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

“Lose the co founder and the investors say, let's start with 50K. We'll give you 50K. Let's see how you do. So we start with 50K. That was March in 2009. And I just make it work. I just stretch it and keep going.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We can't put all this money down right now. We're just nervous. And so we'll give you some money, but it's going to come in tranches. And you have to meet certain milestones to get the next check. And I am like, oh my God, it's been now nine months since I left IBM. Everything is going on credit cards and this round is not coming together. So we leave that meeting. She decides she can't leave her full time job to join me after all.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you know, I've offered like 20% of the company to come on as my co founder. So we go, we meet these investors and they're like, listen, this financial crisis has hit us hard. We're getting cold feet. We really love what you're doing. We love the idea, but we can.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I said, I don't know. The money hasn't come in yet. Like, I don't know what's going on. And so in the new year, I go and sit down with the investors. And we're there with lawyers. We're supposed to be closing the round. I actually have a co-founder at the time, too. that's going to leave her job.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. Then we're putting the mortgage on the credit card. Like we're putting everything on credit cards after that. And so September rolls around. We've got the beta launched. There's good feedback. People are using it. Scott introduced me to some investors. I start, you know, going around Boston and talking to people. And these conversations with investors are not going well. They're not going anywhere very quickly. And I remember Scott calling me on Christmas Eve of 2008 saying, hey, like, are you getting the round clothes? There were a couple of angels that were the first investors in ZipCar that were going to come in. He's like, hey, are you getting the round clothes?”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, it's even sort of a more in-depth story than that, which is, so I had that $27,000 pension that I knew would last us from June when I left IBM to December, six months.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. We tried everything. A lot of what I would call guerrilla marketing techniques. I mean, one of my actual favorite sort of stunts we did in Boston was to do a marketing program during the Boston Marathon and we called it Run My Marathon. And we actually hired runners, Aaron runners, to run portions of the marathon all the way along the marathon route. But yeah, I mean, we just, it was boots on the ground, knocking on doors. You know, cold talking to these business owners about the service.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. And so that motivated me that despite my own personal panic around leaving my own job to do this, that there was something interesting here to be built.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. It was overwhelming. And I mean, the skill sets and the talent in these people were educated and they'd gone to college. They were pharmacists. They were lawyers. They were teachers. They were being laid off. And they were looking for new ways to make money.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I was freaking out. I was like, what am I doing? I had this stable job at IBM and the world feels like it's falling apart. Yeah, no one wants to give me money right now. Investors don't want to write checks right now. Yeah, it was very stressful. But I did realize something which was the runners, the taskers, the people that wanted to make money on the platform, it was overwhelming.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I kind of pitched the guy there the story about run my errand starting and how I'm opening it up. It's been in the Charlestown Mothers Association. It's gone really well. And he's so nice and he loves the story. And he's like, yeah, let's write it up. I'll publish it. And honestly, that drove so much traffic. I mean, I think the readership was like 13,000 people. It drove so much traffic to the site. And all over Boston, it wasn't just Charlestown. And so I was like, okay, wow, there's something here.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Goes really well, and the moms in Charlestown start referring their moms in other neighborhoods of Boston, but it's not open in those neighborhoods. And so I'm thinking, wow, maybe I should just open this up in more neighborhoods, but that means I need to go recruit more runners in these neighborhoods. But I'm then frantically posting Craigslist ads and interviewing runners all over the city. But it's going well. And I get to the point where I think, okay, maybe I should try to do a little bit of marketing or, you know, get the word out more than just word of mouth. So I march into the Charlestown Patriot Bridge, which is the local newspaper in Charlestown.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I built it modeled after eBay, you know, the big marketplace at the time. And so you'd go on and you'd say, I need dry cleaning picked up. I'm willing to pay you $10 to do it. And a tasker would come on, they'd get an alert on their phone, and they'd say, Will I do this for $10, or do I want to make a bid on the job? Oh, I'll do it for $15. So some runners, taskers, Aaron runners, they would bid on jobs. Others would just do the buy now price, right? And connect. And then that was it. And then the transaction would occur offline, and then they'd come back to leave each other ratings and reviews.