Syama Bunten:
She turned everyday errands into a billion dollar behavior shift. And now she’s rewriting who gets funded next. Today, Leah Solivan talks to us about building TaskRabbit, betting on herself, and breaking precedent into venture.

Women don’t talk about money the way we should. Not honestly, not openly, and not with each other. But that’s changing. I’m Syama Bunten, founder of Wealth Catalyst. And Getting Rich Together is where the conversation lives. Every week, a different woman, a different path, and a conversation that will change how you think about your own financial power.

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I am here today with the prolific Leah Solivan, a woman who turned a random “I wish I had help” moment into TaskRabbit. One of the first apps that I know, I was like, my God, this is amazing. This solves all of my problems. But since selling this company to IKEA, Leah, you have been so busy building the next wave of what it looks like to be in venture capital and support founders truly from a lens that I think is unprecedented. Hence, Precedent VC. You have done such an incredible job of being able to navigate this space, write books, raise children, and create a life that is truly unique and your own. I am so grateful to have you here today on Getting Rich Together. Thank you for being here.

Leah Solivan:
Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to chat.

Syama Bunten:
Fantastic. Well, let’s start from the beginning, Leah. Tell me about life between the ages of eight and twelve years old.

Leah Solivan:
Where we’re gonna go way back.

Syama Bunten:
Planet of ours. What was life like around you? What was family like? Put it back to a little girl.

Leah Solivan:
Yeah, I mean, I grew up in a tiny town in central Massachusetts. My mom was a stay-at-home mom. My father was in the Air Force for thirty-five years. He was a civilian. He ran all the training programs on Hanscom Air Force Base. So we lived kind of near the base outside of Boston. And it was just kind of a quiet, middle class, very normal, I think average upbringing. It was lovely. I have a younger sister. We’re very close.

And yeah, I enjoyed… what did I enjoy? I did a lot of ballet. I was a ballet dancer. I think that started when I was five. And I danced all through high school, college, into my twenties actually. So I was probably doing, between the ages of eight and twelve, a lot of dance competitions.

I remember though, a poignant memory from that time. I think I was around eight years old, and I remember my dad came home from the office and I asked him just randomly. I was like, “Hey dad, what’s the highest title you can have in a company?” And he told me it was being a CEO. And I was like, that’s interesting. I want to be a CEO. And so I created my first company at that time, and it was called Pollution Solutions. I basically created a recycling program in my school. It wasn’t for profit, so it was a nonprofit company. It basically was me, my sister, and my cousin digging through trash to separate it in the school. But I did set up office in our basement. I was the CEO. I made business cards. There was signage. So that must have been an early indicator of where I would go from there. I don’t know.

Syama Bunten:
That’s incredible. Did you get any awards at school for doing that? I mean, I feel like there must have been some recognition.

Leah Solivan:
I should have been. I should have been. I feel bad that I didn’t now.

Syama Bunten:
I mean, this was like before everyone was getting a gold star. I feel like there was a moment where every… yeah, when we were younger, nobody got gold stars.

Leah Solivan:
Right. It was like, just do good work and move on with your life, kids.

Syama Bunten:
Oh my god. And in high school, what kind of student were you? Were you taking time out of school to do dance? I know just how much dance can take over someone’s life. So how did you balance everything? Did your toes bleed? Tell me about high school.

Leah Solivan:
You want all the gory details? How many broken toes? If we could just attach some images to this, it’ll be good to go.

No, I enjoyed school and I was smart, but I was not the best student in that I got bored very easily with things I knew how to do. I just didn’t do them. I’d think, I know how to do it, I’m not doing it. And looking back, actually, with children today, I’m kind of like, that probably wasn’t the best thing. I probably could have gotten better grades. I was very average on my SAT scores.

I was really into dance and ballet, and that was a big part of my life. I was very focused. It taught me a lot about discipline. I’m very type A. I like to control things. I think all of that feeds into the precision and discipline of something like ballet.

