Skip to content
The Twenty Minute VCThe Twenty Minute VC

Tooey Courtemanche: From Construction Worker to Billionaire CEO | E1090

Every single 20VC episode is recorded with Riverside.FM. It is the one product that I could not live without. Try it today here (https://creators.riverside.fm/20VC) and use the code 20VC for 15% off. ----------------------------------------------- Tooey Courtemanche Jr. is the Founder, CEO, President, and Chairman of the Board of Procore. He founded Procore in 2002 with a mission to connect everyone in construction on a global platform. After 13 years of business, the company had just $9.6M in revenue, 8 years after that they have over $890M in revenue. Under his leadership, Procore has grown to become a leading global provider of construction management software, connecting over 2 million users across 150+ countries. Today Procore trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker PCOR. Huge thanks to Brian @ Bessemer and Will @ Iconiq for some amazing question suggestions today. ----------------------------------------------- Timestamps: (0:00) Intro (00:47) Relocating to Santa Barbara: Starting Anew (04:59) Handling Stressful Situations in Business (08:35) Passion's Importance in Professional Success (16:31) Fundraising Strategies and Financial Management (24:50) Understanding Growth: The Skateboard Metaphor (30:54) Challenges and Learnings from International Expansion (41:20) Behind the Scenes: Life as a CEO (49:15) Managing Team Dynamics and Promotions (01:04:52) Striking a Balance: CEO, Parent, and Partner (01:15:00) Quick-Fire Round ----------------------------------------------- In Today’s Episode with Tooey Courtemanche: 1. The Founding of a $8.5BN Company: How did Tooey’s wife, Hilary and their house-building lead to the idea for Procore? What does Tooey know now that he wishes he had known when he started? Did Tooey always know he would be a success? What was the moment of most doubt? 2. The 13-Year Journey to $9.6M in Revenue: Why did it take so long to hit the $10M revenue mark? What changed in 2015? What is Tooey’s biggest advice to founders and investors who face market timing risk? Why was Tooey laughed out of VC offices in 2008? What are his biggest pieces of advice to founders raising from VCs today? How does Tooey advise founders on the balance between vision and sticking to a mission vs realising when it is not working and giving up? 3. The Art of Great CEOship: What advice did Tobi @ Shopify give Tooey on being a great CEO? How did it impact his approach? What are the biggest differences between the reality of being a CEO and the Instagram version? What have been Tooey’s biggest lessons on hiring? Why does hiring smart, ambitious but not humble people never work? Why does Tooey believe the idea of “becoming an entrepreneur” to be BS? 4. Parenting, Money and Marriage: Why does Tooey believe great parenting is like great CEOship? How does one bring up children to be ambitious and humble in a very privileged upbringing? What are the secrets to being there as a husband while also being a rockstar CEO? How does Tooey reflect on his own relationship to money and wealth today? ----------------------------------------------- Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3j2KMcZTtgTNBKwtZBMHvl?si=85bc9196860e4466 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-twenty-minute-vc-20vc-venture-capital-startup/id958230465 Follow Harry Stebbings on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarryStebbings Follow Tooey Courtemanche on Twitter: https://twitter.com/tooeyprocore Follow 20VC on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/20vchq Follow 20VC on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@20vc_tok Visit our Website: https://www.20vc.com Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.thetwentyminutevc.com/contact ----------------------------------------------- #VentureCapital #TooeyCourtemanche #Procore #harrystebbings

Tooey Courtemanche Jr.guestHarry Stebbingshost
Dec 4, 20231h 25mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 0:47

    Intro

    1. TJ

      (instrumental music plays) The way you enter markets matter, and you have to be patient. Nothing's gonna happen overnight. You know, if you were to invest in Procore in 2002, the internet was not at the job site. There was no such thing as mobile technology at all. We just were super early. I knew it was gonna happen. I'd seen all these other industries digitize, and I'm like, "It's just a matter of time." We just have to be patient.

    2. HS

      What have been the biggest lessons from international expansion?

    3. TJ

      You know, it's really tempting to say what worked in the US market is gonna work in another market. I would say some of the biggest lessons learned was...

    4. HS

      Tuy, I am so excited for this. You very kindly said you listened to the show before. I've been a fan of the Procore business from afar for a while, so I'm very excited, and thank you for joining me.

    5. TJ

      I think I'm equally as excited, Harry. This is- I'm a huge fan of what you do, and so this is, uh, quite an honor to get to join you today.

  2. 0:47 – 4:59

    Relocating to Santa Barbara: Starting Anew

    1. TJ

    2. HS

      Oh, that's not at all, but Procore has been an epic 21-year journey, and I heard from a little birdie that actually this is, uh, down to your wife, Hillary, who came up with the idea wanting to move to Santa Barbara, but that was all I got. So how did Hillary, Santa Barbara move lead to Procore?

    3. TJ

      So yeah, so I was- I was running a small tech company up in the Bay Area, in the heart of Silicon Valley. And by the way, I was flying all over the United States, uh, servicing clients in a completely different industry. And my wife said to me one day, "Hey, guess what? We're moving to Santa Barbara." And I'm- and I said, "No we're not. You- we live in the Bay Area and I run a business up here." She goes, "No, your son and I are moving to Santa Barbara. We haven't seen you in months 'cause you- all you do is travel, and if you're not, we're not gonna see you. We'd rather not see you in Santa Barbara than San Francisco." And so I, uh, vi- just very much against my best judgment, I'm- I came down here kind of kicking and screaming and, uh, and lo and behold, you know, we started building a house, and, you know, she got sick of me complaining about the challenges with building the house. And so she said to me, like, "Hey, why don't you just go out and solve this problem and stop complaining about it?" And that was the, uh, origin story of Procore. So, uh, yeah, sh- it's all her, it's all her idea.

    4. HS

      Uh, tell me, have you given her due credit along the way, Tuy?

    5. TJ

      No, I- I take all the credit. (laughs) No, I'm just kidding.

    6. HS

      (laughs)

    7. TJ

      I, uh, I learned long ago, Harry, that, uh, yes, you d- give credit where credit is due. One other really funny story along the way was I started Procore in the guest room of our house, and I was by myself for a long time, and one day my wife came in and I was on the phone with one of our customers and she said, "Hey, you gotta get off the phone. I need your help." And I, and I said, "Well, no, I'm kind of like, hey, I'm on the phone. Like, this is a customer." And then she kept coming in and finally sh- I said, "Look, I gotta call you back." And I said, "What is going on?" And she said, "Well, um, I'm making, um, a recipe and I need you to run down to the local grocery store to buy me an ingredient because I'm- I'm- I'm kind of stuck." And so at that moment I said, "You know what? I'm gonna go rent an office somewhere (laughs) and I'm gonna get outta here." So she then encouraged me through that action to actually go out and start Procore by opening up our first office. So she gets credit for that, too.

    8. HS

      And the secret to marriage, which is say yes and space. (laughs)

    9. TJ

      I've been married for 25 years, and, uh, I- the- the most important word in my marriage has always been "yes".

    10. HS

      Everybody who wants to work from home is like, "Uh-huh, you're single, right? Uh-huh."

    11. TJ

      Yeah.

    12. HS

      "Yeah, uh-huh, I got you."