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. That's right. It's interesting because you said in the beginning the stability of IBM, I was the stable one for many years while Kevin kind of jumped around different startups. And we talked, and he's like, You know what? This is such a great idea. I'll be the stable one you go. Like, go see what you can do with this.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I had $27,000 in my IBM pension program that, you know, we could withdraw with a penalty because it was your retirement. But I was like, whatever, let's just withdraw this money.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, nights, weekends, I mean, it was a lot and it really was Scott who kind of nudged me to make the leap. He saw the progress. And everyone I had talked to, no one had said you're insane this won't work. Everyone's reality.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To see how long it would take for a runner, for a tasker to pick up the job. It's like, oh my God, is someone going to pick this up? I mean, like, I didn't know it was a marketplace. Someone would pick it up or they wouldn't pick it up. I ended up being the one doing a lot of the early jobs. I had this little scooter. That I wrote around Boston, a Charlestown area. And I would do a lot of the early jobs myself. And so I would then get like firsthand knowledge of what it was like to be a tasker, a runner, to do these jobs. And that actually helped a lot in building out the service, having that knowledge.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I posted in the Charlestown Mothers Association newsletter that RanMyarn.com was open to them and them alone. and that I had vetted these 30 taskers or runners at the time. And then as soon as I posted some moms were trying it out, they needed dry cleaning picked up. They need groceries delivered, just like simple, easy little tasks I then had created the algorithm right, which would alert all of the runners, all of the taskers at the time, that a new job had been posted, so they'd get an alert on their phone. And at that time, it was a bidding system runners at the time would pick up jobs, they would do the errands, they would be rated and reviewed, but you know, by the customer. But I personally, right, would get an alert every time something was posted. I mean, this was a closed beta. I would be sweating bullets.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was the engineer in me. I was really driven by the technology. That was it. I had no exposure still to Silicon Valley or what was happening. You know, like I didn't really know what was going on on the West Coast. And so. I was driven by the technology. And what I saw what was possible with the technology.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not yet. That was still so early. It was so early. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I mean, Uber hadn't started yet. Relay rides was started in Boston. And that was kind of like a zip car, but with people that owned their cars, right? Now it's Turo.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I met everyone face to face to start because I was terrified that, you know, there was going to be a trust and safety issue early on. Yeah.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I build the site for the moms, closed beta, and I post an ad on Craigslist. And I say, I'm looking for some help running errands. And I get hundreds, hundreds of inquiries. I'll help you. I'll help you, you know. And so I'm like, wow, okay, there's a lot of demand out there for people that want to run errands. And so I started meeting potential at the time we called them runners because it was run by aaron.com.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wi Fi. Yes. And so in Charlestown, this one square mile neighborhood of Boston, I figured out that there was this Mother's Association, and I'm not a mom at the time, right? I'm still like, I don't have kids. So I don't fully understand. But I think moms are busy and like they'd probably use the service. So I go to the head of the Charlestown Mothers Organization and I say, okay, I have this idea. I've talked to a lot of the moms in town and I want to build a beta for you. I want to build a beta just for you 900 moms and one square mile of Boston. Will you advertise it through your newsletter if I build you this beta?”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I'd go hang out there, and I would code and I'd program. And there were a bunch of moms that would come into the coffee shop with their kids. And I'd say like, hey, do you have a second? I'm working on this new thing. Like, would you use a service like this? How much would you pay? What sorts of jobs do you need help with? What do you need done? The owners of the coffee shop were so fabulous. They were very nice to let me hang out there for hours and hours and talk to their customers.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would sit next to someone on the bus going into Boston. I'd be like, hey, do you want to hear about this new idea? I mean, I would talk to anyone who would listen to me. But one of the places where I got a lot of great feedback was a little coffee shop in Charlestown called Zumies.