YouSaid · the spoken record

Leah Solivan

lines on the record: 101
first: 2022-07-11
most recent: 2022-07-11
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Is definitely both. I think that there are definitely times that Through circumstance, I was very lucky. For instance, being able to be out to dinner and get connected with Scott Griffith from an old co-worker. You can't plan some of these things to happen. There was a lot of serendipity. And I think at the same time, given the serendipity, you have to be able to capture it and execute on it. And so for me, I feel like it was very much both. It was both.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, looking back. It was a lot and Could I go back and do it all again? Oh my god, I don't know. Could I go back and even do that whole product pivot change in 2014? I don't know. But I'm really, really glad. I did. When I did, I'm proud of the journey that I had that we had. But it was a lot”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Everybody associates with me. And so sometimes I'm on the opposite end where people are like asking me questions about like, oh, and, you know, what do you think about this with Taskrabbit? And what do you think about this decision or that? And I'm just like, wow, I have no input, I'm very detached, very detached. I know a handful of people at that company today. So it is sort of odd for me because it was my baby. It is my baby. It was the first baby. And so it is this very conflicting feeling at times. I'm proud that it lives on beyond me. And I also sometimes feel a conflict that I'm no longer a part of it.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh God. I do. So as a founder, I always felt like wouldn't it be amazing to build something that lives beyond you? And that's what I got to achieve. And that was incredible. Now the flip side of that is. There's this company that lives beyond me. That I have no control over anymore.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and it was great. So we launched in the London market a partnership between IKEA and TaskRabbit. And what I really got excited about with IKEA is particularly being in their headquarters. You could feel that they had similar values around sustainability and culture, just their way of thinking about the business. Felt really aligned with TaskRabbit. And that got me really excited about working with them.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Started with a partnership conversation and they knew that we were live in London and London is one of their biggest markets and London for us was number four out of all the markets we were launched in. So we were doing very well in London. And they wanted to talk about a partnership in store so that they could drive up sales, right? And have people buy more Ikea furniture because it would then be assembled by a task rabbit.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was always Ikea Furniture Assembly, and it was so funny because it took years and years to make contact with them and finally we did, obviously. But that was great for us. That was great.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Literally since day one, Ikea furniture assembly was always, yeah, I mean, it was always in the top five tasks and it number one. All the time.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thank God we launched that London product because if we hadn't, we would have been completely overwhelmed by that vocal minority. And we could have pulled back. We could have completely decided not to move forward just based on the feedback because it was so visceral. But we saw it working. We knew it was going to work.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh my god, this was so hard because millions of people were using TaskRabbit in the US. And thank God we launched this new product in London because we saw it work. We saw the mobile product work, this on-demand booking platform. It worked. The metrics doubled, the repeat usage. We're like, okay, this works. Now we need to take a million people in the US and 60,000 taskers that are on the platform and we need to transition them to a completely new way of working. We actually brought a tasker from London from the UK who was operating in the London market and we had her train taskers in the US city by city in these little community gatherings.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was going to be a direct booking platform. And what we needed to do was remove more friction from the bidding. So we got rid of bidding, you know, and so people could just post, I want to pay this much money and then taskers would take it or leave. You know, there wasn't a lot of back and forth. Helped”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was just like my body was reacting to the amount of stress I was under. And, you know, my doctor said to me, she said, listen, I told her what had happened. I'm like crying, you know. She's like, listen, you're not going to kill your baby. She said that out to me. You're not going to kill your baby. I was like, okay, all right. And I was going to, all right, that's what I needed to hear because I need to go back and take care of some things too. But, you know, she monitored me for a few hours. I came back to the office. Like, things were settled down.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know. And so I call my doctor in the afternoon. And she's like, I need you to come in. So I go in, they monitor The baby's sluggish. She's like, no, this isn't in your head, you're not making this up, are you under a lot of stress? I'm like, oh my God, am I under a lot of stress? And, you know, it turned out everything was okay.