Founder Fridays No. 147
How Tracy Young Sold PlanGrid for $875 Million -- How to Skip Your Seed -- The NVIDIA Story Part 1 (1993-2006)
Happy Friday.
How Tracy Young Sold PlanGrid for $875 Million
Most immigrant kids avoid entrepreneurship to secure stable careers, but Tracy Young's Vietnamese refugee parents accidentally taught her the ultimate startup lesson: work seven days a week with unshakeable determination. After becoming a rare Asian woman on construction sites, she co-founded PlanGrid and scaled it from iPads-in-backpacks to an $875 million Autodesk acquisition in just eight years. The secret wasn't just digitizing blueprints — it was hiring superintendents who knew every worker's children's names and staying calm under crushing pressure. Now she's applying those hard-won lessons to TigerEye, her new AI sales and business analytics platform, proving that the best founders often come from the most unlikely backgrounds. NFX (56 minutes)
How to Skip Your Seed
Most founders assume they need to raise seed after pre-seed, but 64% of successful startups are jumping straight to Series A — saving 10% dilution and millions in founder equity. The secret isn't just strong traction; it's understanding that investor competition can inflate a $4 million seed into a $10 million Series A when you generate the right momentum. Artificial intelligence companies are accelerating this trend by reaching $5 million annual recurring revenue with 20-person teams, making Series A investors compete aggressively rather than wait for traditional metrics. The strategy requires committing fully to a fundraising process, targeting both seed and Series A investors simultaneously, and using early term sheets to create bidding wars that drive valuations beyond seed territory into true growth rounds. The Split (95 minutes)
The NVIDIA Story Part 1 (1993-2006)
Before NVIDIA became the AI kingmaker, it survived three near-death experiences in the brutal graphics chip wars of the 1990s. When Jensen Huang co-founded the company in 1993, there were 90 undifferentiated competitors making computer graphics chips in a cutthroat, low-margin business. Today, NVIDIA commands 83% market share of standalone graphic processing units and has pioneered an entirely new category — the hardware and software to power machine learning and AI in data centers. This is the wild story of true invention and innovation, where engineering breakthroughs literally pushed our world forward, told through the lens of a CEO whose "will to survive exceeds almost everybody else's will to kill me." From nearly going bankrupt multiple times to becoming the 8th largest company by market cap, this is how NVIDIA won the graphics revolution before conquering AI. Acquired Briefing (15 minutes)
Founder FAQ: What’s the Deal with Non-solicitation Clauses?
Non-solicitation clauses have become a critical battleground in startup employment law, as young companies try to protect their most valuable assets — talent and client relationships — in hyper-competitive markets. These clauses prevent departing employees from poaching colleagues or customers, which can be devastating for startups where losing just a few key people could kill the company. Investors often demand these protections as a funding condition, wanting assurance that their portfolio companies won't hemorrhage talent to competitors. But there's a delicate balance: overly restrictive clauses can backfire by making it harder to recruit top talent who value career mobility. Smart startups are learning to craft targeted non-solicitation agreements that protect core business relationships without creating golden handcuffs that repel the very employees they're trying to attract and retain. Westaway (6 minutes)
Startup Funding Guides
I’ve put together a series of guides to equip founders to excel at fundraising. These guides break down the deal term-by-term and give you negotiation tips so that you can speak to investors with confidence.
Convertible Note: Guide / Video
Certainty in an Uncertain World
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