethings.</p><p><strong>Between your experiences with PlanGrid and then at a bigger company — how retrospective did you get about all of this before diving back in?</strong></p><p>We left Autodesk in March 2020 — and then, as you recall, went right into a worldwide lockdown. </p><p>I’m married to my co-founder [Ralph], so we ended up spending most of shelter-in-place and that COVID period dissecting the past. We suddenly didn’t have a job, we’d left Autodesk, we’re used to moving at such a velocity, and then we came to a complete standstill. </p><p>What we ended up doing is dissecting everything we felt we did wrong, and everything we did right. Everyone we thought we wanted to work with again, and everyone we for sure were not going to work with again. We mapped out the differences between those that we’d want to work with again, and those we didn’t. The first 24 or 25 people [at TigerEye] were people we’d worked with before.</p><figure class=\"kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption\"><img src=https://www.ycombinator.com/"/blog/content/images/2024/06/tracy-and-ralph.png/" class=\"kg-image\" alt loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1388\" height=\"913\" srcset=\"/blog/content/images/size/w600/2024/06/tracy-and-ralph.png 600w, /blog/content/images/size/w1000/2024/06/tracy-and-ralph.png 1000w, /blog/content/images/2024/06/tracy-and-ralph.png 1388w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 720px) 720px\"><figcaption><em>TigerEye co-founders Tracy Young and Ralph Gootee</em></figcaption></figure><p><strong>What determined whether or not you wanted to work with someone again?</strong></p><p>It was the people we thought were incredibly talented, and that we had a fun time building with. It’s as simple as that: looking back, yes, I would love to work with that person again. We had that core value in place before we even narrowed in on a product idea.</p><p><strong>Can you tell me a bit about what you’re doing differently as a founder this time, day-to-day?</strong></p><p>It’s a little bit different this time around; when I first started PlanGrid, I was in my mid-to-late 20s. I’m approaching 40 this year, and I have 3 young kids.</p><p>Getting the luxury of doing it a second time around, I know the things that are a higher value — the things that only I can do as a CEO and founder. There are certain decisions only I can make, and there are decisions that are better off made by someone else at the company.</p><h3 id=\"it-makes-people-feel-like-they-suck-at-their-job-when-the-ceo-jumps-in-and-does-it-for-them\"><em>\"It makes people feel like they suck at their job when the CEO jumps in and does it for them.\"</em><br></h3><p>I think in my 20s, as a founder and a first-time CEO, I honestly didn’t know what my job was. I always jumped onto support tickets; if customers had an issue, I’d be the first one to jump in. Companies get to a point where that’s not the best use of your time. We had really great support people on the team — and it feels really bad when the CEO is jumping in to do your job! It makes people feel like they suck at their job when the CEO jumps in and does it for them.</p><p>So this time I’m really deliberate in how I spend my time.</p><p><strong>What does that look like?</strong></p><p>These days it’s mostly product and sales. But it’s also about having really heavily protected family time, and really heavily protected work time.</p><p><strong>That dedicated family time… I generally don’t ask questions about founders being married to each other because it feels too personal, but since you mentioned it earlier: does that make it easier or harder to separate life and work? Easier because your partner already understands the things that are going on in your life, or harder because, in some way, work is always in the air?</strong></p><p>We’ve been doing this together for so long that it’s hard for me to even know what it’s like on the other side. We worked together [on PlanGrid] starting in 2011; we got married in 2013. With three kids, and now two startups — yeah, it’s hard.</p><p>It’s funny, but we often get founders who are thinking about starting a company with their partners, and the advice we give is: don’t do it. And the reason for that is that startups are hard. And marriage is hard. And having children is hard! So it’s this combinatorial explosion of problems that could come up.</p><p>But we’re also a good example that it can work, but we’ve done a lot of work on personal growth, and practicing patience, and practicing forgiveness to be able to do what we do. </p><p><strong>Last question here, but: you have an incredibly rare perspective on YC. You went through it as a founder multiple times, you were a Visiting Group Partner... for anyone going through the incoming YC batch, or applying in the future, what would you tell them to really maximize their time?