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At that point, we were probably 80 people. And so it was under 20 people that we transitioned out. I had to look them in the eye and say, you know, this isn't working anymore. We've got to move on. At the time, I was six months pregnant with my first baby, Amelia. And I remember going into the office that morning just. Feeling totally sick to my stomach. He and I deliver the news to this group of people in segments and chunks. And we had enough money in the bank to really make sure that we took care of them financially. So that was important. But it was going to be a huge morale hit. At the same time, you know, this is my first pregnancy, and I'm nervous because I feel like, you know what, I haven't felt the baby move today. And it's just a lot of stress. Maybe it's okay, but like”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We did. We did. We had over $20 million in the bank. I remember, you know, so it was kind of like, okay, you've got a lot of funding, but the burn is high. We've hired a lot of people. And we've also built a team that may not be the right team to execute what we need to do next.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Extremely worried about the burn rate. I mean, at that point, I think we were burning probably over a million dollars a month.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Who It was the wrong timing, and it was the wrong fit, and it turned out that we needed to really Change the trajectory of the product into this mobile first, fast-paced on-demand service, which was more analogous to Uber and Lyft and all these other services and all these other competitors, frankly, that were popping up. But we had scaled a team that was built to run a traditional web business. And so we decided as a board, you know, that I would step back in and become CEO again. It was slightly reluctantly. I mean, I really felt like I had failed. I mean, that this process had failed, right? I mean, I wanted help. I wanted a business person. Yeah. And that didn't work. And now I have to step back in. And I also need to like change the trajectory of this giant ship that's going in the wrong direction.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we've been on the web. Like we have a mobile product, but it hasn't been given a lot of attention because we've been so focused on the web I mean, honestly, it's like the entire consumer market and expectation just changed underneath us and we missed it.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so the lever in the model was always this repeat usage metric. Like, if you could get someone to post two tasks a month or one time a week, that was the huge lever in the model that really made all the numbers work. But on average, people were posting about one time a month at the time. And so we're like, okay, why is it only happening one time a month? Where is the friction in the model? At the same time, Eric is really like, he's starting to scale the company the way he knows how to scale companies. It's like, bring on sales and marketing and I need more engineering. We need business development people. We need operations. So we're scaling up. We're also realizing that the product now in 2011 is just not working. It's just not working. And at this point, there are competitors coming out that are launching mobile first, mobile only.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's right. Because it never really felt like a rocket ship. It always felt like we were on the brink of getting on the rocket ship, right? Yeah.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so, this is the point in the business where, like, wow, we need to make instant connections and things have to happen in real time.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so we're kind of in the midst of this monumental moment for consumers. And TaskRabbit actually feels pretty slow and sluggish compared to, yes, yes, compared to. The Ubers and the Lyfts, and it's not happening as instantaneously as the consumer starts to get trained to expect.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it was always just a commission from every task that went through the site. And that was always the business model. So we were always making money. The unit economics looked good. We were profitable on a task basis. We were always making money on every task at that point. Now, at this time, you're also starting to see Uber and Lyft and Airbnb, all these other peer-to-peer economies really start to take off and start to emerge.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Here's the check, and it was the largest round that we raised. It ended up being $18 million led by Light Speed. It came fast because we had brought on this amazing talent.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. That's right. But, you know, we did go out and raise our series B with Eric. So Eric and I then hit the road and I got to say like, oh my God, it was such a relief.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think when I look back, it was more about timing because the business was too early to bring in someone that was a step away from the core vision. And the business still needed me to really drive the momentum forward. He was brought into scale. It was too early to scale in the way that man can scale a company, right? I mean, he's brilliant.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A man by the name of Eric Grossa, he was one of the early guys at hotwire.com, $100 million business, had sold to Expedia, referenced very well. And I mean, is an amazing human being.