    13. TJ

      (laughs)

    14. HS

      Uh, I spoke to many of, you know, your investors, board members. I heard so many awesome things. O- one thing I wanna start on is, like, the GFC apparently, really hard time, uh, and there was- I think Will and Brian both said this. You almost went bust. I think there was a time when you stopped paying yourself. What happened there, Tuy?

    15. TJ

      Yeah. Well, it was a really rough time. So we were selling our software to mostly, uh, custom home builders prior to the great financial crisis, and of course the very first part of the construction industry that fell apart was the custom home bus- market. So we basically, our customers all went out of business, and so we had to shift really, really quickly to commercial construction. Uh, but in that- in that two-year timeframe that it took for us to kind of make that shift, yeah, myself and Steve Zahm, my co-founder, uh, we had to go without a- a paycheck. And I'll never forget, Harry, having to go home and tell my wife, uh, who by the way, at this point, we had sold everything that we had acquired in life. Like I had- I had like two mortgages on the house. I'd sold, you know, a car, I'd sold to make payroll. I'd done- I'd sold e- I had nothing left to sell, uh, and I told my wife one day, uh, when I went home, I'm like, "Look, we're not gonna get paid for a while," uh, and I was scared to death of how she was gonna respond. And you know, the- the coolest thing of all is that she was like, "Look, I believe in this vision as much as you do. Let's make it- let's make it happen." So I- I got really, really lucky, and thank goodness Steve Zahm's wife didn't kick him out of the house either, (laughs) so we were able to go for a couple of years and just scrape by, um, you know, borrowing money from friends and family just to- just to get by, but we got- we got by.

    16. HS

      I mean, you always had your body (laughs) imagine.

    17. TJ

      It's- it's- (laughs) I never- (laughs) it's not real, but like technically.

    18. HS

      You know when you have nothing left to sell but like, "Well," you know?

    19. TJ

      (laughs)

    20. HS

      Um, uh, you weren't expecting this to go that direction, were you, um, but again-

    21. TJ

      I did not see that one coming. (laughs)

    22. HS

      This is British humor at its worst.

    23. TJ

      Uh, no.

    24. HS

      My- my question to you is like, that is

  3. 4:59 – 8:35

    Handling Stressful Situations in Business

    1. HS

      an intensely stressful pressure on, I mean, everything's on the line. Tuy, what are you telling yourself at that moment?

    2. TJ

      You know, people ask me this question all the time, and when I think about it kind of in arrears, when I kind of rewind time, look, I- I think the one thing about being a founder, uh, who's so, um, devoted to the mission is that you don't question it. Like, I knew it was a foregone conclusion that somehow this industry, this construction industry, was gonna get digitized, and I believed in our approach. I just felt like it- it was- if people would give me enough time, I was gonna figure this out, so I didn't really stop to kind of question the- it, and- and- and I'm grateful for that.

    3. HS

      Can I ask, how do you think about the question when you're advising founders of when is the right time to say, "You know, it's- it's not working"?

    4. TJ

      Hmm.

    5. HS

      'Cause at some point, uh, you know, something just doesn't work. How do you advise them?

    6. TJ

      Yeah. Uh, I think it's, I think you know kind of instinctually if something's not working. And- and the other thing is, is that clearly Procore didn't work for years (laughs) , right? Like, you know the story, right? We didn't really raise institutional money until, like, our 15th year.

    7. HS

      No.

    8. TJ

      Like, it was, it was a, it was a long time. Uh, but, like, I think you just know as a founder if it's gonna work or it's not. I also believe that, like, um, founders are usually cut from a different cloth, which is... Uh, you know, I always say, like, I'm a dog on a bone. Like I, no one was ever gonna take this, this vision away from me 'cause I just knew it was gonna happen. Um, and so I could have made a small business out of it, or I could have made a, you know, medium-sized or a large business out of it. But ultimately, um, if it wasn't gonna work, it- it, I think you just know it. And I, fortunately for me, I never had to have that experience.

    9. HS

      You said founders are cut from a different cloth there. I'm, I'm actually a secret armchair psychologist, but I find it a really interesting question. What do you think you're running to, and what do you think you're running from?

    10. TJ

      That's a really good question. I, you- you have to understand, let's start with the running from, and then I'll tell you where, where I was running to. I was a, a horrible student in school.

    11. HS

      Mm-hmm.

    12. TJ

      I, you know, was flunking out of school left, right, and center. Uh, my guidance counselor told me that, you know, there was, you know, there were probably some good, uh, you know, uh, jobs out there for me, but they weren't gonna be very, uh, lucrative jobs. And I had failed out of college, and I just, I was... And, and I was a carpenter by trade, so I, I really had very low expectations of myself as well as, uh, what my family thought of me. Um, thank goodness I had a trade, being a carpenter, which I have the most respect for. I decided one day that I wanted to, uh, prove everyone wrong, that I wasn't this kind of, uh, um, you know, person that was, uh, you know, k- kind of a mediocre, you know, person at best. And so I was running from that stigma, uh, and I wanted to be-

    13. HS

      What-

    14. TJ

      ... prove to myself I was more than what people thought of me as.

    15. HS

      What changed? You have years and years of respectfully being mediocre or not, flunking, as you said, at school there, to suddenly deciding you wanted to be so much more. What happened?

    16. TJ

      You know what's interesting is, I, I, I think in hindsight, like... Look, I'm 56 years old. When I was in high school and elementary school, I don't think that they had diagnosis for dyslexia or whatever, and I'm sure I'm, I'm dyslexic. I'm also an autodidact. So I, if you give me something that I'm passionate about, I will, I will be, you know, the, I will be... I'll blow your socks off at how much of an expert I become at it and whatever else, but I have to be interested in it. And so what changed for me was I found my passion in life, uh, and I devoted my life to that passion. And, um, that's why I just never stopped 'cause, like, that's just my personality type. And I think that's why founders are cau- cut from a different cloth. You have to have more than just an interest in something in order to succeed.

    17. HS

      Do you have to

  4. 8:35 – 16:31

    Passion's Importance in Professional Success

    1. HS

      love what you do?

    2. TJ

      I'm fortunate that I get to love what I do. You know, some founders, uh, Steve Zahm, my co-founder, he had a company he took public before Procore. I think from founding to IPO, it was like 13 months, right? Some founders are really lucky because you, you don't have to go through the years of the dark times to, you know, to, to get to success.

    3. HS

      Mm-hmm.

    4. TJ

      For me, I wouldn't have made it if I didn't love what we did 'cause we just had so many years of just, uh, you know, strife and turmoil that just wasn't, uh... I wouldn't have been able to sustain it if I didn't love it.

    5. HS

      What are you running towards on the flip side?

    6. TJ

      You know, the... I have this, like, this, this, this vision, uh, that we are going to be able to connect everybody in construction on a global platform. And that seems really kind of esoteric, but I know construction. I grew up in construction. I know how dysfunctional it is, and I know how technology and automation can actually change the industry. So I'm running for this vision, and I, I always wonder if there will be a day in my life where I actually see it happen, like, like fully, 'cause it's happening. You know, we're doing, we're having a lot of success doing it. But like, will it ever truly be done? And so I think I'm running towards this vision of it being done, which I think a lot of founders lie to themselves too, that there will be a nirvana state in the future where everything is, is gonna be where you expect it to be. And I think that's just the survival instinct that we all have, but I think I'm running towards that.

    7. HS

      Can I ask you a bit of a blunt question-

    8. TJ

      Yeah.

    9. HS

      ... which is for the first 10 years, as you said, it was slow. I think, uh, it was 2012, and it was like 4.8 million in revenue, 10 years afterwards, not hyper growth. Um, uh... (laughs) Bluntly put.

    10. TJ

      Easy.

    11. HS

      Um, but my question to you is, like, why was that? When you analyze that, why did it not grow fast, and why did it take so long?

    12. TJ

      Rewind time to 2002. Uh, if you walked onto any construction site in the, in the world, there was no internet at the job site, yet I had built a SaaS, a vertical SaaS solution (laughs) to serve an industry that couldn't actually use my technology, right? So those were the tough days.

    13. HS

      I hear you used to do some pretty crazy things to get customers Wi-Fi.

    14. TJ

      (laughs)

    15. HS

      Thanks, Brian. What did you do?

    16. TJ

      So we would, we literally, Steve Zahm and I literally would buy airline tickets, go to a customer. We went to Sea Island, Georgia, which is on the other side of the United States. Uh, we went to CompUSA, and we bought our s- uh, bought a router and bought a wireless access point and bought... Then we went to Home Depot and bought a toolbox, and we actually went to the job site, this is like what we used to do, and we would install the internet at the job site, uh, so a customer could then, you know, pay us $95 a month for our service (laughs) . The, the answer to the question was, the internet was not at the job site. There was no such thing as mobile technology at all. The iPhone didn't come out till 2007, for goodness sakes. iPad in 2011. We just were super, super early. But, you know, I knew it was gonna happen. It was the last industry I could, I was aware of that had not digitized, and I'd seen all these other industries digitize, and I'm like, "It's just a matter of time before it happens." We just have to be patient.

    17. HS

      I need your help. I'm an investor today, and I- I don't like to take market timing risks just because it's an externality that's so out of both of our control. What would you say to me, who's fearful of market timing, given the depth of what you've been through?

    18. TJ

      ... the more things that have to happen in order for a company to be successful, uh, the higher the risk ratio is, right?

    19. HS

      Mm-hmm.

    20. TJ

      So, I would look at it definitely that way. You know, if you were to invest in Procore in 2002, we didn't even take, I didn't even take our first friends and family till 2004. But if you were to invest then, you would have had to believe the Internet... first of all, that, that, the construction industry was gonna digitize. Second of all, that the people that work in construction were actually gonna be proficient enough in technology t- to use it. Third, that the Internet was gonna need to make it to the job site. Fourth, that mobile applications were gonna be able to untether people from a job site trailer to actually do their job in, in the field. And fifth is, is that, uh, people would actually look at these tools as productivity gain tools, as opposed to documentation tools. So, yeah, all of those things would have, uh, had to have, had to have happened in order for you to believe that Procore was gonna be successful. (laughs)

    21. HS

      You're not selling it. (laughs)

    22. TJ

      Well, so, so the risk ratio-

    23. HS

      Fine.

    24. TJ

      ... as an investor, right, is much higher for those things. Uh-

    25. HS

      Yeah.

    26. TJ

      ... by the way, uh, I don't know if you know the story of Qualcomm, but Irwin Jacobs, who started Qualcomm, in order for Qual-... Qualcomm is a, you know, very big company. Uh, in order for Irwin Jacobs to be successful at Qualcomm, he needed to invent the technology behind CDMA, which was brand new technology and was barely able to be done. He needed to d- get all the wireless carriers to trans- um, to take all of their infrastructure out and replace it with new CDMA, uh, infrastructure. He needed to create handsets that could use CDMA, so he had to build, invent a, a cell phone that would work, and then he would, uh, had to invi- vi- invent the chips in order to make, uh, this processing actually possible. You look at that investment, the same thing as Procore, like, that's a high-risk investment. All those things had to become true in order for them to be successful. But with those high, you know, high-risk investments come tremendous rewards. And I think that's the way I would look at it.

    27. HS

      And then there's the hard thing also, bluntly, that's just on the timing side. If-

    28. TJ

      Yeah.

    29. HS

      ... all of those things happen, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're gonna adopt it straight away.

    30. TJ

      No.

  5. 16:31 – 24:50

    Fundraising Strategies and Financial Management

    1. TJ

      product-market fit, and all we needed to do was go out and raise some capital to bring this idea to market.

    2. HS

      Was that a change that you had made or was it the market changing to you?

    3. TJ

      Uh, the market definitely changed to us. We had not changed anything. We had been building the same product for 13 years, uh, but the market finally, uh, uh, you know, adopted it.

    4. HS

      What do you say then to founders who do have market timing and market adoption risks like you had, and are told, "You need to do something." Like they have investors, "We need, we can't just wait."

    5. TJ

      Yeah. Well, uh, trust me, (clears throat) we didn't just wait either. We, we, uh, we did a lot of things as a company that, uh, supplemented our income in order to make payroll, uh, through those, uh, lean years. I don't know if those were the best ideas, but they kept us alive. We, um, you know, customers would ask us to do custom development on a new application, and you know, if, if they're gonna pay us $30,000 for a month's worth of work, we would literally put two engineers on it and just ship a piece of software that had nothing to do with Procore for them, just to keep the lights on. So, um, I would just say like, look, as they say, the only thing that matters in, you know, in business is that you survive to fight another day. And so, whenever I talk to founders who are like, you know, "Look, it's, it looks like it's all over." I'm like, "Just, the oxygen to the business is, is revenue. Just go generate some fricking revenue, you know, and you will, uh, you'll survive."

    6. HS

      I, I absolutely love that, and totally with you there. So take me to that conversation. You're like, "Steve, no mailbox walk for you."

    7. TJ

      (laughs)

    8. HS

      And he's like, "Yeah." And then you go, "Why don't we go raise money?" How does that conversation, then, come to be?

    9. TJ

      So you have to understand the d- dichotomy between Steve and myself. So I'm the carpenter who failed out of college, right? Steve's the, uh, Stanford grad who went to, uh, you know, got his MBA at Haas, uh, at Berkeley. You know, a lot of these companies, if you think about it, a lot of big, successful companies actually have this kind of dichotomy in co-founders, right? So Steve was very much business-focused, and he was the one who was, like, making all of the kind of recommendations. So he said to me, he's like, "Tui, like, look, I think we, I think we have enough product market fit that we could actually go out and, and, and figure this out and raise some capital." Uh, and so I was like, well, you know, um, I'd always known we were going to, and, you know, that we were gonna ha- have this opportunity. So I was pretty bought in right off the bat. I was a little intimidated, um, you know, walking up and down Sand Hill Road and, you know, meeting the likes of Brian Feinstein and, and Byron Dieter and, you know, um, and Will Griffith and, you know, (...)

    10. HS

      How, how did- how, how, how did it go? Like, now, this is your first time. This is 13 years in. Can you take me to those meetings?