But I was always kind of interested in the sciences. I was always very good at math, kind of naturally good at math, less good at reading and writing. I definitely read the Cliff Notes for all the books we were supposed to read in school. I don’t know, I kind of made my way, but it was an average sort of public school in central Massachusetts. I was just one of many and there wasn’t a lot of pressure to do more, to do anything, and it was fine. I think it was just a very nice, calm upbringing.

Syama Bunten:
Did you think at that young age that your future career would be in dance? What did you sort of know of yourself?

Leah Solivan:
Yeah, that’s a great question, because the answer is I wished it was, but I also knew deep down two things. One, I probably wasn’t technically good enough to become a professional dancer. But two, when I look back, I loved it, but you really have to sacrifice your entire life and your body and everything to be a professional dancer, and I didn’t love it that much.

I did have friends that left high school and went to boarding school ballet programs. Nutmeg was a big one in Connecticut, and it grooms professional dancers. I was never good enough to get in there, but I saw my friends do it, and that actually was a helpful calibration. I’m not gonna be that, but I still enjoyed it, and I did pick the school I went to for college based on their dance program, instead of anything else. I wanted a strong dance program. I auditioned for scholarships to schools based on their dance program.

And then when I got there, I ended up majoring in math and computer science, getting this engineering degree, and I ended up doing a dance minor. So it always stayed part of my life. But it was a big driver then.

Syama Bunten:
It’s so interesting. I feel like they say, what is it, ninety-four percent of all female CEOs played or participated in something athletic.

Leah Solivan:
Sports. Yeah, absolutely.

Syama Bunten:
So the discipline and the ability to hold yourself to a high bar and put in the long hours, talk about mental and also, in the startup world, physical training, right? Being able to stick to something and have your body withstand suffering. Not anything we like, but important.

So when you were choosing your major in college, were you thinking, I want to pursue a career in a specific lane, so these are the subjects that are going to help advance a certain direction? Or was it, hey, I’m really good at math and I like putting things together and thinking about things strategically? How well thought out were you about your post-collegiate life at that time?

Leah Solivan:
God, I wish I was more strategic. I look at how much pressure we put on our kids today about really mapping everything out. I did not have a clear plan. I liked math. I was learning about computer science. I had never programmed anything before I went to college, but I was always good at math. It was a natural inclination. And I loved computer science too, and I learned how to program.

But I wasn’t thinking, I’m gonna go do startups or be an entrepreneur. I thought I would get a programming job, but then the dot-com bubble burst. I graduated in 2001, right at the height of that. So it ended up being very difficult to get an engineering job at the time. But I was able to get a job in software development, and that was a great next step.

Syama Bunten:
I love that. And in this first sort of launching yourself into the world, was it really a matter of where you could get the best salary? Did you have your eyes set on a certain place you wanted to live? How did you think about the post-college, “how am I going to get my foot in the door”?

Leah Solivan:
As I mentioned, it was a tough time to get an engineering job. So I took a job as a quality engineer, a QA associate, which just meant I tested the code and found bugs, then wrote up the bugs and partnered with the engineers to fix them. That was basically my job.

It was a friend of the family who got me an intro to a smaller startup that was then bought by Lotus, and then Lotus was bought by IBM. So I got merged into IBM within the first six months. Again, this is 2001. There was a lot of consolidation, right? So it was a really tumultuous time to be in the industry. I got lucky in that I got my foot in the door. I got rolled into IBM through two acquisitions, and then I ended up staying at IBM for eight years as a programmer.

Syama Bunten:
And during that time span, how did you start to think about money for yourself? Were you of the mindset of, all right, I’m renting my apartment, putting money in my 401k, I’ve got savings? When did the thinking about establishing money habits, or how you were thinking about investing, kick in?

Leah Solivan:
What’s interesting is I had a small scholarship to go to the college I went to, Sweet Briar College in Virginia, because of the dance program, but I was on federal student loans. So I had student loan debt coming out of school, and that was something I had to factor in as I got my first job. I had to make those monthly payments, those started to kick in, right?

The nice thing about IBM was it set me up with a pension, a 401k, lots of benefits. It was a very stable environment for me to build a foundation on, and that was great, because I was able to pay off student loans while I was there, and I was able to save a little bit of money.