</strong></p><p>It’s easy to get a bit obsessive — the goal is to make as much progress as you can in three months, so that you have a great Demo Day with as much revenue and progress as you can.</p><p>But I would encourage everyone to look at the people around them [in the batch], and the startups around them, and put in the effort to get to know them. Learn what they’re building.</p><p>I think back to YC Winter 2012 and Summer 2022, and it’s the people that really are the best part of YC. It’s the friendships I made; the partners that I got to work with. It’s really easy to be 100% heads down and obsessive over your thing — of course, talk to customers, make something people want! — but don’t forget that you are getting an incredible opportunity to meet people who are going through the exact same journey you are.</p><hr><p><em>Find out more <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.tigereye.com//">about TigerEye here</a>, and <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/predictable-growth-7018963257554046976//">find Tracy's newsletter \"Predictable Growth\" here</a>.</em></p>","comment_id":"6669d02f5df3e40001fdc874","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2024/06/tracy.png","featured":true,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2024-06-12T09:43:27.000-07:00","updated_at":"2024-06-12T11:07:13.000-07:00","published_at":"2024-06-12T11:00:00.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":"In 2018, Tracy Young and her co-founders sold PlanGrid for $875 million. 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You can read the first edition <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/learnings-of-a-ceo-max-rhodes-faire/">here. </p><p><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://zapier.com//">Zapier was founded in 2012 by <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://twitter.com/wadefoster/">Wade Foster</a>, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://twitter.com/bryanhelmig?lang=en\%22>Bryan Helmig</a>, and <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://twitter.com/mikeknoop/">Mike Knoop</a>. The founders went through YC’s <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/zapier/">Summer 2012 batch</a> and <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/growth-program/">S18 Growth Program</a>, and today, Zapier automates work by connecting with over 5,000 apps. The company has been profitable since 2014 and is valued at $5B – with 700 employees working remotely. Wade, Zapier CEO, shared his learnings growing into the role of a growth-stage CEO. </p><p><strong>How has your job as a CEO changed from leading a 3-person company in 2012 to a 700-person organization today? </strong></p><p>In the early days, you’re in the trenches with your co-founders and early employees splitting up tasks and touching nearly every part of the business. Often you’re writing code, selling products, recruiting, and helping with HR and finance functions. Today, Zapier is almost a team of 700 – and as we’ve grown, people have taken more and more duties from me to help the company grow and scale.</p><p>Now, one place I feel I am most needed is the vague concept of setting the vision and communicating that vision — and then ensuring everyone understands what we are doing, why it’s important, and their role in getting that done. This came naturally to me when we were small and I was in the trenches with everyone and communicating constantly. But as we hired more folks, I realized leaders were interpreting the vision to their team somewhat differently. I learned that if you are not communicating the vision well, you'll have teams that seem to be working on random projects. In isolation this isn’t bad, but as a collective set of tasks, you discover their work doesn’t fit into the vision. </p><p>We now repeat the vision over and over again in many formats. We put the vision in writing and it's constantly referenced; it's communicated at our all-hands; we bring in customers to talk about Zapier’s impact; we show data, so charts and figures can help tell the story; we have a company podcast. </p><p>When people inside the company start to turn the vision into a meme or Slack emoji, I know they really get the vision. Diagnostic tools, like employee engagement surveys, also help me understand how well employees understand why their role is important. It’s also evident when reviewing roadmaps. If a team’s tasks are tight and cohesive, I can tell they’ve been making tough decisions to align to the vision; if there are a bunch of random tasks, I can tell the vision hasn’t been communicated clearly. As a CEO, you have to ask, “Tell me how this is aligned,” and force those conversations to occur. Over time, people will get more comfortable with these types of assertive exercises. </p><p><strong>As you've grown, what changes have you had to make to keep everyone at your company aligned?