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I went to his office and I said much like you're thinking about Zipcar where you share cars in a neighborhood, I want to create a platform in a marketplace where you can share errands and share services. And he immediately was like, wow, I think you're onto something here. Let's meet again next week. And so he just was so brilliant and so nice. And he said, why don't you come by every week for an hour and sit with me and we can brainstorm. I was still at IBM. And so I started meeting up. And finally, after a few months of that, you know, he said to me, you know, Leah, I really feel like you're on to something here. Why don't you just see how far you can take it? And it was sort of his nice way of saying like, what are you still doing at IBM?”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I email Scott this note. I'm like, hi, Scott. My name is Leah, and I'm working on this new idea. And to his credit, you know, he wrote me back Sunday morning and he was like, wow, this sounds interesting. Why don't you come by my office this week? And then I see in his signature that he's the CEO of ZipCard. Of zip car. And I lose my breath. I'm like, oh my God, I can't believe I just emailed the CEO of Zipcar. Cold email”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely, it was taken off, and he had taken over from the founders, from Robin Chase. And it was in Cambridge. And I met Scott through a friend of a friend. I mean, it wasn't an obvious connection. But again, we had been out to dinner one night with friends and talking about this idea. And my friend says, oh my gosh, you know who you should talk to? My friend Scott, he would love this idea. I used to work with him back at my old company. I had no idea he was the CEO of Zipcar. She failed to mention this.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right Yes. And I've always said, I am not the first person who had the idea for TaskRabbit. Many people have had this idea, many, many people. But it was the way that I leveraged the technology that was available at the time that made it all work.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I did, and that was the key driver for me. I think as an engineer and as someone who wanted to work on something, I saw those three technologies, social location and mobile. And that was what was interesting to me at the time. I was like, I can mash up these three technologies and create a new platform that no one has launched before.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, if I could tell you that, you know, you need your dry cleaning picked up and the person that was going to pick up your dry cleaning was two degrees of separation from you and your friend Bob, like you're going to be okay with that.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I knew no one was using location based awareness, and so as an engineer, again, I was like, I want to find the person at the store at this moment. How do I find that person And then the other key for me from a technical standpoint was Facebook was just emerging and coming out of the college scene. And honestly, the biggest piece of feedback we got in the early days, including at this dinner, was why would I trust a stranger? Bring something to me or to come into my house. What if they're, you know, an axe murderer? I mean, people would say this to me all the time. Yeah. And so I saw Facebook as a way to leverage the social graph to build trust between people.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. Yes. It was people were excited. It made sense. They were like, hold on. Someone must be doing this. Like this already exists. I mean, it was a lot of like. This must exist already, but I think the key like I knew as an engineer that no one was using mobile yet technologies. The App Store was just emerging. It was very early.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was, but they weren't in tech either. So they were doctors. My friend, it was like a sweetbriar college roommate who was going to medical school. I mean, they were kind of like, huh, that's interesting, you know?”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I bought it on the spot. And I was like, okay, well, we now own runmyaarin.com. What are we gonna do with it? And so we ended up going to dinner. We met friends at dinner. Like, it was that dinner where we're talking about this idea with friends.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, a big bag of dog food. That's right. That's right. What if all the stores are closed on the way home? It's snowing outside. And I was like, you know what? Wouldn't it be nice if there's just a place online you could go, say you needed dog food, name the price you're willing to pay. There's probably someone in our neighborhood right now that'd be willing to help us out. And maybe there's even someone at the store at this very second and we should be able to connect with them And the iPhone had just come out, and so I grabbed my iPhone and I was like, we should be able to connect with who's ever at the store right now. I said, okay, if a site like this existed, what would it be called? And I typed into my iPhone into GoDaddy, run my errand.com. In the domain name was available for $6.99. Great.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He was the best. And so we realized we're out of this dog food and I'm talking with Kevin and I'm like, God, there's got to be a way to get this dog food. We're taking a cab to dinner. We don't want to drag the dog food with us to dinner.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So I was in this very entrepreneurial mindset. I was looking for a problem to solve. And so it was February of 2008. It was cold and snowy outside. We're getting ready to go out to dinner in Boston with some friends. And we realized we were out of dog food. And at the time, we had this 100 pound yellow lab named Kobe, who we kept very well fed.