And then, the pension that IBM by default mandatorily offered was the seed money I used to start TaskRabbit. It was $27,000 in this pension after eight years of working there, and I said, this is the money I’m gonna use to start my company. So it provided stability, it provided some flexibility, and I was able to take risks in a way that, unless I had paid off my student loans and gotten a stable foundation going, I wouldn’t have been able to do.

Syama Bunten:
It’s incredible. I mean, most of the women who listen to the show are over forty, and many of them are older than that, and would understand a pension. But if anyone young is listening, they’re like, what the hell is a pension?

Leah Solivan:
They don’t do it anymore.

Syama Bunten:
Right, like, what takes care of you? There’s a way of paying off student loans and helping young people get established. It’s wonderful to know that you got to have such a great experience of being able to get yourself launched into the world.

So having that experience at IBM, then transitioning and getting an idea, and moving into this wild west of going from stability to instability, again, my question is around foresight and planning. Obviously you had a pension, you were able to use and leverage that. But as you were thinking about launching TaskRabbit and getting things off the ground, did you do any sort of inner personal work around, “my God, this is gonna be insane,” or “here’s how I’m gonna transition from this full-time job into starting this,” so you could leverage or hedge not just cash resources, but the emotional and mental load of taking so much risk?

Leah Solivan:
Yeah, so it was a couple of things. One is on the financial side, I had mapped out, if I quit my job at IBM and I withdrew the pension, how much time would I have to get this company up and running. And I gave myself six months. I felt like, six months, I’ll reassess then. I can always go back to IBM, which was really nice. I always felt like the door would have been open there if I needed to go back. I had a great relationship with my team and my boss, and that helped. I felt like I did have a safety net.

And then I think emotionally and mentally, after spending eight years in that environment, I was ready. I was ready for change and risk, and I was kind of bored being there. I felt like I had all these other skills that I wasn’t using on a daily basis at IBM, that I felt like in building my own company I would have to use. I’m also really driven and motivated by learning new things, and after eight years in that job, I felt like I knew the job and knew what I was doing, and it was pretty easy, pretty straightforward. So I was motivated by the learning, and that fed me and helped me feel really confident about taking that leap.

Syama Bunten:
That’s wonderful, to leave and know that there’s a family to come back to. If it doesn’t work, you can make another change, you have optionality.

Leah Solivan:
Absolutely. And I’ve stayed in touch with that team at IBM. In fact, we’ll get to talking about my new fund, but I needed a developer to code up something for this new fund I’m working on, and I called my boss at IBM, who I used to report to, because he had retired from IBM. I said, hey, what are you doing, want to do some contract work for me? And now he’s working with me on my fund, and we’re having so much fun. So it’s like, keeping those relationships is really important.

Syama Bunten:
That’s so powerful. And at that time, when you were in the six-month phase, thinking, I gotta make something work, I need some traction, how much exposure had you had at that time to different ways of financing the business, outside of your pension?

Leah Solivan:
That was one of the biggest learning curves I had to figure out. I had no exposure to venture capital. I did not know that people would give you money and take ownership of your company. I didn’t understand what that meant.

I remember sitting at dinner with friends, and one of them, Constance Friedman, who now runs her own fund, was finishing up her MBA at Harvard at the time, and we were neighbors, we actually met as neighbors in Boston. I was telling her about this idea for TaskRabbit, and she said, there are people out there that would invest in this and give you money. And I said, well, what do you mean they’d give me money? What happens if it doesn’t work? What happens if it fails? Do I have to give the money back? She said, no. Let me break this down for you, you silly engineer.

She was getting her business degree. I had no exposure to any of this, so it took a lot of learning. It took a lot of friends who were on different paths and tracks that I could talk to and use as a sounding board. I picked things up pretty quickly, and I figured out that there were angel investors and early stage investors I could pitch, I could talk to. So I started doing that.

