Leah Solivan was an IBM engineer, working on business collaboration tools like Lotus Notes, when she got her million-dollar startup idea: an online marketplace that connected customers with “caregivers” who could perform tasks or perform household chores for a price.
The idea came from Solivan running out of dog food one night and wondering why he couldn’t communicate with someone at the time you could take him. It was 2008 and the first iPhone had come out the year before. Solivan saw potential in his iPhone for a location-based business.
Leah Sullivan. Photo: Chance Yeh/WireImage
In an interview with businessman Jeff Berman last week, Solivan said that when he looked at this problem as an engineer, he saw these three technologies: social, location and mobile.
“I thought, there’s a lot here,” she said.
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Solivan decided to quit his engineering job and withdrew $27,000 from his IBM pension plan to get his idea off the ground. Ten years later, Ikea bought TaskRabbit for an undisclosed sum after the startup raised about $50 million in multiple fundraising rounds.
TaskRabbit was Ikea’s first acquisition in the US
It wasn’t easy to find though. Shortly after leaving IBM, Solivan started coding. In six to eight weeks, he worked on his idea and built its first version, working in a coffee shop sometimes and asking random people in the shop to get feedback on what he had created.
When the site was ready, Solivan put out an ad on Craigslist for janitors – people who would do certain jobs on the site. He gave each person who answered the ad a 30-minute interview in a coffee shop and ended up with 30 employees for the first launch in Boston.
The introduction taught Solivan that he needed to “be the first to work.” He also does jobs, all over Boston. The experience still makes him ask the founders: “Would you be part of the process?” Solivan says being part of the day-to-day of a company is important to learning what customers really want.
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Ikea, on the other hand, known for its furniture to be assembled, acquired TaskRabbit in 2017 after the partnership in the store in London proved to be very profitable. Customers can choose to have TaskRabbit deliver and assemble Ikea furniture for them instead of doing it themselves, increasing Ikea’s average order value and bringing in new TaskRabbit customers.
Then Ikea decided they wanted to own TaskRabbit.
“It was bittersweet,” Solivan said. “It’s been 10 years… I’m very happy to know that without me, it’s going on.”
For entrepreneurs who have jobs at Meta, Microsoft, or other companies who come to him to ask if they should quit their jobs to work on their ideas, Solivan says it’s hard to focus on starting a day’s work, but he. you know that not everyone has the right to be able to pursue their vision without a safety net.
“My advice is, if you’re confident about something, you’ll find a way to deal with it,” Solivan said.
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