Leah Solivan

Partner, Fuel Capital
Born: November 15, 1979
Location: United States
Nationality: United States
Residence: San Francisco Bay Area, California
Businesses: Fuel Capital / TaskRabbit

Biography

Leah is General Partner at Fuel Capital, where she invests in early-stage companies across consumer technology, hardware, education, marketplaces, and retail. She’s passionate about supporting teams who are taking on world-changing ideas.

Leah relates so well to founders because she is one herself. She created one of the most widely recognized consumer brands of the past decade with TaskRabbit. As TaskRabbit’s CEO for eight years, Leah scaled the company to 44 cities and raised more than $50 million. In 2016, Leah transitioned into the role of executive chairwoman and in 2017, TaskRabbit was acquired by IKEA.

Other Mentors

As the President of Asia Pacific and Japan at Siemens Healthineers, Vy Tran is responsible for one of the fastest growing regions with critical healthcare needs.

Vy Tran

President of Asia Pacific Japan, Siemens Healthineers
Nationality: United States
Residence: Singapore
Businesses: Siemens Healthineers / Varian

Barbara Humpton is President and CEO of Siemens Corporation, where she guides the company’s strategy and engagement in serving the company’s largest market.

Barbara Humpton

President and CEO, Siemens Corporation
Nationality: United States
Residence: Washington, D.C.
Businesses: Siemens Corporation / Booz Allen Hamilton / Lockheed Martin Corporation / IBM

Tracy Sun is the co-Founder and SVP of Seller Experience at Poshmark. The company has developed into a social marketplace for new and secondhand styles, where users can interact and build community around fashion.

Tracy Sun

Co-Founder & SVP of Seller Experience, Poshmark
Nationality: United States
Residence: San Francisco Bay Area
Businesses: Poshmark / Brooklyn Industries / Canon USA

Sandy Venugopal is Chief Information Officer at SentinelOne. Most recently, she was Chief Information Officer at Uber. Sandy joined Uber from LinkedIn Corporation, where she spent nine years and served as Director of Strategic Planning and Delivery.

Sandy Venugopal

Chief Information Officer, SentinelOne
Nationality: United States
Residence: San Francisco Bay Area
Businesses: SentinelOne / Uber / LinkedIn

More on GMN

video

Having an Entrepreneurial Mindset

Leah Solivan, founder of TaskRabbit, talks about the importance of maintaining an entrepreneurial mindset. There’s a popular story about Leah being inspired one night with the idea for TaskRabbit when she realized at the last minute that she was out of dog food. But Leah points out that this inspiration was also the product of several months of cultivating a keen entrepreneurial mindset--always on the lookout for new opportunities.

video

“I was the first TaskRabbit”

Leah Solivan was actually the very first TaskRabbit. She remembers tooling around Boston on her little Honda scooter, doing errands for people, and also making the rounds with investors in 2008/2009 when money was tight. She stuck with it and eventually the little company snowballed. TaskRabbit gave a lot of people an opportunity to work after they lost jobs in the Great Recession.