I think one of the people that really made a difference was a man named Scott Griffith, who at the time was the CEO of Zipcar. I did not know him in advance. We had a mutual friend who ended up introducing us, just because I would talk to anyone who would listen to me about this idea for TaskRabbit. She said, you should meet my friend Scott, he would really like what you’re doing. But I didn’t know he was the CEO of Zipcar. I sent him a cold email and said, hey Scott, your friend AG said you’d really like my idea, let me tell you about it. And he invited me to his office, and I realized he’s the CEO of Zipcar.

That was a huge milestone for me, because he was so plugged into the industry, and he really liked the idea, and we really hit it off. He took me under his wing and said, okay, let me show you how this works, this is who you talk to, let me look at your pitch, let me give you feedback. That was extremely helpful, and it literally was a serendipitous connection.

Syama Bunten:
Wow, I love that. It’s the power of the people, right? Who you know, who connects who, how the dots happen. So spill the tea. What did it feel like when you first started pitching?

Leah Solivan:
God, pitching is so hard, especially in the beginning, because at that point you take things so personally, and you don’t realize these investors hear hundreds, if not thousands, of pitches a year. So it was hard, but because I had warm intros from Scott, at least I was reaching the right people.

Early on, two of Scott’s introductions became angel investors in TaskRabbit. They also had invested in Zipcar, so that gave me a little bit of credibility and more confidence in what I was building. That allowed me to apply to an incubator program that Facebook was running out here in California in the summer of 2009. I applied to the program and I got in, and that was a whole other step function change. So it was really hard in the beginning, it was certainly demoralizing, you feel like you take all the feedback so personally, but pretty quickly I got to the right people, I adapted the pitch, and that’s what brought me out here to the Bay Area.

Syama Bunten:
So cool. My follow-up to that is, what did it feel like when you got the first check wired to you? What was that moment like?

Leah Solivan:
It’s so funny, because I feel like every dollar I raised was so hard to get. I said I’d give myself six months, it took nine months to get that angel round of funding done. Those last three months were really treacherous, and I was thinking, what am I doing, should I just go back to IBM, maybe I should quit right now. I really wasn’t sure. There were many moments.

So although it was always a relief and an internal celebration to get the dollars in the bank, it was also so grueling, that every single dollar, it was never like a big celebration, because I was just so relieved to live another day.

Syama Bunten:
Oh my god, it’s like your own personal James Bond movie.

Leah Solivan:
That’s right. That’s what we should title this episode.

Syama Bunten:
I love that. Okay, so you successfully fundraise, fuel the business. I feel like there are these inflection moments in the beginning where everything is poured into the business, time, money, everything, certainly lots of questions, is it going to work, is it not going to work. What were some of the inflection points for you, in the building phases of this, where you really had to look at yourself in the mirror and think, all right, I’ve got my own back, I don’t know what’s going on, but I know this is gonna be okay?

Leah Solivan:
Yeah, I mean, every day I felt some extent of that, because I was learning so much and I hadn’t ever done it before. I had never built a team, never hired anyone, never fired anyone, never built a financial model, never run a marketing plan. There were just a lot of learnings.

But at some point I decided, you know what, none of this is rocket science, I can figure it out. I had to keep that mentality of, I’ll figure it out, I’ll figure it out, and every day was just another twenty-four hours to figure out something new. That was the mode I ran in for the entire life of the company. And it was great, I loved it.

Syama Bunten:
That’s incredible. Were there moments where you started to feel more stability, where you started to feel like, okay, I can now buy the thing I need, that breathing room moment?

Leah Solivan:
Yeah, I think after we raised the Series A round of financing, the seed round was hard, the pre-seed was hard, the seed was hard, the A was hard, it was all hard. But once I got the Series A financing done and in the bank, I felt like, I can build a team that can help me do this, we’re now live in two cities, not just one, it’s not just me running around Boston on my scooter delivering errands for people.

From that point on, I had great investors behind me, supporting me. We’d built a product that people loved, and we got to see every day how they used it, the stories of the connections that happened on the platform. Those were always indications of success. When I saw a match made and a task getting done, to me that was success. I think after that, probably 2011, things started to feel like they were on a good trajectory.