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I always wanted that business person. And so at this point, we're like, we're open in two markets. We're four people, but I know we need to raise more money. And I know that having more operational and business help is going to help get that done. And so we met a lot of different people over the course of many months. We ran a whole search process”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, you know, we continue to talk to investors and we finally get connected with the team over at Shasta Ventures. And then we meet Todd, who's one of the founders of Shasta. And after several meetings with them, and they invite me out to dinner, which is so nice. It's very old school. I don't know if this happens anymore, but they're like, let's go out to dinner and we'll discuss terms, you know. And so then they put together a five million dollar term sheep. You know, it was so exciting. It was a great interaction too. I remember Todd saying, you know, we never go back on our work. We've never pulled back a term sheet and like, we're really excited about working with you. And that was it. And so we decided to move forward with Shasta. And it was a great partnership with them.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He's like, it just dawns on me. You could really build a huge house cleaning business with this platform. And I was like, what? What is he talking about? And he was thinking that if we spoke Spanish, we could market to the Spanish community and bring them on. It just was like so far off from. What we were pitching that day, and my hand is broken, and I'm just completely destroyed by this meeting.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I'm barreled over in pain. Brian is like, oh my God, are you okay? What just happened? We've got to get into this meeting. And I'm like, I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay. I'll deal with it later. We just go into the meeting. I walk in. I say nothing. I shake everybody's hand with my broken hand, grimacing. Sit down at the table and start the pitch. And at this point, Brian and I, you know, had done this pitch many times. Part of the pitch was also, you know, we're building out the team. Still, it's just four of us. And in this particular meeting, about halfway through, the investors interrupt us. They interrupt and they're like, hold on, hold on, hold on. Does anyone on your team speak Spanish? I'm confused. I'm like, well, my father's Puerto Rican. I speak a little Spanish. Like, why?”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. That's right. Yes. So we start to fund fundraise for the Series A. And Brian and I sort of hit up and down Sandhill Road and we pitch investors. And even given all of that, the fundraise was not easy. I remember one such meeting where we were on Sandhill Road, Brian and I, and we park, you know, at the investor's office. And I get out of the car and I like somehow close the door awkwardly and it slams my right hand in the door.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was much faster than it was in Boston. And so from the very early days of launching San Francisco, I could see that just the consumer in the Bay Area was going to use the service differently. I mean, it was under a new name and brand as well, so that helped. But people were really creative with their use of the service. They were using it much more often than people in Boston were. The weather was nicer, so there were a lot more outdoor tasks being done It was definitely growing faster than we were in Boston.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. I mean, we saw the main use case was Aaron's, but we even saw early days in Boston people posting really interesting different things. They needed help with a birthday party or You know, they needed a costume sewn or there was like all kinds of crazy things that people would come up with. And so, you know, we did a little bit of press. We did a lot of the on-the-ground gorilla marketing like we had done in Boston.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I did not like the name Run My Erand about 20 minutes after I bought it off a GoDaddy february of two thousand eight It did get us pretty far. It was clear, it was descriptive. I felt like what we could build was bigger than errands. I felt like the word run my errand was a command and it felt demeaning. And I wanted the site and the service to feel uplifting and innovative and push the thinking forward. And so we came up with gravitation.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. I think the culture of Bostonians is a very do-it-yourself mentality. And so that was some friction for this type of service. And I felt like if we could just get to San Francisco where it's the tech company capital of the world, like this is the consumer market where we actually prove this is a real business.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. And over that lunch meeting, we just really bond and connect over for our work week and run my errand and how they're so collaborative. And I ask him to be an advisor. And on the spot, he says yes. And he says, and I want to introduce you to my good friends that are investors and Merico at Floodgate and Steve Anderson at Baseline Ventures. Know, I was like, if I can turn this into a million dollars of funding, it'll be worth it. And so that was just my mindset. I had to make it work.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I have the 15 minute meeting with Tim, and I'm showing him the site, and I'm describing run my errand to him, and he's giving me feedback about the homepage. And it's 15 minutes. So I'm like, oh my God, the clock is ticking down. Like, how do I ask him to be an advisor in a 15-minute meeting? So I decide that that's too much, too much to ask for in 15-minute meeting. All I need to do is ask for another meeting. And so it gets down to like 12 minutes, 13 minutes. He's giving me tons of great feedback. And I'm like, hey, you know, Tim, would you be willing to spend more time with me? Like, could we set up another meeting? And he's a little hesitant, to be honest. He's like, well, why don't you reach out to my admin and like, we'll see what we can make work. And I say, okay, great.