Find Problem Solvers

Leah Solivan

09.26.19

What do you look for in a founding team? Leah Solivan, founder of TaskRabbit, talks about her own founding team and the fact that her best team members were generalists--fellow entrepreneurs--with the drive and intelligence to frequently change roles and tackle an endless stream of different challenges. Having the ability and determination to solve tough problems is often more important than a specialized skillset.

Summary:

What do you look for in a founding team? Leah Solivan, founder of TaskRabbit, talks about her own founding team and the fact that her best team members were generalists–fellow entrepreneurs–with the drive and intelligence to frequently change roles and tackle an endless stream of different challenges. Having the ability and determination to solve tough problems is often more important than a specialized skillset.

In this conversation with Thuy, Leah talks about her founding team at TaskRabbit and what she believes made them the ideal startup founders.

Thuy

And so what kinds of qualities did you look for in your team members, and how did you go about finding them?
Leah_Solivan

Leah Solivan

You know, in the early days I think the best team members were the ones who were also entrepreneurs themselves. And I remember, you know, we were a team I think of 4 or 5. And out of the 4 or 5 of us, 90% of the team had started their own companies before, or had built their own apps before, or had been entrepreneurial. And even up to 20 people, they were all generalists. They were willing to dig in to lots of different areas and continuously learn, and continuously just build and iterate and get better. And so finding people that really want to roll up their sleeves, and are really engaged in the mission and vision of what you're creating was so important.

Thuy

What was the scariest part of what you were building and trying to do?
Leah_Solivan

Leah Solivan

Well, because no one had ever done it before we didn't really know what was going to happen. We didn't know if we were going to live or die the next day. We didn't know how the interactions on the platform would be. I mean I would lay awake night after night after night just thinking about like: "How many tasks did we do today?" "Did they go well? Were people happy? Were there any problems?"

Thuy

What if you got a weirdo who appeared on someone's doorstep?
Leah_Solivan

Leah Solivan

Yeah! Absolutely, right? And so that stuff would keep me up at night all the time. And so it took a lot of work to get to a place where we felt confident, we felt comfortable. And at scale, we really did, but in the early days we were just trying to piece things together in the best way we could.

Thuy

And how did you deal with that, all those fears that were keeping you up at night?
Leah_Solivan

Leah Solivan

I don't know if I have a good answer for that. How did I deal with that? I didn't sleep. I don't know. I had, I think, a great core team that was always around me. And so I tried to sort of share those burdens and those challenges, and utilize sounding boards with other people, and I think that's what made it bearable. I think if it was just all me on my own, that would have been too much.