Syama Bunten:
That’s amazing. And at what point during this tenure did you start to realize that not only can you receive the checks, but this idea of investing, when did the light bulb go on that you could really be an ecosystem builder from both sides of the table?

Leah Solivan:
That didn’t happen until a little bit closer to the exit, because I had so much liquidity tied up in the business. When we exited, I did have some liquidity to put in other places, and I knew I wanted to invest in other founders and be an angel investor.

One of the very first deals I did was actually right as we were selling TaskRabbit. We knew the transaction was going to happen, this was in 2016, 2017. I remember because I was pregnant with my second child, and he was born in August of 2016. I was looking for a baby monitor for him, and for my first I used the old analog sound machine, whatever. I thought, come on, technology, there’s gotta be a computer vision version of this. It was early, early days of Nanit.

I found Nanit, I found the founder, Assaf, on LinkedIn. He’s Israeli, he was living in New York. I cold reached out to him and said, I want to invest in your company. That was the first angel deal I did, and I have a great relationship with him as well. That was kind of like, wow, I can now give back to the ecosystem and help other founders build their businesses too, and I love it.

Syama Bunten:
It’s so great. I feel like whatever the task is at hand, there are so many ways you can approach it, the investor, the builder, the connector, that ability to be of service and to build. I think it’s really beautiful. Were there any moments, either while building or maybe at the sale of the business, where you bought something special for yourself, that commemorates or marks a moment? Maybe it was the first house, or something deeply meaningful that let you know you were doing it?

Leah Solivan:
Yeah, I remember, I think it was at the Series C round of financing for TaskRabbit, I sold a little bit of secondary and I paid off my parents’ mortgage back in Massachusetts. My parents were like, what, what are you doing? And I said, I can do this, let me do this for you. And I did.

They had a thirty year mortgage they were paying down, and they were like, I don’t know when this is gonna actually get paid off, and then I was able to do it. So that was a really nice moment.

Syama Bunten:
When’s the last time anyone asked you what money actually meant to you growing up? Not how to budget it, what it meant. That’s the reason I built the Money Story Reset. Five reflections on the beliefs shaping your relationship with money, and my own stories are included in every single one, including the parts I normally don’t say out loud. I didn’t write this from the outside, I did every page myself first. It’s free, the link is in the show notes, or go straight to wealthcatalyst.com/reset. That’s wealthcatalyst.com/reset.

At the time when you were getting ready to sell, how did you start to think about that being the option? Who did you turn to? How did you know it was time? Did you spend any time preparing for the emotional and mental identity crisis that can follow? Talk to me about that experience.

Leah Solivan:
Well, at that point we were coming up on almost ten years of running the company, it was nine years in. IKEA was a partner of ours, a business development partnership, we were live in their London store assembling IKEA furniture, and that was going very well.

We were also thinking about raising a growth round of financing to open more international markets. We were only live in the UK at that point, and obviously all across the US as well, it was like 44 cities total plus London. But we saw the opportunity for growth more internationally than domestically. So we thought about raising a growth round, we talked to investors about that.

At the same time, the partnership with IKEA was going so well, they knew we were raising money, and we thought, maybe they’ll be a strategic investor. That conversation snowballed into maybe they’re a strategic buyer. Then we had to get bankers, run a process, and in the end we had three offers. I was really excited about IKEA from the beginning because I felt like we had such a match and shared values, we were both mission-driven companies. I had visited their headquarters in Sweden, seen how much they cared about sustainability, they’re family owned, they’re private, there was a lot of values incorporated into how they run that business. I felt like TaskRabbit would be a great fit with their culture, and it has been.

In the end we decided to move forward with IKEA, but I remember the board call where we made the decision officially. It was obvious the votes were going to go that way, but we went around one by one. It wasn’t a Zoom call, it was a board call, because this was 2017. First our Series A investor voted, but before he voted he said all these nice things about the company and about working with me and with Stacy, and I thought, that’s so nice. Then the Series B investor said something, all these nice things, and then the next investor, and then our lawyer said, it’s just been such a pleasure. By the time they got to me I was sobbing. Of course I put in my vote, but I was so grateful for the journey and for the support. I will forever remember that phone call, that moment.

Syama Bunten:
And then what happened, the moment after?

Leah Solivan:
Oh my god, yeah. I had just had my second baby, born in August of 2016, and this was 2017. I did have moments of thinking, wow, TaskRabbit was my identity, what am I gonna do now, will I stay relevant? I remember saying to a friend, am I gonna stay relevant, and I was upset. She was so funny, her name’s Lily, and the next week I came to her and said, oh my god, Guy Raz called and he wants to interview me. She said, remember when you were crying last week about staying relevant, will you just relax, okay? So it was kind of funny.

But I realized over time that although TaskRabbit was a big part of my life, it wasn’t my identity. I still had a path to pave after TaskRabbit, and that’s why I chose to go over to the investing side. Specifically, I feel this deep obligation, because of the success I’ve had, to really pull others along, and to not just be happy with the success of myself, but to create a path for others. Investing gives me the opportunity to do that, and that’s what’s been so fulfilling. Now I realize all my time at TaskRabbit was actually preparing me for this job, which is what I really, really love doing.

Syama Bunten:
So amazing. At this point, when you had this great liquidity event, who did you hire on your personal team to help you start to think about, or had you already had these people in place, where to invest the money, or how to think about what life would need to look like now? Who did you turn to, and what did your team start to look like?

Leah Solivan:
Definitely when we did the secondary and I paid the mortgage for my parents, that was with the help of a financial advisor who looked at things and said, yes, you can do this. I continued to work with them, build up that team, and then get in place things like trusts, do some estate planning and tax planning. All those pieces became more and more important, and I was able to get referrals and references from my investors or other entrepreneurs I was friends with on who they were using as well.

Syama Bunten:
I feel like there’s something so important about who the right staff is. There are so many unknown unknowns that, unless you’ve got the right people you can trust, it can be challenging to navigate. It’s great that you’ve had, pretty consistently, Leah, really smart, kind people around you who’ve wanted to see you succeed and get you connected to all the right people.

Leah Solivan:
It makes a huge difference. People are the most important thing, yes.

Syama Bunten:
It’s really incredible. So how much time did you take, if any, before you decided to go fully two feet into launching a fund? I know you sit on a number of boards, you’re a provider. How did you think about what was going to fill your time? I think how we spend our time and our money are really the most important ways in which we show up in the world. How did you make decisions around that time and space?

Leah Solivan:
I think I was instantly drawn to venture capital as a way to extend my angel track record and work with more teams and founders. I joined another fund at the time called Fuel Capital, we have three funds under management, and I got to learn the craft of venture, the operations behind venture, the back office pieces, over the last nine years or so.

Then I joined some boards, I’m on some public boards, I’m on the board of the San Francisco Ballet, which ties back to my passion for ballet, and I’m very involved in YPO as well, Young Presidents Organization. But more recently I felt this pull and this obligation to do more, and do it in my own way. That’s what spawned the fund, Precedent VC.

It didn’t actually start with the fund, it started with my own podcast called Breaking Precedent, where I’ve interviewed leaders across industries who are shifting society in some way, a lot of business and tech folks, but also artists and activists and politicians and Broadway producers. I talked to all of them about what it took in their journeys to break through and how they did it. That podcast then snowballed into a book. I have a book coming out next summer called Breaking Precedent, and it’ll include some TaskRabbit stories I’ve never told before, how we helped shape the gig economy and the future of work. It’ll give readers a toolkit and a framework, if they’re trying to break through something, how to do it.

It was really after the podcast and the book became established, not just ideas in my head but real projects, that I decided to launch the fund, Precedent VC. The idea is to back this next generation of category-defining, precedent-setting companies building for the consumer. Why consumer? Because I love consumer, I’ve built a consumer company myself and sold it. I also think we’re at this crazy inflection point right now with technology, specifically AI, which is changing consumer behavior so rapidly. This next generation of iconic companies are going to be building for this new consumer behavior in this new generation. That’s why I decided to do the fund, that’s why I called it Precedent VC, and I’m really excited about working with a whole new crop of founders.