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sort of doing, yeah, like it's doing a version of this. It's very exciting, but yeah, that was back in 2006, 2007. And so I also built a dog walking site for our dog walker so that he could expand his business. And then I started building dog walking sites for all of his dog walking friends. And then I had the idea for what became TaskRabbits.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So at that point, we're living in Charlestown, a neighborhood of Boston. I was working out of the Cambridge office for IBM. And I did start to think, you know what? I have the skill set. I have ideas. Like maybe I should just go code some things. And I started a blog, mostly about technical engineering projects, ideas. There was one idea I had in the real estate space where I was, you know, doing these going to open houses and doing write-ups about them and then letting, you know, buyers and engage with blog entry. Oh, wow.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. And I think in hindsight, what I've realized, just a pattern in my career, a pattern in my life is, and really, I mean, back into college too. I only like to work on problems that I feel like I can uniquely solve. And if I feel like there's someone else who can also do it and do it just as well, I become very disengaged and very bored. And uninterested in working on it. And so I think that was where the ambition came from. And, you know, like I was always thinking like I can do more. I want to be doing more.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I was super confused. His tone, like, it didn't make sense to me exactly. Yeah. But you know what? That actually was part of what made me realize that IBM wasn't the long-term fit for me. And I was really ambitious. And I did always have this sort of fire in my belly. And so I think people saw that. People knew that. I mean, that's hard for me to hide.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Almost eight years, almost eight years. Eight years wow. Yeah, yeah. It was consistently one of the top hundred places to work for women. And that Mattered to me And I thought I can just stay here, I can move up. I always wanted to stay on the technical side. They kept trying to put me in management, go manage people. I was like, I don't want to manage anyone. But by the end, the last couple years, I felt a little bit loose in the saddle. I know for a fact that I was seen as very ambitious. And in fact, there was one incident that occurred on my team where, you know, one of the other engineers said to me, wow, Lia, you're really ambitious. And he said it like it was a problem.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, yes, yeah. I was 22. He actually also worked at IRIS Associates, which was bought by Lotus. And then Lotus was bought by IBM. And so we worked together there for many years. And then he left first. He left and started joining startups in the Boston area focused mostly in the healthcare space. And I stayed.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. Oh, we really value you. Don't go And so finally I get to start coding and I joined a new team and I really loved that team in my time there. I still stay in touch with my mentors and technical leads there on that team.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I know. So I was like, I can do this, I can go do it at this other company, or I can stay here and do it. And they're like,”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I did. I did. I finally worked my way into it. And the only way that was possible is I got another job offer at another startup program.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I actually started as a quality engineer, so I wasn't doing any programming. They wouldn't have let me touch the code. But I was the tester. So I would find all the bugs in the code. I would write up the bugs. And then I'd work with the developers and the engineers to fix them. I did that for five years, but I always wanted to be the programmer. I always wanted to be the coder. It was really hard for me to break into that side, though. You know, and I saw other IBM, you know, interns coming in right out of school and joining as engineers. And I'm like, why aren't I coding? Why aren't I programming?”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, well, so not really, but a little bit. Let me explain. So, you know, programming in college was my first exposure to actual engineering. In high school, I dated someone who eventually became my husband, who I started TaskRabbit with, Kevin. And Kevin was really into computers. And so we would spend like Friday nights. I would help him build computers. We would go to computer shows on the week. Yeah.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For me, it was the opportunity to be able to build whatever was in my mind. I mean, I am very imaginative. I have ideas all the time. And I'm not really good at delegation. And so the idea that I could take what was in my head and build it so that someone else could see it or use it or interact with it was really exciting. I mean, I remember it was the simplest, simplest assignment, which was taking this little JPEG robot. And being able to code it so that with the arrow keys on the keyboard, it could move around the screen. And honestly, that was enough for me to understand how powerful programming and engineering could be.”
2022-07-11 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · TaskRabbit: Leah Solivan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT