From Being Rejected by Every VC to Starting Her Own Fund - Leah Solivan (Founder of TaskRabbit)

I got to walk with Leah Solivan, founder of TaskRabbit and now Managing Director of Precedent VC, through her journey from IBM engineer to startup founder to venture capitalist. We got into the early days of building TaskRabbit, the decision to sell the company to IKEA, and her transition into investing. Leah also shared her philosophy on evaluating founders, the AI-powered deal scoring tool she built, and the story behind her upcoming book, Breaking Precedent

Timestamps:

00:00:00 Trailer
00:01:12 Intro
00:01:21 Ballet background and SF Ballet board
00:06:12 TaskRabbit's origin story
00:10:52 Move to the Bay Area
00:23:00 Selling TaskRabbit to IKEA
00:33:03 Letting go of founder identity
00:35:37 Launching Precedent VC
00:38:26 AI-powered deal scoring system
00:41:26 Investing philosophy and founder fit
00:54:30 Founder green and red flags
00:58:26 Why she wrote Breaking Precedent
01:07:12 Parenting and work-life balance
01:10:46 Defining success
01:12:20 Outro

Links:

Leah Solivan
Website: Leah Solivan
Instagram: Leah Solivan (@leah_solivan) • Instagram photos and videos
LinkedIn: Leah Solivan | LinkedIn

Luba Yudasina
Instagram: Luba Yudasina (@lifeoflubaa) • Instagram photos and videos
X: luba yudasina (@LubaYudasina) / X
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yudasinal