Syama Bunten:
I love it. It seems like there’s a sense of fearlessness, Leah, around all of this. You have four littles.

Leah Solivan:
Or insanity. Talk about insane, yeah.

Syama Bunten:
So tell me, what do they think mom does? What is their experience on their side of things?

Leah Solivan:
They’re so funny. My oldest, Naz, she’s my only daughter, I think she understands the most, obviously. I enjoy that she can see and understand me as a businesswoman, someone who works and is doing big things. I would like being that role model for her. She’s always thinking about her own ideas and businesses, she started her Etsy page selling bracelets when she was eight, so that’s kind of fun.

Then the boys, the three boys I have, there’s a wide range there. But my five year old, his favorite thing to do, and he begged me to do it for this interview, is he likes to sit under my desk while I’m doing a podcast. And then at the very end, sometimes he likes to pop up and say hello to whoever I’m talking to. He’s not here right now, but yeah, it’s kind of funny, especially if they’re coming home from school and I’m on a call or something, he busts right in, he’s like, can I say hi, I wanna say hi.

Syama Bunten:
I love that. This conversation, it’s really this concept of getting rich together, learning from each other’s stories, hearing, right? I feel like we can always find ourselves in each other, and there are all these different ways in which we’ve all been navigating individually our lives and figuring things out as we go. How are you guys thinking about talking about money as a family? What are some of the ways in which you’re anticipating, or have you already started to think about how you want to talk about it, or how you want to relate to it, or how you want the kids to experience it?

Leah Solivan:
Yeah, I think we are really careful about it. A couple of tactical things we’ve done, anytime the kids want something or ask for something, they do have allowances, they do their weekly chores, right, and then they get their ten dollars or whatever for an allowance. But if they want anything beyond that, I actually ordered these ledgers, paper ledgers, and I make them do the accounting. Write out what it is, write out how much it is, add, subtract, have your little balance sheet, subtract out your allowance.

I’m trying to make it an exercise around understanding how money flows in and out, how much you have, how you can budget, because I think all those concepts are really important. So that’s kind of the main thing that’s fun that we do with the kids around money.

Syama Bunten:
I love that. As you’re thinking now about Precedent, and where, it’s hard to know where it goes, right, there are gonna be so many exciting opportunities, especially to create so much impact in a variety of ways when you’re managing a fund. As you think about this body of work you’re creating, and I feel like today we’re all living so much longer now than ever, let’s put you into the future about sixty years, which puts you as a teenager today. What are some of the values, and some of the things in this life, that you’re really looking forward to reflecting back on?

Leah Solivan:
Yeah, I think for me it really comes down to this idea of precedent, and specifically with venture capital, for me it’s about who gets funding, who gets to create businesses, who gets backed, how are those decisions being made. I feel like everything I am doing right now, between the podcast, the book, the fund, who I’m raising money from, my LPs, it’s all really connected to changing the venture ecosystem and giving more people more access than what they’ve traditionally had. I feel very passionate about that. I feel like I’ve been very lucky with the path I’ve been able to walk, and again, I just want to be able to pave the way for others as well. So that’s a big part of my thesis in creating this precedent-breaking ecosystem.

Syama Bunten:
I love that. Could you go a little further on what you think needs to change about this venture ecosystem, and your philosophy on access, and how that gets nurtured?

Leah Solivan:
Yeah, I was just talking with Paige Hendricks Buckner a couple of weeks ago on my podcast, she’s the CEO of All Raise, a nonprofit focused on providing more access in venture capital. One of the big topics we discussed, which I don’t think is brought up enough, is the myth that venture capital and entrepreneurship is a meritocracy, because it’s not. It really is about your proximity to power, your network, who you know, what warm intros you can get.

And listen, I started from nothing, I started from nowhere, and I built my way up and I built my way in. Sure, some of that has to do with merit, of course, but a lot of it has to do too with just hard work and luck and really grinding my way through.

