Meet the team behind TigerEye, the innovative business simulation engine that is taking the industry by storm. Tracy Young, CEO and her husband Ralph Gootee, CTO, are no strangers to success. They previously built a $100 million ARR business, PlanGrid, and sold it to Autodesk for $850 million. But even with their achievements, they felt that they left potential on the table due to inaccurate business forecasting.
After leaving PlanGrid in 2020, they continued to be drawn to the issue of forecasting and its impact on businesses. With a shared desire to create a product they wish they had during their PlanGrid days, they launched TigerEye in 2021. Today, the company is revolutionizing the way companies predict their future.
“TigerEye is a business simulation engine that helps companies predict their future,” said Young in an interview with TechCrunch.
Using TigerEye, businesses can test potential changes such as territory alterations, hiring decisions, and sales quota adjustments before presenting them to their team and board. This provides valuable insights on the potential impact of these decisions before they are made.
Young also highlighted the irony that while PlanGrid aimed to make the construction industry paperless with their iPad-based platform, she found herself printing Salesforce reports and using flat spreadsheets to track business progress. Gootee, on the other hand, used insights from his previous work at Johns Hopkins, simulating ballistic missile attacks, to develop a solution for the limitations of traditional business forecasting.
She shared, “We felt very strongly about simulations being the future of business, and I think we were just waiting for someone to build it – and then suddenly, it’s 2020 – and our time got freed up because we left Autodesk. So we started really thinking about if we were going to be the ones that built this out – and then we did it.”
The couple’s expertise and success also led them to advise other startups at Y Combinator in 2021. The following year, they brought back their core team from PlanGrid and began working on TigerEye. It took two years to develop the complex solution, collaborating with a design review board and design partners to refine the product. Young envisions incorporating generative AI into the platform in the future, allowing users to ask questions and gain deeper insights from the data.
As a husband and wife founding team with three young children, maintaining a work-life balance can be a challenge. However, Young and Gootee have set clear boundaries between work and family time. They make sure not to let one overlap with the other to maintain focus and success in both areas. Young acknowledges that it is not easy, but they are proof that it is possible.
One of TigerEye’s core values is being wholehearted, and Young expects this from everyone in the company. She explains, “When you’re at work, be at work.” During the day, they have others responsible for the children, but they fiercely protect dinner time as family time. Even after the kids are in bed, they ensure to both agree before discussing work matters. Young shares, “We have to both agree to talk about work where we gauge, are we talking about work? Okay, we’re talking about work.”
Their dedication and success have caught the attention of investors, who value an experienced and determined founding team. TigerEye has raised an impressive $35 million from investors such as Y Combinator, Initialized Capital, and Next47. The future looks bright for this innovative company, all thanks to the hard work and passion of Tracy Young and Ralph Gootee.