    11. TJ

      Well, let me take, let me take you to an earlier meeting. So we walked up and down Sand Hill Road in 2008, right? So we, we were a little, uh, we were, we were a little ambitious in 2008. You know, everything was going up and to the right. Our customers were doing really, really well. The economy hadn't hit the, the skids yet. So we walked up and down Sand Hill Road (laughs) and, um, we went into... I'm not gonna name their name, but we went into one of the largest institutional investors that everybody knows, uh, and they put us in the back, dark conference room with the junior, junior analyst, and we were pitching them on Procore and literally, the guy said to me, he goes, "Look, this is really an interesting idea, and there's probably some opportunity here, but if you did it more like Facebook, we would be inves- we would be interested in investing." So essentially, they, then they kicked us out of the building and everyone laughed at us. And it was really funny because literally, they were calling us idiots. They're like, "You're selling software to an industry that can't use your software." Like, "What are you doing? You guys are idiots." And then it's funny, you fast-forward to, you know, 2015, 2016 to '17, and we're up raising money, and everyone's like, "You guys are geniuses." (laughs) Like, "You've figured something out that nobody else has figured out." And it's funny that I'm like, "We're the, still the same person. We're probably more idiots than geniuses." But anyhow, it was just funny to have the same people refer to you now as a genius when they were calling you an idiot five years before.

    12. HS

      So 2000... I love that in terms of like, "If you'd be more like Facebook." That's so helpful. Thank you.

    13. TJ

      (laughs)

    14. HS

      Uh, (laughs) why don't you be more like Mike Moritz, but you know. (laughs)

    15. TJ

      (laughs)

    16. HS

      We can both play that game. Um, what, what happened then? So 2008, you kind of come back with your tail between your legs and going, "Okay, that was a bit preemptive." And is that how it went? And then you come back seven years later?

    17. TJ

      Yeah, yeah. Then we... You know, so I guess I was saying, I was... We were a little intimidated going back, right-

    18. HS

      Yeah.

    19. TJ

      ... uh, when we were... 'Cause we had had such a, such a, um, demoralizing experience on our first run, you know, at- at, uh, institutional investors. But the good news was we, um, we learned that it's, it's almost less about the brand of the, of the, of the venture firm, and it's more about the partner, right? And so I got to know both, uh, Will Griffith and Brian Feinstein, uh, personally, deeply personally, and I spent a lot of time with these, with them, as well as some other investors that, um, that we ended up not going with. I decided that I was gonna make sure I was gonna be working with people who shared our values, uh, and actually were really vested in our success, and it wasn't just another deployment of capital. This was somebody and, uh, that was gonna lean in and be very heavily, heavily engaged in this journey. And fortunately for me, we found two amazing institutional investors that till this day are on our board and till this day believe in our mission and are 100% behind what we're doing. And, and yeah, so we got very lucky.

    20. HS

      Can I ask you, when you reviewed that fund rate, first off, like, what was that deal? How much cash did you raise?

    21. TJ

      We raised 30 million, I think, in the first one.

    22. HS

      30 mil?

    23. TJ

      Yeah.

    24. HS

      Do you remember the price?

    25. TJ

      Well, I remember this. So Bessemer, I don't know if Brian told you this, but Bessemer had an investment thesis on Procore that they, of course, they don't tell the company about. They thought that Procore, uh... The best outside scenario they could come up with was that Procore was gonna be worth $300 million in the future. And we always joke about that because, like, I think we've, uh, I think, I think we're a little bit beyond that, right? So, uh, but yeah, and by the way, I don't know if you know this, but we had a co-lead on our Bessemer investment, guy named Paul Landress, who, um, was with Brian in the investment. I, I hired, uh, Paul to join Procore after we had done the fundraising, and, uh, and Paul ended up becoming our CFO. But Paul told me all of the back stories of what the partners were saying about Procore during the investment thesis, (laughs) and it was kind of shocking that they, uh, how, you know-

    26. HS

      I, I, I-

    27. TJ

      ... (...)

    28. HS

      ... had Jeff Lawson on the show from Twilio, and, uh, he said a similar story, but actually, he got a 200 million premium on you. They said 500 million for Twilio.

    29. TJ

      (laughs) I love it.

    30. HS

      Uh, it, it seems that they grossly underestimate the upside, (laughs) which is probably a, a good thing. Can I ask, when you review those fundraising days, is there anything that you tell yourself? If you could advise yourself on fundraising again, what would you say?

  6. 24:50 – 30:54

    Understanding Growth: The Skateboard Metaphor

    1. HS

      can I ask, when did it really ramp then? So then you raised money from, you know, uh, Bessemer and, you know, your then, what, future CFO.

    2. TJ

      Yep.

    3. HS

      And you were at 9.6 million, I think you said.

    4. TJ

      Yep.

    5. HS

      When was it like, voof?

    6. TJ

      You know, it really started within about a year, uh, where we, we'd double and then double again and double again and, and, and double again. Uh, and so it really did, I mean, around 2017, we were rolling. What's really interesting to me, Harry, is in hindsight, we never stopped to kind of think about what the heck was happening. 'Cause you're... You know, I used to, when I was a kid, I was a skateboarder, right? And so if you're... When I was skateboarding down the hill and you get too fast and you s- you got speed wobbles, you have to leap off your skateboard, you're hoping that your feet can run as fast as the speed of the skateboard so you don't fall on your face. Those years were us running as fast as we possibly could, trying not to crash. So we had no time to kind of think about, like, "What the heck's going on here?" You know, you kind of wake up and you look around, and I'll never forget when we got our, our, a, a billion-dollar valuation on Procore and we're raising some private capital. Uh, (laughs) we, we were all standing in a hotel room somewhere, we were at a conference, the leadership team, and I was talking to our, our investors about, you know, the, pricing the round, and it came up to be a billion dollars. And I'll never forget, that was the f- that was a moment where I'm like, "I cannot..." Like, I, I had, I had missed like 100 million in valuation (laughs) to, to a billion, and that we were all like, "Wow, we've significantly grown this business," and it kind of happened without us thinking about it.

    7. HS

      Can, can I ask, do you think naivety is a good thing?

    8. TJ

      Yes.

    9. HS

      You mentioned there about kind of falling on your face. People say it is-

    10. TJ

      Yep.

    11. HS

      ... sometimes they say it's not. How do you th- think about that one?

    12. TJ

      Uh, I, I actually do believe that ignorance sometimes is bliss, not all the time. Um, I also think that you can be too smart for your own good. So, uh, I, I, I think that, um, you know, uh, us having this singular focus on what we were doing, you know, uh, not trying to just build a business, but actually solve a real problem and satisfy the needs of the customers, just kept us really, really focused. And so you can call it naivety or whatever, but like, that's all we were really thinking about, you know?

    13. HS

      So it's really interesting, you said there about focus. I, I actually had a- and sorry, and this wasn't in the schedule because I actu- just heard it from Will and Brian, so recent additions. But I, I heard about kind of the dozen products that we now have at Procore, and I wanted to ask, and they asked actually, to be fair. I'm such a VC, take credit for others' work. You can tell it's a natural proclivity of mine.

    14. TJ

      (laughs)

    15. HS

      What were your biggest lessons in terms of scaling product line without losing focus?

