I am standing on the shoulders of giants

... and I couldn't be more thankful.

I learned a ton while working at BuildingConnected (acquired by Autodesk). I'm excited to share those learnings in this blog - but it's important for me to acknowledge that a lot of the content that I plan to publish was introduced to me by these incredible individuals.

Over the years, I helped to iterate on the processes but very few I created outright.

This list isn't meant to exhaustively cover everyone who has influenced me or had an impact on my success (like my wife, family, friends, teachers, who all played a huge part). This post is more meant to give attribution to those from whom I specifically drew ideas and inspiration in the coming posts.

My giants from BuildingConnected

Jesse Pedersen

Though this list is not in order, Jesse has been my most influential giant. He has taught me to trust my gut, take action, be brave, and move fast (which are important qualities that counter my hindering perfectionism). He's an incredible leader in all aspects of building a great product, designing it, and engineering it. He exponentially magnifies his impact by building incredible teams and the culture/processes to allow those teams and individuals to flourish.

Al Urim, Karen Rose, Thomas Beirne, and Bradford Cook

These four make up the original engineering manager group with whom I worked closely. The vast majority of my management and team-building capacities are a direct result of their ideas or from collaborating with their great minds.

Ashu Agte

Ashu represents the highest caliber of an engineering leader that I've had the pleasure to work with. His mentorship allowed me to advance from a figure-it-out-as-I-go team lead to a manager helping to prepare new managers. I would not have been able to succeed without his guidance, trust, and empathy.

Dustin DeVan

Dustin showed me how a founder can attach to a vision of the future and drive relentlessly toward it. He saw with perfect clarity how technology could fundamentally change networking in preconstruction and he was excellent at selling that future to the industry and employees (including those like me with zero previous construction knowledge). As a future founder, I hope to emulate that same focus and drive.

Jenny Ji

Through Jenny, I learned why a team should keep such an incredibly high bar for design. That bar still helps differentiate BuildingConnected in the industry. Jenny also introduced me to personal finance. Many of my personal finance fundamentals (which I plan to share in future posts 🙂) come from discussions with her and from books that she has recommended.

Chelsea Hodge and Abbie Hanright

Chelsea and Abbie were my collaborative leaders in product and design, respectively. Their attention to detail (not only in design but in the process and systems behind a product) truly helped to shape my view on building a great product and sub-organization to support it.

Zac Hays

Through Zac, I learned why it's so important to have a solid vision along with strategies and roadmaps. He's even given talks on this. This giant taught me the value of defining and measuring success as well as how to hire phenomenal product managers.

Thank you, giants.