I've always been a builder at heart. From a young age, I was fascinated by construction. My father always seemed to have a construction project underway. Watching those projects take shape, I learned that I was drawn to people who value hard work, and who see the building as their craft and calling.

In the eighth grade, I started working in a cabinet shop after school sweeping the floors. I worked construction jobs while in high school and college, and I ended up choosing to swing a hammer full-time on job sites in the San Francisco Bay Area rather than complete my last two years of school.

In 1993, my life and career took a turn into technology when I met a man who would become my mentor for the next decade. He introduced me to creating software, another form of building that became a new passion.

I found myself at the center of the technology boom in Silicon Valley, learning to code and solving enormous engineering challenges. In 1996, I started my own software development company focused on web applications. The timing could not have been better. That company grew, and by 1999 I found myself working like crazy and also married, with a newborn son.

The need for Procore came from the actual problems I was having as the owner on a construction project to build a new home for my family. Phone calls and fax machines were the default communication modes with my contractor. When I looked at the sheer complexity of coordination, and the lack of streamlined communication, I was shocked that anything ever got done on my own construction project.