</strong></p><p>We host weekly all hands, bring customers in to talk at those all hands, are transparent with metrics, and make sure those metrics are reflective of the good and the bad. Ultra transparency with metrics has served us well, as they are motivating and help people get aligned. People start to ask, \"How do we get these bad metrics to the good category?\" and then work towards change.</p><p>Being candid has also served us well. Whether at all hands, on a podcast, or solely talking with one of our leaders, we have candid conversations about why we didn’t hit a goal, why we were off schedule, why a deal didn’t close – and then immediately dive into what we think needs to happen next. The goal is to give awareness to the organization, so that in various meetings and forums people can try to figure out how to improve those areas.</p><p><strong>What's your advice to other founders on how to hire executives?</strong></p><p>Hiring executives is one of the hardest things you’ll do as a CEO. It's hard to determine when to start hiring executives, exactly what you’re looking for in an executive, and then find that person. </p><p>The best way to figure out when to start hiring executives is to meet with people who are unquestionably good executives at companies a stage or two further along. With no intention to hire them, meet with the VP of Engineering, VP of Marketing, and VP of People and ask, \"What are the things you do? What makes you great at this job? What do people in your job disagree on?”. Get as smart as you can on this topic and then compare and contrast what that set of leaders is telling you with how your company operates. If these executives wouldn’t bring anything new to the table, you may not be ready for that type of leader. This starts to help you answer the when part of the equation – and also the what, because you start to see what these folks are capable of and what they are not. </p><p>Part of determining what you should look for in an executive is understanding your own strengths and weaknesses. This requires honesty with yourself and internalizing feedback you have received. (I encourage folks to work with executive coaches and get 360 performance reviews.) Figuring this out helps you start to realize, \"Okay, within my executive team, I need people who will compliment me in these ways.\" Otherwise, you risk hiring a team that is quite capable and competent at their function, but actually may not work well with each other or with you.</p><p><strong>What is Zapier’s culture? What do you do to cultivate it as a remote company?</strong></p><p>We have a strong set of values that we align around. One is default to action. We hire folks who are action-oriented – and we have to as a distributed company; folks aren’t in situations where they notice someone next to them is stuck on something. So, they need to be curious, self-starters, and (figuratively) scratch and itch when they see something that doesn’t satisfy their innate drive. </p><p>Next, we value defaulting to transparency because folks who are action-oriented should be equipped with a ton of context. The mission, strategy, metrics, goals, systems and processes – all of it – is well documented and organized so people can find them and take action.</p><p>We also have a feedback-oriented culture. I teach a course on feedback to all the new folks to ensure they understand how to ensure they understand how to give and receive feedback effectively because it helps us grow. </p><p>The rest of our values are outlined <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://zapier.com/jobs/culture-and-values-at-zapier/">here, but these are some of the things that drive Zapier’s culture – and as you scale, it’s crucial to create different forums to communicate these values. We have an internal tool we named Async, which is email meets Reddit. The platform is public by default, anyone can post, and information can be targeted at different groups or people. We find this is great for long-form substantive topics that have a longer shelf life (1-2 weeks) versus Slack channels (1-2 days). We also hold all hands and have a company podcast, where we capture evergreen content. For example, when we have key moments in the company history, we’ll break it down: Why we did this thing, what led to that decision, the outcomes, why it is an important moment, etc. We have found podcasts to be helpful when onboarding new folks. </p><p><strong>Why did you decide to not raise any additional funding since your seed round?</strong></p><p>The only funding we took in the history of the company was a $1.3M seed round in 2012. This was partially philosophical and partially about the business. </p><p>The three of us co-founders had worked at a fast-growing, bootstrapped company owned 50/50 by two brothers. When we came out to the Valley (we were from Missouri), we started to hear this line of thinking, “No great company has ever done X.