The Simplifiers

When you think tech innovations, the construction industry probably isn't the first to come to mind.

Tracy Young, 30, is changing that. After majoring in construction engineering, she was shocked at the fact that construction projects still used paper blueprints. Each blueprint revision is literally screwed on top of the one before, meaning some projects end with as many as 28,000 pieces of paper.

In 2012, she co-founded a digitized blueprint system called PlanGrid which she heads up today along with her three co-founders -- Ryan Sutton-Gee, Ralph Gootee, and Kenny Stone.

"The paper savings is one thing, but mitigating risk of building off of old drawings, that adds the most value," she said. "It's really easy to build off of old drawings."

With PlanGrid, construction managers just need a tablet and they can upload the blueprints, take it into the field and edit on the fly.

In less than three years, the firm has 10,000 paying customers who have built 200,000 projects. It closed an $18 million round of funding in May. Oh, and it's profitable.

"It's a no brainer for people in the field," she said. "No one thinks PlanGrid is a bad idea." -- Aimee Rawlins