Diverse teams start with diverse VCs with Leah Solivan, Taskrabbit

About this episode

Leah Solivan discusses the importance of diverse venture capitalists in building diverse teams and the challenges of hiring in the tech industry.

If one thing has become clear this season, finding the right talent for your team isn’t as easy as picking from a pile of resumes This week’s guest is Leah Solivan, the founder of Taskrabbit and now an early-stage investor who has seen that the power to change a homogenous startup exosystem comes from empowering diverse VCs to fund underrepresented founders who will hire the hidden tech talent. From bootstrapping TaskRabbit on credit cards to scaling it into one of the defining companies of the gig economy, Leah learned firsthand that the hardest part of building a company isn’t the product, it’s selecting the right people to build it. In this episode, Isabelle Johannessen and Leah unpack what it really takes to build diverse teams from day one and why most companies get it wrong by waiting too long. They also explore how the lack of diversity in venture capital directly shapes who gets funded, and ultimately, who gets hired. They discuss: How to build diverse teams intentionally from the very beginning Why the “easy path” in hiring leads to less diverse outcomes The connection between diverse VCs and diverse companies How to hire for culture and values over credentials Apply to…

People in this episode

Host: Isabelle Johannessen

Guest: Leah Solivan

Topics covered

• diversity in teams
• venture capital
• startup ecosystem
• hiring practices
• underrepresented founders

Keywords

• diverse teams
• venture capital
• Taskrabbit
• hiring
• startup
• tech talent
• entrepreneurship

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Taskrabbit, TechCrunch

More episodes of Build Mode

• Best of Build Mode: Scaling Company Culture · June 11, 2026 · 18 min
• Best of Build Mode: The Founder Mistakes That Cost Time, Money, and Growth · June 4, 2026 · 27 min
• Best of Build Mode: Cofounders, Conflict and Compatibility · May 28, 2026 · 21 min
• The 7-Failure Rule: How Forethought AI Found Product-Market Fit with Co-Founder Deon Nicholas · May 14, 2026 · 46 min
• Maintaining Momentum and Morale During the Long Road to FDA Approval with Robhy Bustami, BioticsAI · April 30, 2026 · 32 min
• Don't stop hiring humans. Stop hiring the wrong humans with Jaspar Carmichael-Jack, Artisan · April 23, 2026 · 37 min