Leah Solivan is a technologist, entrepreneur, and investor who has spent the past two decades breaking precedent—personally and professionally.

She’s a General Partner at Fuel Capital, where she manages three high-performing funds and invests in early-stage companies tackling transformative ideas across consumer tech, hardware, education, and marketplaces. Leah brings the rare perspective of a founder-turned-investor, having created and scaled one of the most iconic platforms of the gig economy.

In 2008, Leah founded TaskRabbit, pioneering the on-demand marketplace model years before it became mainstream. As CEO, she scaled the business across 44 cities, raised over $50 million in venture funding, and led TaskRabbit through its successful acquisition by IKEA. Before founding TaskRabbit, she spent seven years as a software engineer at IBM.

Proud of her Puerto Rican heritage and one of the few Latinas to raise venture capital at scale, Leah has become a sought-after voice on the future of work, entrepreneurship, and inclusive innovation. She’s been recognized by Fast Company as one of the “100 Most Creative People in Business” and has spoken at global stages including Davos and the Women in the World Summit.

Leah holds a B.S. in Math and Computer Science from Sweet Briar College. She serves on the boards of PetMeds, the San Francisco Ballet, and YPO Pacific. She lives in the Bay Area with her husband, four children, and their Maine Coon cat, Eddard.

Topics:

  • From mid-2023 through 2025, AI has already jumped from novelty to necessity: 61% of U.S. adults have used AI; ~500–600M people engage daily worldwide, yet only ~3% pay. That gap is the biggest consumer monetization opportunity of the decade. Leah Solivan (engineer, TaskRabbit founder, investor) braids a personal AI experiment (16,195 messages), proprietary Consumer×AI deal-flow signals, and fresh adoption data to show where AI is already changing daily behavior, and where the next outliers will break precedent.

  • Leah Solivan has broken precedent on many levels, from reimagining the Future of Work with TaskRabbit, to challenging the Venture Capital industry as a young Latina.  She is passionate about sharing her journey and highlighting other’s unprecedented journeys as well.  

    Imagine a world where the boundaries of what’s possible are constantly being pushed, where societal norms are challenged, and where new precedents are made every day. This is the world we will explore in Breaking Precedent, a dynamic presentation dedicated to uncovering the stories of those who dare to innovate, trailblaze, and redefine the status quo.

    Throughout this presentation, Leah will delve into the lives of extraordinary individuals who are not just thinking outside the box but are completely dismantling it to create new standards and pathways in their respective fields. From technology and art to social justice and beyond, Leah will share journeys of breaking barriers and setting new precedents.

    This presentation is also about equipping you with the tools and strategies to break precedents in your own life and work. We will explore practical applications that will empower and inspire you.

  • Mom always told us not to talk to strangers, but are there really any strangers today? Ten years ago it was unthinkable to flag down a random car and hop in for a ride, but today, with the use of technology, we don’t hesitate in sharing rides with people we don’t know. We are willing to hire a handyman through an app, such as TaskRabbit, and we are renting out rooms in our own houses to people we’ve never met before. How did the sharing economy begin and what will it evolve to next? In this dynamic speech, Leah will share her story of starting TaskRabbit and why 2008 was a pinnacle for the beginning of the sharing economy. Over the last 15 years, this new trend has evolved into mainstream adoption and continues to grow and scale in new ways that are changing the future of work. Leah will explore how businesses, large and small, will need to evolve to support this new fragmented workforce, and how, despite the skeptics, providing more flexibility and entrepreneurship in our work environments will drive innovation, support diversity, and ultimately translate to stronger, longer lasting companies.

  • After 8 years as a software engineer at IBM, Leah quit her job to found TaskRabbit. With no prior business experience, no MBA, and by withdrawing $20,000 from her IBM pension account, it was a cold winter night when she had the idea for founding TaskRabbit. After bootstrapping the company for 18 months, maxing out credit cards, and building the business from the ground up, Leah was able to raise over $50 million dollars in venture funding, expand the company internationally, and propel TaskRabbit as a leader of the sharing economy movement. Then in 2017, Leah oversaw TaskRabbit’s successful sale to IKEA – the multinational home décor corporation's first step into the on-demand platform space.

    There were many lessons learned along the way, and in this dynamic speech, Leah will share five important lessons that changed the game for her life and her business. From having “Big Hairy Audacious Goals” to discovering ideas, instead of inventing them, Leah will explore how anyone can be entrepreneurial and drive innovation for their team, business, or organization, ultimately achieving greater happiness for themselves and truly loving what they do.