Leah Busque (TaskRabbit) - Do Something You Love

Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders (ETL)

Stanford eCorner

Journey, Startups, Education, Stanford, Culture, Strategy, Stanford University, Entrepreneurship, Business, Life Lessons, Thought Leadership, Creativity, Etl, Challenges, Leadership, Innovation, Founders

4.4 • 739 Ratings

🗓️ 21 May 2014

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

TaskRabbit Founder and CEO Leah Busque tells how a need for dog food on a snowy night in Boston turned into a rapidly growing venture connecting people in neighborhoods around the country. Busque also explains the value of sharing your idea freely and the importance of cultivating an atmosphere of mentorship and collaboration.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You are listening to the DFJ Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders series, brought you weekly by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program.
0:10.0	You can find podcasts and videos of these lectures online at eChorner.standford.edu.
0:16.0	It brings me great pleasure to introduce an amazing entrepreneur into our midst.
0:23.8	How many of you have heard of TaskRabbit?
0:27.2	How many of you have had someone do something for you using TaskRabbit?
0:32.6	How many of you have our rabbits?
0:34.4	You've actually done TASC.
0:35.7	All right.
0:36.8	Well, this is an amazing company founded by an amazing entrepreneur.
0:41.3	Leah Busque decided after working at IBM as a techie, she's an engineer, right, doing software and all that stuff.
0:48.3	She said, I need stuff done that I can't get done.
0:51.3	And so she started TaskRabbit in 2008, moved out from Boston to the Bay Area. They're now headquartered in San Francisco with 60 employees, $40 million in venture capital from places like the Founders Fund and Lightspeed and Shasta, right? I mean, really great firms that we've had in this, some of them in this very same place.
1:11.6	And it's national, but it's also just gone global. Leah says that they've opened a London office to go into Europe.
1:19.6	And I'm trying to talk her into going west toward Asia. We'll see how that goes.
1:22.6	Let's give Leah Vasquez a warm welcome. Welcome to Stanford.
1:26.6	Thank you. Let's give Leah Busce a warm welcome. Welcome to Stanford.
1:32.3	Thank you so much, Tom. I appreciate the introduction.
1:34.3	So hello, everyone.
1:35.3	I'm incredibly excited to be here.
1:37.3	This is my first time at Stanford.
1:40.3	So I'm thrilled to share with you.
1:43.3	A few lessons I've learned.
	...

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