    16. TJ

      Yeah, those are, the- there's a lot of lessons in there, right? So we, uh, up until 2017, uh, we only had one product. It was our project management tool and it's still our flagship product. Uh, but what we had heard was, um, our customers were sick of b- having point solutions, and so they really wanted to have our platform be the platform of choice for all of their kind of core business needs, from financial management to quality and safety and things that matter in construction. And so we very deliberately force ranked those. So we prioritized which are the biggest needs, and we kind of worked our way down from there. And, um, so I, I would say some of the lessons learned were, uh, we... Well, one big lesson we learned was, you know, in the early days, you're kind of faking it till you make it, and you don't really realize the s- that scales might happen. And so some of our, so our financial product line was a great example, was we had built that very quickly, got it to market, arguably wasn't 100% enterprise grade, so we had, actually had to stop developing that product at a certain point and go back and rearchitect it so it was enterprise grade, and we literally stopped new feature development for a year. But we realized that if we weren't going to, if we weren't gonna get this thing to the point where it was enterprise grade, we weren't gonna be able to scale it.

    17. HS

      What year was that realization?

    18. TJ

      It was probably 2019.

    19. HS

      Wow.

    20. TJ

      Yeah.

    21. HS

      Shit.

    22. TJ

      We had to tell our customers like, "Look, though all we've been, we've been talking to about a lot of features that we're gonna be building, we're gonna actually p- uh, pause on this for now. And, uh, and, and, you know, you're, trust us, you're gonna, you're gonna love it." You know what's so cool is that till this day, customers still come up to me and they're like, "Though that was really hard for us to hear, it was the smartest thing you guys ever did on that product line, because now it has completely changed the way we do business and it's completely scalable and it's, it's enterprise grade." So, uh, yeah, but that was, that was a hard decision to make.

    23. HS

      So you scaled to, what were your revenues in 2019 there? They must have been 50 to 100?

    24. TJ

      Yeah, probably.

    25. HS

      ... without having an enterprise-grade product?

    26. TJ

      Well, so our project management tool, which is our flagship, was definitely enterprise grade.

    27. HS

      Okay.

    28. TJ

      This was a newer product we had just brought into market, and it was kind of becoming wildly successful and to the point where we really had to go back and shore it up to make sure that, that we could actually deliver on our promises. So yeah, that was a, that was a, that was a tough one.

    29. HS

      That is f- yeah, that's a really tough one.

    30. TJ

      Yeah.

  7. 30:54 – 41:20

    Challenges and Learnings from International Expansion

    1. HS

      so pleased you said about taking them globally 'cause Will said, you know, obviously about the recent and the very successful kind of global expansion. He said, "I'd love to hear Tui's take on what've been the biggest lessons from international expansion, what worked-

    2. TJ

      Yeah.

    3. HS

      ... what didn't, what you wish you'd known."

    4. TJ

      Yeah.

    5. HS

      Hear his thoughts there.

    6. TJ

      Well, uh, uh, I, I love to tell people this, which is a, it's just a reminder that every day in Procore's history, I had never been the CEO of a company of that scale before, right?

    7. HS

      (laughs)

    8. TJ

      So, like, 'cause it, it was growing, right? And so everything was... I had to learn a lot as we went, and so there were a lot of lessons learned. You know, going internationally, it's really tempting to say what worked in the US market is gonna work in another market. And so I would say some of the biggest lessons learned was, uh, you have to build a brand, and you have to build loyal customers and referenceable customers in those markets before you really can expect any sort of scale and growth in those markets.

    9. HS

      Does that mean you should then limit budget, do it from where you are, build that base, and then move people there? Is that how you'd recommend?

    10. TJ

      With... the beautiful thing about, you know, SaaS, right, is, is y- we had a lot of customers in Australia and New Zealand long before we went to that market just because of the way... it's an internet-based tool. You can buy it from anywhere. So, what I suggest you do is that you actually deploy your customer success and your, and your field and, and product marketing folks, uh, there first. Build that brand. Get the ground swell going with the referenceable customers. Then put your go-to-market, um, team in afterwards to capitalize on that. In all kind of candor, we, we went all in into our early markets thinking, like, they're gonna love us, and it's, you know, it's all gonna go well. We have learned that you, you really... there is a playbook here and that you have to really build that brand first. But what we find is the longer that we've been into any particular market, the more success we have. The way you enter markets matter. Uh, and you have to be patient. Nothing's gonna happen overnight. It took us years to build a brand in the US, uh, and so we have to be patient building brands in new markets.

    11. HS

      What was the hardest market to do well in?

    12. TJ

      That's a good question. One thing that we're really kind of, uh, privileged by is that construction is done very much similarly all around the globe. So, it's not like... you know, I have friends that run financial services software companies and stuff, and, and things are done differently and very differently in different regions. Um, we have this privilege of being able to go in and have about 85% product market fit into most, most new, uh, new territories.

    13. HS

      Speaking of kind of doing things the same way, uh, in construction, one thing that you did quite differently compared to SaaS is most of SaaS is predicated on a per-seat model.

    14. TJ

      Yeah.

    15. HS

      And when I spoke to, obviously, Will and Brian, they told me about their decision to be volume-based.

    16. TJ

      Mm-hmm.

    17. HS

      I'd love to hear your lessons on pricing from-

    18. TJ

      Yeah.

    19. HS

      ... maybe contrarian decision to be volume-based and that question of could you have been as successful if you were seat-based.

    20. TJ

      No. No, so our mission is to connect everyone in construction on a global platform. I knew from day one that if we went with a seat-based licensing model, which, by the way, remember, I had run a technology company before this. So, like, I, I knew that m- that was the only really prevalent model at the time was seat-based. I knew that what would happen was our customers were gonna make value decisions based upon who was gonna get a seat. But the way that construction done is, is a team sport. And so you need everyone to have access to the system 'cause everyone needs to contribute. So, I realized that I couldn't go with a per-seat model because that was gonna, that was gonna actually make it so we were never gonna be successful. Uh, and so I had to come up with another yardstick. And honestly, um, the only thing I could come up with was construction volume. One of our customers one day said to me, Harry, I said, "How do you buy other things?" And he said, "Well, I buy our s- I buy our insurance based off of our construction volume. So, if I'm gonna do $10 million worth of construction volume next year, I will buy $10 million worth of insurance." And so I thought to myself, "Well, here's s- here's a way that they're used to buying, uh, and it's actually a yardstick that actually scales nicely, uh, with customer size, so let's adopt this." It was so wildly unpopular (laughs) with our customers. Even till this day, some of our customers don't love it. But it is, it is a, it's, it's the ultimate yardstick, and we really believe in it.

    21. HS

      Why did you keep it when it was so unpopular? Like, how did you get over that? Like, do you just educate them on why you chose it? Like, just...

    22. TJ

      Well, w- yeah, yeah, so we did, and, you know, as one customer would adopt it, they would actually realize that it gives them the flexibility to buy more or less of Procore at any given time. Yet, they're able to get all of their team members and their collaborators. You know, in construction, if we sell the, you know, Harry Construction, right, you're gonna invite all your subcontractors onto the platform. Those folks are working on the platform for free. They get all the benefits of Procore, but you're paying the bill, uh, unless they wanna become their own, um, you know, customer. So, these folks would go and tell other general contractors, "Hey, I'm using this amazing product." So ultimately, uh, you know, our success kind of was-... the driver of adoption of this new pricing model. But like I said, even to this day, I was on a call last week with a customer who s- still wishes that we had a different pricing model.

    23. HS

      Can I ask, do you think that CEOs will always need to get on calls? You know, Procore today is a close to $9 billion public company. Do you think CEOs will always need to close the biggest customers?

    24. TJ

      So, I actually have a- a- a very strict line at Procore. I do not do deal negotiations anymore, and I haven't for the last five or six years. I build relationships with the customers that I want... that I do not wanna be transactional. So, uh, I make it very clear with all of our, uh, prospects and all the people that I- I'm talking to, uh, customers at renewal, that I'm not in- I am not gonna be doing the commercial terms. But what I am gonna do is I'm gonna be a long-term partner of them- theirs to put together a, uh, you know, a joint strategy of success. Uh, and so I- I create a very big delineation. I talk to a customer I think every single day. I think there's nothing more important that a CEO can do than to talk to a customer. Uh, and I actually get kinda blamed for it sometimes. Like, people are like, "Well, are- are you spending too much time?" And I just don't believe you can spend too much time with the people that you're serving.

    25. HS

      I- I- I totally agree with you. Um, and, uh, (laughs) your team do as well, by the way. They said that. Um, going back to our point on punctuality, which we'll leave our timekeeping as a topic. Um, I- I do wanna ask one final thing on the business before we move to your leadership.

    26. TJ

      Yeah.

    27. HS

      Are there any other hard lessons that you think are really important to discuss? As I said, it's such a journey. I didn't wanna leave out an epic.

    28. TJ

      I had the privilege of- of mentoring some CEOs of- of- of tech companies that are growing their businesses. And one of the things that I impart on them, which I wish somebody had imparted on me, was in the early days of a tech company, you do everything. Your job is to do. Like, literally, I was writing code, I was taking out the trash, I was- I was doing everything. At a certain s- point in your leadership scale, you have to learn how to stop doing and start leading. And it's a really unnatural, uh, motion for people that are just used to getting the job done themselves. And I see it till this day, Harry, with leaders at Procore. Not- not senior leaders, but people that are moved into management roles, the difficulty that people have of letting go of getting... of doing the actual work and empowering their people. And I think that that's probably one of the, uh, biggest challenges with anybody.

    29. HS

      I have this problem. And then you actually finally delegate it to someone, and then they don't do it as well as you. And you go, "See? I- I knew it. They need me." And so you go back in and do it, and then they never learn and they never do it. So help me-

    30. TJ

      Yeah.

  8. 41:20 – 49:15

    Behind the Scenes: Life as a CEO

    1. TJ

    2. HS

      It- it's so funny, uh, you- you said there about kind of doing the work that you're not great at and you'll never actually become better than satisfactory at it unless you really, really try. Totally agree with you. I think there's a lot of perception in reality or kind of Instagram in reality. How do you think about the Instagram versus reality at being a CEO?

    3. TJ

      You know, this is one of the areas, Harry, where I'm ac- absolutely most fascinated. Um, I... w- so I have several mentors that are CEOs of very large companies. Like, very large, like the biggest companies, right? And- and- and these folks are, um... I admire the-... their, w- how they run their businesses, and h- the complexity that they have to deal with, and, uh, the challenges of, like, keeping a straight face or- or ch- trying to keep a, you know- be stoic in times of difficulty and stuff like that. I always find it's interesting that the way people approach me is- seems to be, um, they're curious about, like, kind of like what my day- day-to-day job is like. So the- a- the Instagram side of things, like, "You must have it so easy." Like it's, you know, that, "You're a nine billion- billion dollar company," and, you know, things are- seem to be going up and to the right. They don't really understand, uh, the complexity of the job, and they actually think it's- I think- they think it's easier than it is. In reality, the- the job is a, um ... it's a 24-hour-a-day job. I've been doing it f- I think I've b- I- I'm only at 8,900 days of Procore, right? (laughs) Never having a day or a moment off. Uh, and I, uh ... and- and it's a hard job. You know, it's- it's-

    4. HS

      D- Does it get easier over time?

    5. TJ

      No. Uh, if I, uh-

    6. HS

      I disagree. I disagree. Okay. This is a good one.

    7. TJ

      (laughs) It gets different. It gets different, right?

    8. HS

      I- I agree, but, like, truly, like, let's just- like, your success is phenomenally, unparalleled, different to mine. But, like, I now am in a beautiful house, and I have Fiji Water (laughs) , and I ha- and I have a massage, and yeah, it's really high pressure, but it's quite nice having, like, not, "Shit, I'm gonna be on the street." (laughs)

    9. TJ

      Uh, trust me, having security and stability is priceless.

    10. HS

      Yeah.

    11. TJ

      A- All I'm saying is, the baseline level of- of stress involved has not diminished at all. As a matter of fact, you know, we have 4,000 pl- employees globally, and, you know, we- we have, you know, uh, 16,000-plus customers. The blast radius of- of- m- of screw-ups are- is so big (laughs) that, like, it's, uh, you can't take that lightly.

    12. HS

      You said 4,000 there. Brian said about the amazing culture you have. He said, "Ask him what have you specifically done to have such a good culture across, now, 4,000?"

    13. TJ

      You have to be intentional about culture. Uh, and so we are very, very, uh, very-

    14. HS

      Were you always intentional about culture?

    15. TJ

      Y- Actually, I know a few CEOs who really think people are a commodity, so I wouldn't- I wouldn't say most or that all do, but, um, but yeah, I do think it's important. And so what we have done is, very intentionally, we hire to our values. So if you go through the interview process at Procore, you may think you're being interviewed for your skillset, but ultimately, to get into the interview process, you've already had to demonstrate that you have the skillset to do the job. The real hurdle to get over is do you live our values, and do you value our values?

    16. HS

      I love a good discussion. Whenever people are like, "We hire to our values," I'm always like, "Whose values are really contrarian, respectfully, too?" It's like everyone wants someone who's, like, hardworking and ambitious and kind. I- I'm not a team player, I'm largely in it for the money, and I am egotistical. I'm not saying I'm, uh, any of that.

    17. TJ

      Yeah.

    18. HS

      But like, I could be really fucking great for a business. (laughs)

    19. TJ

      Th- so the value hiring is one piece of it. The way we solve for that is hungry, humble, smart. So we- we will not hire somebody who doesn't demonstrate that they're hungry and that they're humble and they're smart. And trust me, I've hired a lot of hungry and smart people in this world. They tend to be assholes, and, um, they tend to not be good team players, and they tend to tank culture. And you know what's interesting about culture is once you get- once you get a solid culture that's based off of your values, and you hire correctly, no longer as the CEO are you responsible to be the keeper of culture. The- the- the business itself keeps culture. I always say it's like angular momentum, which is once the culture's set, if something come- if somebody sneaks into- through- in- through the filters and gets in that there's then a cultural fit, the teams eject them. Like, it's- you just can't survive at Procore if you are not hungry, humble, and smart, and if you don't live our values. It just- it's just that simple.

    20. HS

      Was there ever a time where it slightly got away from you, where it was like, "Ugh, uh, um, this isn't how I wanted it to be"?

    21. TJ

      Yeah.

    22. HS

      And can you take me to that time?

    23. TJ

      Yeah. Uh, I've hired people, again, uh, because I was- they were luminaries in our industry, and I- and I- I said to myself, "Look, they may not be humble, um, but they're gonna move the needle." Uh, and I regretted- I've regretted every single one of those decisions that I've made, and fortunately I'm not making (laughs) those decisions any longer. But yeah, those were hard lessons learned, because, um, you know, it's- some point, you know, you- you really have to get real and say no to people that might have a big impact on the business, but you just know are not gonna be a cultural fit. And at our scale, Harry, you- y- there's no longer a superhero at Procore who's gonna move the needle, right? The only way you move the needle at Procore is you work collaboratively across teams in ways that are inclusive and basically brings the highest level of capabilities out of people in order to deliver big results, and you can't do that if you're, you know, if you are kinda selfish and you're an individual contributor who all you wanna do is- is root for your- your own success. It just doesn't work.

    24. HS

      The thing that I've done many times, and I see a lot of founders do this, they hire the brand. "Oh, they spent 10 years at Salesforce, and they must be great." And then you get them there, and it's- it's just terrible. I've done it so many times.

    25. TJ

      W- we have definitely learned which, uh, large tech companies to not hire from, 'cause- 'cause, you know, honestly, you can- you can- you can just go right back to the culture that is existent in those tech companies, uh, and you're like that's- you're basically hiring in that culture.

    26. HS

      Do you think there are tells beforehand? I know that sounds weird, but... So I have some tells, like if you're a bouncer, you got one year here, one year here, two years here, one year there. That-

    27. TJ

      Oh, yeah.

    28. HS

      Uh, real, like, negotiation on title. I need to be chief of- chief of staff, not just chief of staff.

    29. TJ

      Yeah.

    30. HS

      You know?

  9. 49:15 – 1:04:52

    Managing Team Dynamics and Promotions

    1. HS

      totally agree with you. What do you do in the difficult situation when someone internally wants the promotion, but actually you feel it's an external hire that should get it instead? How do you manage that difficult process?

    2. TJ

      Well, it's such a broad subject because I, you know, for 21 years, um, have had to make very difficult personnel decisions. Y- one of my, uh, a very old mentor of mine, um, Tobi Lutke, as I'm sure you know from Shopify-

    3. HS

      Yeah, yeah. I had him on the show. He's f- (laughs)

    4. TJ

      He, he's awesome.

    5. HS

      And someone, someone once described him, "If humans could be IP addresses, Tobi would be one."

    6. TJ

      (laughs)

    7. HS

      (laughs)

    8. TJ

      That might be the best thing I've heard in a long time. (laughs)

    9. HS

      It wa- it was Harley. Harley was like, "I know better than anyone." (laughs) I was like, "That's so good." (laughs)

    10. TJ

      They're such a great team. Like, that's, that's just they're, they're awesome. But he said to me, this was probably 10 years ago, he said to me, um, he said, "Tui, what, what's important about leadership is, if your business is scaling at 100% a year, that means you and your team needs to be scaling their skillset at greater than 100% a year." And so, I, I took that to heart, which is, I really do look at, um, I look very critically across my leadership team to make sure that my team has what it takes to take us to the next level, not rewarding them for getting us to where we came from. So, I spend a lot of time having those conversations with folks saying that like, "Look, there's, um, you know, there's, there's probably somebody outside of this organization that might be able to do this job where you can learn from them and scale your own career." It's never easy, Harry. Like, I've... You know, it's never, never, ever easy.

    11. HS

      I, uh, again, you realize that I just use this show as like a personal learning platform, (laughs) uh, especially why I started it, by the way. I didn't actually intend to release them. I- people don't know that. Um-

    12. TJ

      Cool.

    13. HS

      ... yeah. I just wanted to learn from great people and realized that was the best way for people to give me time. Uh, my question to you is like, when people are loyal, and they put in the hard work, and all the inputs are there, but the output isn't there, what do you do then?

    14. TJ

      You just make the tar- tough choice. You make the tough call. Now, fortunately, the way business works is that you don't wake up one day and realize that somebody's not scaling, right? It's, you, you get all of the tells going up to it. You know, if there's a leader underneath me who's, who's starting to kind of, uh, s- not, not scale to where we need them to go, you work with them on scaling, but at a certain point, you start having conversations around, like, you know, "Let's, let's find a place in the organization where you can actually be successful." And then if that doesn't work, then you, you, you, you, with all empathy in the world, you walk them out the door, and you help them find another job somewhere else. And I'm very fortunate that a lot of the people that have, we call it graduated, but graduated from Procore, have m- moved on to have illustrious careers elsewhere that we've been very instrumental in helping them get. So, that's the path that usually, you know, it can, it can go.

    15. HS

      Uh, i- it's so funny, you said there about Tobi's advice to you on kind of scaling at a faster rate in the company. That's really hard (laughs) to do. Do you ever feel that imposter syndrome and self-doubt of, "Oh, shit, I don't know if I can do that or keep doing that?"

    16. TJ

      Yeah. There was a... So, remember, I'm the college dropout who's a carpenter, right? I was never supposed to be a publicly tr- traded CEO of a successful tech company, right? That was, that was not in the, uh, in the card. So, as we'd grown Procore and we started hitting scale like around 2017 and '18 and things started really flying along, um, I started being asked to go to these investor conferences, uh, in the Bay Area, and you know... I'd s- and it was like the time when, like, Jeff Lawson was there. It was like, this, there was a certain graduating class that was starting to go, show up, because they had a line of sight to an IPO. And I would sit there on these panels, and every single one of the people on the panel would have their Patagonia zip-up vest, and they'd all gone to Stanford, and they all were out of central casting. And here I am, like, a, a college dropout carpenter sitting on this panel going like, "Well, what the hell do I know?" That was kind of an existential crisis personally for me during that timeframe because, you know, I wasn't Frank Slootman, and I wasn't, you know, I wasn't these other leaders that I looked up to just in terms of pedigree.

    17. HS

      What did you tell yourself then? 'Cause that's, that's-

    18. TJ

      Well, so it's interesting. I, I'm gonna bring this back to my wife, but, um, I was miserable for probably two years where I would like... I tried. I even went out and bought the Patagonia vest and, you know, (laughs) whatever. I just like-

    19. HS

      Yeah.

    20. TJ

      ... I desperately want to figure this out. Uh, my wife said to me one day, she said, "Tui, you know, on a personal basis, you're miserable." Uh, and I'm like, "Look, I don't know who I am and who I'm supposed to be." And she's like, "That's not true." She goes, "You know exactly who you are, and you know exactly who you should be. Stop trying to be somebody else." And so, you know, at that point I, it was such an, a liberating, uh, feeling, 'cause I'm like, "You know what? I'm my best when I'm authentic and I'm vulnerable, right?" So, you know, I grew out my hair a little bit longer. I, you know, whatever, I... and I just started being me. And I, and with all of my warts and all of the, the challenges of who I am, I just...... decided that if I couldn't be my authentic self, I wasn't gonna be happy. And honestly, if they didn't like me for being my authentic self and being vulnerable, they could fire me, right? But I was willing to kinda throw my badge down on that. I really wanted to be myself. And the i- the interesting thing here is people responded wildly, like, supportive. Like, people loved seeing me be authentic and not be the, trying to be something I'm not. So, it actually... It wasn't as scary as I thought it was gonna be.

    21. HS

      I think the biggest challenge is kind of knowing who you are.

    22. TJ

      Yeah.

    23. HS

      And I think actually a lot of people don't know who they are. Do you think you always knew who you were?

    24. TJ

      No, no. In fact, I don't, you know... I, I, I s- I s- I'm kinda going through a, a phase in my life right now, uh, where I'm really doing a lotta introspection on, you know, what's it all mean and, you know, who am I and what, you know, all of that. So, I don't think you ever truly know, but I think what you do know, again, is you know your strengths and your weaknesses, uh, and you, and you know kind of at the core who you are as a person. Uh, and if you just stay true to those, the things, I think you can deliver your authentic self every day and it's fine.

    25. HS

      I, uh... And again, we're on different scales, but I had a, a tax bill that for me was humongous, in the multiple millions, and I was very upset. Um, and my, my dear friend, who's about 70, one of the best investors in the world said, "What makes you happiest in the world?" And I said, "Walking around the park with my mom and getting an espresso." And he's like, "That's who you are."

    26. TJ

      Mm-hmm.

    27. HS

      "Just remember that." And I now just think of, like, when one wonders who they are, what single case makes you happiest, Tuy?

    28. TJ

      It's funny. I do this all the time, Harry, which is on my challenging, most challenging days, uh, when things are kinda stacking up and, you know, no good news is landing on my desk- (laughs)

    29. HS

      (laughs)

    30. TJ

      Um-

  10. 1:04:52 – 1:15:00

    Striking a Balance: CEO, Parent, and Partner

    1. HS

      'cause I'm worried that I will be less performant, mediocre at what I do. Because if you wanna do parenting well, you gotta be committed.

    2. TJ

      Yep.

    3. HS

      How do you do CEO at Procore well and be there for Henry for soccer games, for pick-up, for whatever that is?

    4. TJ

      I would say my biggest regret, Harry, in life is that I didn't get, I didn't, I didn't do more. I wasn't there more. Uh, there are big swaths of his life where I was completely consumed by Procore. Um, fortunately for me, we have an amazing relationship and he's, he and I are like best friends and...

    5. HS

      Do you think that's just what you have to do though, sadly? If you wanna be CEO of a public company. I'm not saying... You can do well, but if you wanna be the fucking best, you gotta give it everything.

    6. TJ

      Well, like, here's a great example. Um, he and I were in San Diego yesterday visiting my mom, his grandmother. And he, we dropped him off on the way coming up north in LA and he goes, "Hey, Dad, do you wanna stop with me and go see the Charger game tonight?" Uh, football g- football game. And I- I said, "I would desperately love to do it, but I've got earnings this week and I can't do it." And, um, just because I've got so much going on. And those are the tough, like, even at this age where he and I are, like, best friends, you, I still have to make those really difficult decisions, and it, and it breaks my heart but, like, it's just what you have to do, I- I think. I don't... There's not enough time in the day to be able to do both amazingly well.

    7. HS

      Did you have to do it?Sorry, I'm just push- I'm just pushing you. Like, did you have to do it? Like, could your CFO not have done stuff like that? I'm just like, there's... You have many earnings calls. Like, what? Four a year?

    8. TJ

      Yeah.

    9. HS

      And things like that Chargers game with Henry-

    10. TJ

      Yeah.

    11. HS

      ... probably is something you might remember, whatever might happen.

    12. TJ

      Yeah.

    13. HS

      You're never gonna remember this earnings call.

    14. TJ

      Uh, that's, that's a good point. By the way, these are the things I struggle with. Um, yeah. I, I'm sure I could have, uh, and I'm sure I could have.

    15. HS

      (laughs)

    16. TJ

      I do try to prioritize my kind of, um, self-stability and, and wellness first, because if I'm not, I can't show up well. So, that, that was part of my thing, was I needed to get home, get a good night's rest. We had a huge week this week-

    17. HS

      Yep.

    18. TJ

      ... and, uh, I just didn't want to, uh, I didn't want to start behind the eight-ball.

    19. HS

      What do you do when you feel super overwhelmed?

    20. TJ

      Well, uh, it's, uh, this is kind of a not well-kept secret, but, uh... So, if I'm really overwhelmed, uh, f- fortunately for me, Hillary understands I'm an introvert, so for me, the very first thing I need to do is I need to get some alone time, right? So, she will create lots of space for me to do my thing. One of the things that I do, which I'm very, uh, I love, is I will build extremely complicated Lego sets, okay?

    21. HS

      (laughs)

    22. TJ

      So like, uh, so... And people ask me, like, like, "That's weird. Like, why do you do that?" Well, first, I'm a builder. I like to build. Um, and secondly, the thing with these complicated Lego sets is, if you get one piece wrong, and then you go 400 steps past it, you have to reverse all the way back to that step, get it right, and then go forward again. And I always think of it as like business, which is like, every step matters, and so you have to be very intentional and you have to be very focused. And that focus on that particular act of building these complex Lego sets allows me to stop thinking about Procore for a finite period of time, and allows me to kind of clear my brain. And it's something that just works for me. And I... So, you know, people will ask me. They'll, they'll judge my stress level if I'm building a Lego set or not. Uh, right now, I'm not building a Lego set, just to answer the next prob- probable question, but (laughs)

    23. HS

      It is, it is, it is the only thing public market analysts should be asking: How's, how's the Lego? If it's like, "It's good."

    24. TJ

      (laughs)

    25. HS

      Yeah, yeah, we're very busy. It's like, "Oh, sure."

    26. TJ

      (laughs)

    27. HS

      If it's like, "I h- haven't seen it in years," it's like a strong buy.

    28. TJ

      Yeah.

    29. HS

      Um, w- related to Henry, obviously, (laughs) um, marriage. Uh, again, like, I'm not married, but I am... You, you have... How do you make marriage, work, and be a public markets CEO? Are there any tips that you have for me, genuinely, for people listening, that help make it work?

    30. TJ

      By the way, I want to lead this... Uh, I should have said this in the very beginning, which is, everything that I'm saying to you, I, I have not figured out anything. I just know what I know, right? So, nothing I'm about to say is like, these, you should follow these, uh, as, as rules for yourself. But, what I've found works out really well is that, um, you know, Hillary and I have been together on and off for p- well, we, we dated, you know, before we got married, obviously. Uh, but we've been together for like 35, 36 years. Th- somet- something like that. We've been married for 25 years. We know each other really, really well. Uh, and so, um, and we complement each other really well. She's a yoga instructor, right? And I'm a CEO of a publicly traded company, (laughs) and we have very vastly different worlds outside of each other. We basically allow each other to have that space. Uh, and that kind of worked for us.

Episode duration: 1:25:06

Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript

Transcript of episode zi3gTfKkpUc

Get more out of YouTube videos.

High quality summaries for YouTube videos. Accurate transcripts to search & find moments. Powered by ChatGPT & Claude AI.

Add to Chrome