As I think about that, I think about how we can make venture capital more accessible, more democratized, to more people who have great ideas but maybe don’t have the network, don’t have the proximity to power to get a round raised, to get a deal done. The stats are bleak, and they haven’t changed. Two percent of women receive venture capital funding for their businesses. I’m Latina, and it’s 0.62 percent for Latinas. It’s insane, it’s completely crazy, and those numbers have not changed in the course of a decade or more.

It really comes down to, I think the system needs to be broken down and the flow of capital needs to change. That’s why I’m doing my own fund, I don’t want to be attached to anyone else’s frameworks or rules or philosophies, I have my own. One of the things I’ve done, and I think a lot of funds are doing this now too, is opening up the deals that can come into Precedent VC. You don’t have to know me, you just have to email, I created an email address, deals@precedent.vc. Anyone can email it with their pitch, their deal, whatever. I don’t even read them, I’ve created an AI copilot that reads all of those pitches, all of those emails, scores them based on market size, on traction, on competitive landscape, whatever it is, summarizes it and shows me what those deals are coming in at.

It removes some of the bias in the system around, who do I know, do I know this person, what is their LinkedIn, it’s like, no, just show me what they’re building. I think that is a systems change that has started and will become more pervasive. With AI too, I’m an optimist, I think AI can really help remove bias, I think it can help democratize access, and this is just one of the ways I see it and I’m using it.

Syama Bunten:
I love that. It’s being able to take that bias out and to accurately judge something, it’s only possible if you can remove yourself, right? You can’t self-talk it, I’m gonna read this and not apply bias, it doesn’t work that way. I think that’s a fantastic application of thinking about AI integration that ultimately will help connect people to the right capital.

So we’ve talked a lot about all sorts of things related to money. I love that you were able to help support your family, I love what you’re doing with your kids, I always find that the first angel check is always the most exciting, that was so great to hear. What are some of the most fun, recent things you’ve done with your money? Not necessarily on the serious side, not investing, but something that’s been fun, because money can also provide us with great experiences and is also something to be celebrated.

Leah Solivan:
I totally agree, and I think you can buy things and then forget about them, but experiences are something that creates memories and moments. We are big on that as a family, we love to travel. I didn’t get to travel a lot growing up with my family, the first time I was out of the country I was in college, that was the first time I got a passport and traveled with my professor in school out of the country. So we do a lot of international travel.

Coming up, I’ve planned for 27 family members a family reunion in Puerto Rico. My father is from Puerto Rico and he has not been back to the island for over 15 years. His sister’s coming, his older brother, all my cousins, and we’re gonna go back and do a family reunion for his 80th birthday. I’m gonna bring all my kids, it’s the first time they’ll have been to Puerto Rico as well. It’s such an exciting thing, we’re leaving in just a few days. I hope it’s something my kids remember and becomes part of their constitution, because it’s part of their heritage and history as well.

Syama Bunten:
That’s so wonderful. I always love to ask our guests what they need. What are you calling in? What can our audience support you with? What is on your heart and mind? What can we do for you?

Leah Solivan:
That is so kind. I think for me it’s really about the book that’s coming out next summer, I’m finishing writing it now, it’ll get published July, August, we don’t have a date yet. In the meantime, just checking out my podcast, following me on Instagram, I’m excited and waiting to hear about the book, I’m really excited to share it with audiences when it’s ready.

Syama Bunten:
Amazing. Leah, you’re a total rock star. Thank you for sharing so generously and so openly about all the different things, and for being here today on Getting Rich Together. I appreciate you.

Leah Solivan:
It was so much fun. Thanks for having me.

Syama Bunten:
Thank you for listening. This is the conversation we come back to every single week. Real women, real wealth, and what becomes possible when we stop being silent about money. If today’s episode moved you, don’t let it stop here. Wealth Catalyst is where women go to take it further. Our Freedom Tour salons are gathering women in 32 cities this year, intimate evenings in homes and private spaces where women talk honestly about money, risk, and what they’re building.

And if you’re ready to go even bigger, join us at the Wealth Catalyst Summit, a full day event in San Francisco this October. Find your city and claim your seat at wealthcatalyst.com. We’ll see you there.