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I look online to see how much a plane ticket is to fly back. It was like $700. It was a lot. And I think, okay, it's a 15-minute meeting with Tim. Like, is this really worth it? But I decide that I'm going to make it worth it. I'm just going to make sure that he comes on an advisor, like whatever it takes. And so. I book my ticket back on Sunday night, some in Boston for a day, go back on Sunday night, and on the way there I read the four-hour work week again. So I just have it fresh in my mind.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. Okay. So I had read four hour work week. And particularly as it related to runmyerin.com, I thought, oh my God, if I could get Tim as an advisor to this company, that's going to be a huge win for us. And it just so happened that Tim was going to speak at Facebook Fund on a Monday morning. Now, I was flying back and forth, right, a week in Boston, a week in Palo Alto. So the head of the Facebook program says, okay, Monday morning, Tim Ferris is going to be here. Surprise, you know, everyone can sign up for 15 minutes with Tim on Monday. I'm literally on a flight back to Boston when I get this email. I'm like, oh my God, do I really turn around just so I can have this meeting with Tim?”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, it was. And I didn't fully understand yet either. You know, just how to do this or the dynamics around it. But one of the people that was very pivotal in the race.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so I really had to make the shift away from being a technical engineer and into what is the value proposition, like what are you actually building here for? Consumers And so that was very helpful. I mean, I actually worked on the pitch then for the next 12 weeks. And at the end, there was a big demo day. And, you know, it was online and there were investors there as well. And I was just like, I am making this round happen. Like this is my chance. I have to bring around together at the end of this program”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. There was a big pitch day at the end of the program. And I remember on the first day of the program, one, I was surrounded by all of these other amazing entrepreneurs and founders and people. And that was the first time in my life I had been surrounded by that type of energy. And it was really exciting. So day one, day one, they get us to stand up, introduce ourselves, and give our 32nd pitch. Like 20 companies. And then we get rated on how well we did on day one out of 10. I got like a two.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was. It was in Palo Alto. So I'd spend a week in Boston on the ground. And then I'd spend a week over at the Facebook program. And I told Facebook, I was like, hey, listen, like I've got this company running in Boston. I can't just go there for the summer. So I just went back and forth all summer. I mean, that was a pivot. It ended up being a pivotal moment. And that program was life changing”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I decided to do it. I decided to go for it. Even though Most people thought it would not be worth doing. I felt like this is the connection to Silicon Valley. There are things happening there. Let's go do it.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For 15 grand. And I said, Well, what happened to the 250? And they're like, yeah, well, it's different for everyone. Is what they tell me. They decide how much they're going to offer you. Okay. So I am talking to Scott about it. He's like, don't do it. That's not worth it. It's 15 grand. Don't do it.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then we get it. We're offered it. And John says, you know what? I think it's like $250,000. Like it's an investment from Facebook. And I say, okay, that sounds great. That sounds a great way to raise money. So we get the offer from Facebook to come out to do the incubator program is $15,000. And it's for a chunk of the company. It's like, you know, a few percentage points of the company.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I want you guys to meet, we're going to do a deal with them. And ZipCar said, cool. And so later that day, I meet John, and he's like, hey, you know what? There's this incubator program. Facebook is going to launch this summer. You should apply. I know the people who are going to run it. I'll put in a good word for you. And I was like, okay, great. So I go back, I tell Scott, he's like, yeah, that sounds really good. Why don't you apply to that program? And in the meantime, we had closed a little bit more Angel money, you know, in total it became around $150,000. And so I apply to this program called FB Fund. I do a phone interview for it.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, that's right. It wasn't big enough yet to sustain anything, let alone pay for the web server costs of running the site. And so I just kept expanding. At that point, though, I was working out of the zip car office. So Scott very nicely said, why don't you just come work out of here, you know, for as long as you want? And one day he said, you know, there's another entrepreneur from California coming by. His name's John Zimmer. He runs the company called Zimrad.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Probably less, honestly. Probably less Boston was a tough market, even at scale with TaskRabbit, Boston was like number 10 market. For us.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT