Leah Solivan: The Best Decisions Are Made When You’re Well Rested
Welcome to All Raise’s Women Crush Weekly (#WCW), a series where we highlight genius women who are funding or founding tech companies. Please come back to the All Raise Medium blog weekly to find a new profile of an awe-inspiring female VC or founder. This week our crush is Leah Solivan, General Partner at Fuel Capital and founder of TaskRabbit.
When she was a founder, Leah Solivan saw it all. As the founder of TaskRabbit, Leah created a household name and company that was my saving grace as I looked, aghast, at furniture assembly directions during my post-college move to SF. Over her time at TaskRabbit, Leah led the charge in scaling TaskRabbit operations to over 44 cities and raising more than $50 million in venture capital funding. In 2017, Leah brought her talents to Fuel Capital, where she joined Founding Partner Chris Howard as a General Partner. Fuel Capital is a generalist early-stage venture firm currently investing out of a $75 million Fund III. The combination of Leah’s operating experience, Chris’s investment experience, and Chief Marketing Officer Jamie Viggiano’s marketing expertise gives Fuel a unique ability to target and advise early-stage companies as they make key tactical decisions that could define their future.
As Leah continued to invest in companies and meet more and more entrepreneurs, she noticed an issue that had often plagued her during her own time as an entrepreneur — burnout. Remembering her own experiences with burnout, which included many nights sleeping under desks and a stress-induced medical emergency, she knew she wanted to prevent the same in Fuel entrepreneurs. Fuel Capital launched a new series called “ReFUEL,” which serves as the antidote to the typical Silicon Valley networking. ReFUEL events included Barry’s Bootcamp or SoulCycle classes (a passion Leah and I share) and eventually culminated in a two-day Refuel Retreat to give entrepreneurs the tools to help prevent burnout, make better decisions and be better leaders for their companies and teams. The ReFUEL Retreat included helpful sessions on meditation, fitness, and nutrition, a session I wish I had gotten to attend every time I wander aimlessly around Trader Joe’s. I chatted with Leah about her own experiences dealing with burnout as an entrepreneur and some skills learned at the ReFUEL Retreat.
Q: Why do you think “founder burnout” is such a prevalent issue?
A: I ran TaskRabbit for almost a decade. During that time, there were a lot of highs and a lot of lows and really everything in between. It was a time where I did not focus on being healthy — mentally, physically, or emotionally. My mindset was just one of go, go, go, go, go. And the Silicon Valley culture reinforced this type of behavior. One particular experience that stands out is when an investor told me that posting photos of my children on the weekend made it look like I wasn’t working hard enough. I think that many times founders are under so much pressure from their teams and investors to perform. The philosophy in Silicon Valley seems to be that you need to completely burn the candle at both ends, 24/7 to succeed.
As a fellow founder, you can look an entrepreneur in the eye and really understand where they’re coming from and what they are dealing with. I think the late nights where you end up sleeping under the desk is just not a healthy way to operate. It’s important that strategic decisions be made when you’re well-rested and thinking straight. For most people, it’s not ideal to be making huge decisions while working 100-hour weeks and dealing with immense pressure and stress. . You can see decision-making suffer when founders are really burnt out.
Q: Was there a moment for you when you felt you had burnout?
The pivotal moment for me was eight years in to building TaskRabbit when I was raising the company’s last round of funding. I was looking to raise only about $3 million, which would have gotten us to profitability. This small round ended up being the hardest money to raise in the entire history of the company. One day during this raise, I was taking a walk with a fellow founder and as I got in my car to drive home, my stomach started to hurt. When I got home, I literally couldn’t move because I was in so much pain. I finally went to the ER and after all kinds of tests, the doctor came in and said “Have you been under a lot of stress lately?”. I said “Yes,” kind of laughing to myself. He told me my colon was inflamed and the size of a grapefruit. He said, “We think it’s stress-induced. There’s nothing really explaining it other than just being under a lot of stress.” So, I ended up spending the next five days in the hospital getting pumped full of antibiotics. It was actually from that hospital bed that I got that last round of funding done. In an interesting twist, it was that deal that led to the partnership with and ultimately acquisition by IKEA. So, there is a happy ending to the whole story. But ,it was that experience that left me thinking about the immense amount of stress that founders are under and how it not only impacts their own physical health but also the health of their organization. It got me thinking… What type of example was I setting for my team? How was I showing up for them each and every day if that was my physical and mental state?
Q: How do you help founders in your portfolio deal with burnout?
A: Brainstorming with our team, which includes Chris Howard, the founder of Fuel, and Jamie Viggiano, who was also with me at TaskRabbit, we came up with this event series called “ReFUEL.” We started out with regional events — taking over classes at SoulCycle or Barry’s Bootcamp. We wanted ReFUEL to be the antidote to the traditional networking event (which typically includes drinks and lots of food). We wanted to do something that really promoted the culture that we wanted to see built across our portfolio companies. In October of last year, our ReFUEL series culminated in a “ReFUEL Retreat” for the CEOs in our portfolio. The Retreat was held at the Skywalker Ranch in Marin. For two days, we gave our founders permission to reboot, refuel, recharge, and helped them learn some techniques to cope as a founder, which they ultimately could bring back to their teams. . We brought in speakers including nutritionists, meditation experts, sports psychologists and more. We
Q: Why do you think it’s important for you to teach your founders coping mechanisms to deal with burnout?
A: The coping mechanisms can really help them as they face difficult times in their journey, which are inevitable. The founder road is full of ups and downs and is always go-go-go. They can also take those techniques back to their team, which we believe will in turn create healthy, sustainable company cultures. That’s the basis of our philosophy and thinking here at Fuel. We believe that we’re not just investing in companies. We’re investing in people. When you invest in people, it’s important to consider the whole person and what it’s going to take for them to be healthy and focused so they can build their company. Chris and I have seen bad behavior and cultures that are unhealthy, that are not inclusive, that are not friendly towards women or underrepresented minorities. I believe that Silicon Valley embraces and celebrates burnout, thinking that is how you build a successful team and business. I believe there’s another path to success — one where founders can take a more balanced approach.
Q: What are some coping mechanism founders learned during your retreat?
A: One of our most popular sessions was led by Will Kabat-Zinn, a meditation leader and expert. He works at Spirit Rock, and runs several retreats. He led us on a three-hour meditation. We thought it was pretty risky to put 50 founders in a room and ask them to be silent for three hours but it turned out to be our most popular session! Will is such a master at really breaking down your thoughts and slowing down your mind. It’s all about being really intentional about what you’re thinking and feeling and seeing and acknowledging why that’s important and how that can give you clarity even when there’s chaos all around you — all the time. We all learned how to practice some of those meditation techniques. We also had Kelly McGonigal, a Stanford professor, who wrote a book that came out in late 2019 called The Joy of Movement. She talked about the theories behind physical activity that can change your brain chemistry and help you become a better leader and decision maker.
Q: Which wellness techniques do you personally find helpful when managing a stressful career in startups/VC?
I have a few regular practices to help me manage stress. The first is daily exercise. I am a big fan of cycling and SoulCycle and try to take a class there a few times a week. If I can’t make it to class, I will do a Peloton ride at home. Even if I do just 20 minutes a day, it’s enough to clear my mind. The second is meditation, which I have been doing for the past 12 months or so. I make this a daily practice and get up early so I can meditate before the craziness of the day begins.
