The vital question Taskrabbit founder Leah Solivan wished she asked investors

Masters of Scale

WaitWhat

Entrepreneurship, Business, Management, Reid Hoffman, Mindset, Diversity & Inclusion, Jeff Berman, Bob Safian, Startups

4.6 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 15 August 2024

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A pioneer in the gig economy, Leah Solivan joins host Jeff Berman to share scale lessons from founding Taskrabbit. Hear how a need for dog food on a snowy night grew into a global business acquired by IKEA. She also reveals how her experience as an entrepreneur is shaping her next act as an early-stage investor.

Leah has a new podcast of her own in the works: Breaking Precedent

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Transcript

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0:00.0	From day one, the highest volume task on the site was always IKEA Furniture Assembly.
0:09.6	From day one. I mean, I was like going to I Ikea getting these flat packs with my little
0:15.1	Allen wrench like putting an Ikea furniture together. So it was always a popular
0:21.8	task okay?
0:23.6	And I would always, you know, I'd give these talks and
0:29.6	be like, can anyone in the room guess the most popular task on Task Rabbit?
0:33.4	No one would ever guess.
0:35.6	It was always Ikea.
0:36.8	Task Rabbit can help you find someone handy to do all sorts of work, like assemble a
0:43.2	bookshelf, pick up your dry cleaning, or help with the yard work.
0:47.0	And that's Leah Sullivan, who founded the company and in the early days especially,
0:51.7	often did the tasks herself.
0:54.4	She grew the company to impressive scale and then became laser focused on a perhaps non-obvious
0:59.6	partner, IKEA.
1:01.9	They were on our dream list for a long time.
1:04.2	We want to be in store, we want to be part of their
1:06.2	check out process, you know?
1:08.6	But they were really, very elusive, very difficult to get to, private company family owned out of Sweden.
1:15.3	And at that point we were live in London, internationally.
1:19.8	London was our fourth largest market.
1:22.1	It happened to be IKEA's first largest market in the world.
1:26.0	Leah convinced IKEA to pilot a partnership with Task Rabbit in London.
	...

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