\" Some of these statements would center around the impact of venture funding, and I was dismissive in part because I had this counterexample from my time in Missouri. So, when we raised the seed round, we decided to treat it like the last round we’d ever raise.</p><p>Our second reason for not raising multiple rounds: Across the founding team, we had all the skill sets to do every job inside the company. That meant we didn't have to hire to make progress in the early days. We even had rules in place around hiring like, “Don’t hire until it hurts.” </p><p>Then there was the third, rational component: We were able to grow quickly without external funding because of Zapier’s network effect on our developer platform side. We're able to have low customer acquisition costs (mostly through organic channels), and this is intrinsic to how Zapier works. </p><p>Along the way, some of the philosophical thinking fell by the wayside by observing other companies and realizing fundraising is a tool like anything else. There are moments when it can help you, and there are moments when it can hinder you. You should strive to understand when external funding is a good tool to use versus when it is not – and then apply it if it makes sense for you.</p>","comment_id":"62f15573ab52db0001d3b642","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/08/BlogTwitter-Image-Template.jpg","featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2022-08-08T11:26:59.000-07:00","updated_at":"2022-08-15T12:08:14.000-07:00","published_at":"2022-08-09T08:55:00.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":"Today, Zapier automates work by connecting with over 5,000 apps. 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In 2010, she was one of the first 30 employees at Square and the company’s first comms hire.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/lindsay-amos/"}],"tags":[{"id":"62b9edfe063d2d0001f0fc58","name":"#442","slug":"hash-442","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"internal","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/404/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71181","name":"YC Continuity","slug":"yc-continuity","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/yc-continuity/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71152","name":"Founder Stories","slug":"founder-stories","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/founder-stories/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71174","name":"Advice","slug":"advice","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/advice/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71158","name":"Leadership","slug":"leadership","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/leadership/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71170","name":"Startups","slug":"startups","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/startups/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71155","name":"Growth","slug":"growth","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/growth/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710a7","name":"Lindsay Amos","slug":"lindsay-amos","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/02/Lindsay.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Lindsay Amos is the Senior Director of Communications at Y Combinator. 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It did for these YC companies.","slug":"does-co-founder-matching-work","html":"<p>We launched the co-founder matching platform earlier this year to help founders find their co-founders. When you sign up, you tell us about yourself and what you’re looking for, and we show you profiles that most closely match your ideal co-founder. If you message a candidate and they accept, we match the two of you.</p><p>Co-founder matching has also seen success with brand-new companies. Two pairs of co-founders met through the platform earlier this year, worked together on trial projects, became fully committed co-founders, applied to YC, and were accepted into the Summer 2021 batch!</p><p><strong><strong><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.sequincard.com//">Sequin (YC S21) is one of these companies. Vrinda Gupta had left her job after launching credit cards like the Chase Sapphire Reserve at Visa to work on a product to help women build credit. She spent a year working as a solo founder, and, in that time, raised a pre-seed and built an MVP. She knew she needed a technical co-founder who was mission driven, had fintech expertise, and was in it for the long haul.</p><figure class=\"kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption\"><img src=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://blog.ycombinator.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Sequin.jpeg/" class=\"kg-image\" alt loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption>Sequin (YC S21) co-founders, Vrinda Gupta and Mark Thomas.</figcaption></figure><p>That person was Mark Thomas. He had ten years of engineering experience at Paypal, cared deeply about gender equity, and spent six years as CTO of family-oriented startups. They had an instant connection and arranged to meet in person soon after. Vrinda recalls, “We met the day after we matched, and the day after, and then the day after that.”</p><p>Together, they went through YC’s batch this summer and <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.forbes.com/sites/geristengel/2021/09/15/debit-card-startup-builds-credit-for-women/?sh=6283b60b3c67\%22>raised $5.7M</a>.</p><p><strong><strong><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.kiwibiosciences.com//">Kiwi Biosciences</a></strong></strong> (YC S21) has a similar story. Anjie Liu started the company to solve her own pains with irritable bowel syndrome. She had a founding scientist to tackle R&amp;D, but wanted a co-founder to help her build a consumer brand and commercialize the product.</p><figure class=\"kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption\"><img src=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://blog.ycombinator.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/kiwi.jpeg/" class=\"kg-image\" alt loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption>Anjie Liu and David Hachuel, co-founders of Kiwi Biosciences (YC S21).</figcaption></figure><p>When Anjie saw David Hachuel’s profile on YC co-founder matching, she knew that he was “exactly what [she] was looking for.” David had previously sold a startup in the same space, and was immediately interested in her idea.</p><p>They took a very structured approach to co-founder matching. Both founders answered all 50 questions posed in <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://proof-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/firstround/50 Questions for Co-Founders.pdf/">First Round’s co-founder questionnaire</a>. They found deep alignment on “all the important things” (conflict resolution, vision for culture, etc.). When their month-long trial ended and it came time to say go or no-go, the decision was easy.</p><p>Anjie and David worked remotely for four months and finally met in person after getting into YC. They went through YC and <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/14/kiwi-bio-aims-to-free-irritable-bowel-syndrome-sufferers-from-restrictive-diets//">raised $1.5M</a>.</p><p>We’re ecstatic about the companies who met through our co-founder matching and we’re excited to see the platform continue to grow and support more awesome founders in the future!</p><p>Looking for a co-founder? Check out the platform at <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://blog.ycombinator.com/does-co-founder-matching-work/www.ycombinator.com/cofounder-matching/">www.ycombinator.com/cofounder-matching.

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Before that she was an engineer at Instagram and Facebook. Cat has a B.S. in Computer Science and Math from MIT.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/catheryn/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71152","name":"Founder Stories","slug":"founder-stories","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/founder-stories/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/does-co-founder-matching-work/","excerpt":"We launched the co-founder matching platform earlier this year to help founders find their co-founders. When you sign up, you tell us about yourself and what you’re looking for, and we show you profiles that most closely match your ideal co-founder. If you message a candidate and they accept, we match the two of you.","reading_time":2,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":null,"feature_image_caption":null},{"id":"62c640aadb59f2000159e618","uuid":"062e4f3f-c2e8-4f21-8a15-eb02adb47efe","title":"Same, Same but Different with Vanta and Zapier","slug":"same-same-but-different-with-vanta-and-zapier","html":"<p>Both <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.vanta.com//">Vanta CEO <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://twitter.com/christinacaci/">Christina Cacioppo</a> and <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://zapier.com//">Zapier CEO <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://twitter.com/wadefoster/">Wade Foster</a> made the decision to take a disciplined approach to fundraising. They flipped the equation of a typical startup founder: instead of raising money to enable a certain amount of growth, they eliminated the assumption of fundraising, controlled their spend, and evaluated how to ramp up spending based on what the business was bringing in. <br></p><p>YC’s <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://twitter.com/anuhariharan/">Anu Hariharan</a> sat down with Christina and Wade to talk about their unique funding history in our first episode of <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/new-yc-audio-series-same-same-but-different/">Same, Same but Different.</a> </p><div class=\"kg-card kg-audio-card\"><img src=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/media/2022/07/SSBD_Final_1_thumb.jpg?v&#x3D;1657216763245\" alt=\"audio-thumbnail\" class=\"kg-audio-thumbnail\"><div class=\"kg-audio-thumbnail placeholder kg-audio-hide\"><svg width=\"24\" height=\"24\" fill=\"none\" xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\"><path fill-rule=\"evenodd\" clip-rule=\"evenodd\" d=\"M7.5 15.33a.75.75 0 1 0 0 1.5.75.75 0 0 0 0-1.5Zm-2.25.75a2.25 2.25 0 1 1 4.5 0 2.25 2.25 0 0 1-4.5 0ZM15 13.83a.75.75 0 1 0 0 1.5.75.75 0 0 0 0-1.5Zm-2.25.75a2.25 2.25 0 1 1 4.5 0 2.25 2.25 0 0 1-4.5 0Z\"/><path fill-rule=\"evenodd\" clip-rule=\"evenodd\" d=\"M14.486 6.81A2.25 2.25 0 0 1 17.25 9v5.579a.75.75 0 0 1-1.5 0v-5.58a.75.75 0 0 0-.932-.727.755.755 0 0 1-.059.013l-4.465.744a.75.75 0 0 0-.544.72v6.33a.75.75 0 0 1-1.5 0v-6.33a2.25 2.25 0 0 1 1.763-2.194l4.473-.746Z\"/><path fill-rule=\"evenodd\" clip-rule=\"evenodd\" d=\"M3 1.5a.75.75 0 0 0-.75.75v19.5a.75.75 0 0 0 .75.75h18a.75.75 0 0 0 .75-.75V5.133a.75.75 0 0 0-.225-.535l-.002-.002-3-2.883A.75.75 0 0 0 18 1.5H3ZM1.409.659A2.25 2.25 0 0 1 3 0h15a2.25 2.25 0 0 1 1.568.637l.003.002 3 2.883a2.25 2.25 0 0 1 .679 1.61V21.75A2.25 2.25 0 0 1 21 24H3a2.25 2.25 0 0 1-2.25-2.25V2.25c0-.597.237-1.169.659-1.591Z\"/></svg></div><div class=\"kg-audio-player-container\"><audio src=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/media/2022/07/SSBD_Final_1.mp3/" preload=\"metadata\"></audio><div class=\"kg-audio-title\">Same, Same but Different with Vanta and Zapier</div><div class=\"kg-audio-player\"><button class=\"kg-audio-play-icon\"><svg xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\"><path d=\"M23.14 10.608 2.253.164A1.559 1.559 0 0 0 0 1.557v20.887a1.558 1.558 0 0 0 2.253 1.392L23.14 13.393a1.557 1.557 0 0 0 0-2.785Z\"/></svg></button><button class=\"kg-audio-pause-icon kg-audio-hide\"><svg xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\"><rect x=\"3\" y=\"1\" width=\"7\" height=\"22\" rx=\"1.5\" ry=\"1.5\"/><rect x=\"14\" y=\"1\" width=\"7\" height=\"22\" rx=\"1.5\" ry=\"1.5\"/></svg></button><span class=\"kg-audio-current-time\">0:00</span><div class=\"kg-audio-time\">/<span class=\"kg-audio-duration\">59:28</span></div><input type=\"range\" class=\"kg-audio-seek-slider\" max=\"100\" value=\"0\"><button class=\"kg-audio-playback-rate\">1&#215;</button><button class=\"kg-audio-unmute-icon\"><svg xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\"><path d=\"M15.189 2.021a9.728 9.728 0 0 0-7.924 4.85.249.249 0 0 1-.221.133H5.25a3 3 0 0 0-3 3v2a3 3 0 0 0 3 3h1.794a.249.249 0 0 1 .221.133 9.73 9.73 0 0 0 7.924 4.85h.06a1 1 0 0 0 1-1V3.02a1 1 0 0 0-1.06-.998Z\"/></svg></button><button class=\"kg-audio-mute-icon kg-audio-hide\"><svg xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\"><path d=\"M16.177 4.3a.248.248 0 0 0 .073-.176v-1.1a1 1 0 0 0-1.061-1 9.728 9.728 0 0 0-7.924 4.85.249.249 0 0 1-.221.133H5.25a3 3 0 0 0-3 3v2a3 3 0 0 0 3 3h.114a.251.251 0 0 0 .177-.073ZM23.707 1.706A1 1 0 0 0 22.293.292l-22 22a1 1 0 0 0 0 1.414l.009.009a1 1 0 0 0 1.405-.009l6.63-6.631A.251.251 0 0 1 8.515 17a.245.245 0 0 1 .177.075 10.081 10.081 0 0 0 6.5 2.92 1 1 0 0 0 1.061-1V9.266a.247.247 0 0 1 .073-.176Z\"/></svg></button><input type=\"range\" class=\"kg-audio-volume-slider\" max=\"100\" value=\"100\"></div></div></div><p><strong>You can also listen on <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://open.spotify.com/episode/3c1CmZtpzCqMa2MxXK845H?si=Ay6GBKIuT4OPfZePwUO4bQ\%22>Spotify, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/158-same-same-but-different-with-vanta-and-zapier/id1236907421?i=1000569160335\%22>Apple Podcasts</a>, or <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1vAxRkrNwoXKl/">Twitter. </strong><br></p><p><strong>3:20 </strong>- Christina, why did you wait so long before raising your first round?<br></p><p><em>Vanta was bootstrapped until raising a Series A round that ended up looking more like a traditional Series C. The company has surpassed 3,000 customers and is valued at $1.6B.</em><br></p><ul><li>Investors want to fund businesses that don't actually need funding.</li><li>Christina talks about ensuring they were truly building something that people wanted and finding product-market fit.<br></li></ul><p><strong>7:10 </strong>- Christina, what was the scale of Vanta when you decided to raise? Why did you decide to raise if you were cash-flow positive? <br></p><ul><li>Vanta had true signs of product-market fit, as shown by the impact of sales and marketing.</li><li>Christina talks about raising to ensure they didn’t lose the market they created. <br></li></ul><p><strong>10:50</strong> - Christina, how did you say no to the investors wanting to fund Vanta? What was your mental model? <br></p><ul><li>Be pragmatic with how you plan to spend funds; ensure the dilution from fundraising is worth it.</li><li>Christina talks about already hiring as quickly as possible and funds not helping with this challenge.<br></li></ul><p><strong>14:15 </strong>- Wade, tell us about your experience raising a seed and why you decided not to raise again. <br></p><p><em>Zapier raised only a $1.3M seed round in 2012 and has been profitable since 2014. The company is valued at $5B. </em><br></p><ul><li>Treat each funding round like it will be the last money you ever get.</li><li>Wade talks about his personal experience working for a quickly-growing, bootstrapped company, growing Zapier in a cost-effective way, and addressing constraints without fundraising. <br></li></ul><p><strong>20:00</strong> - Wade, did you always want to build a bootstrap company? When did you know Zapier had product-market fit and that it was a business model predisposed to being bootstrapped? <br></p><ul><li>When you make something people care about, it’s easy to sell to customers.</li><li>Don’t hire until it hurts.</li><li>Wade talks about finding product-market fit, their repeatable go-to market strategy to grow their base without a ton of capital, and their philosophy around hiring and building a remote company. <br></li></ul><p><strong>24:30</strong> - Wade, how did you attract talent without big headlines about fundraising news?<br></p><ul><li>Wade talks about hiring in a distributed way, writing about their learnings, and unique hiring tactics to raise the profile of Zapier as an employer. <br></li></ul><p><strong>27:00</strong> - Wade, what was the hardest part about hiring for a bootstrapped company? <br></p><ul><li>Wade talks about this not being an issue when hiring outside of Silicon Valley and already being profitable. <br></li></ul><p><strong>29:15</strong> - Christina, can you highlight Vanta’s journey to product-market fit?<br></p><ul><li>You can’t raise your way into the right product.</li><li>Christina shares insight into her first customers and advice on testing the value proposition with early users. <br></li></ul><p><strong>35:45 </strong>- Christina, when did you know you had product-market fit and what were the signs? <br></p><ul><li>The path to product-market fit isn’t linear.</li><li>Christina speaks to the mistake of focusing solely on hiring versus selling in the early days. <br></li></ul><p><strong>38:45 </strong>- Christina, how did you attract talent without big headlines about fundraising news?<br></p><ul><li>Christina shares how her pitch to candidates changed throughout Vanta’s journey. <br></li></ul><p><strong>44:10 </strong>- Wade, how has hiring changed since the pandemic? <br></p><ul><li>Wade speaks to more companies competing in this remote environment and how this is shifting again given today’s economic climate. <br></li></ul><p><strong>46:45</strong> - Wade, what is your advice for founders whether to fundraise or not? <br></p><ul><li>Determine the constraints in your business and figure out how to address those.</li><li>Wade shares their biggest challenges and his mental model to determine whether to raise or not raise. <br></li></ul><p><strong>49:00 </strong>- Wade, talk about your early days and how you were able to reach product-market fit as a remote company. <br></p><ul><li>When building a company, pick a lane: all remote or all in-office; the hybrid approach is the most challenging.</li><li>Wade talks about how this played out for Zapier, including working in-person with his co-founders the first few years and reaching product-market fit during this time. <br></li></ul><p><strong>51:15</strong> - Christina, do you recommend in-person, remote, or hybrid? <br></p><ul><li>Christina talks about the importance of documentation for remote and hybrid companies.<br></li></ul><p><strong>53:30 </strong>- Christina, how long in Vanta’s experience was in-person important? <br></p><ul><li>Christina shares the challenges of shifting from in-person to remote. <br></li></ul><p><strong>55:30 </strong>- Christina, how are you thinking about fundraising today in this funding environment and what advice do you have for founders? <br></p><ul><li>If you can, push your fundraising out — and if you can’t, it’s all about unit economics.</li><li>Christina talks about her recent experience fundraising (<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.vanta.com/blog/vanta-announces-series-b/">$110M Series B</a>) and the importance of metrics.<br></li></ul><p><strong>58:00 </strong>- Wade, what advice do you have for founders in this funding environment? <br></p><ul><li>Running a good business never goes out of style. 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