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Leah Busque

General Partner, Fuel Capital · 1 appearance on the record.

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founderinvestor

Leah Busque is an American entrepreneur and investor who founded the online labor marketplace TaskRabbit. She subsequently joined early-stage venture firm Fuel Capital as a General Partner.

10statements → 2claims → 1claims resolved → 3.9/5average certainty → 1.7/5average debate potential → ≈4.0/5argument clarity, estimated → 8said about them ↓

1 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not checkable as stated how the 2 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

1 prediction · 1 assertion · 3 insights · 5 disclosures · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertion are the 2 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, and 1 names no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Leah argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
TaskRabbit employees were sometimes unaware Leah Busque's direct report was her husband
“In fact, people at TaskRabbit sometimes did not know that we were married. And Kevin sat in exec meetings. He reported directly to me.”
Leah Busque Mar 19, 2018 ▶ 30:41 20VC: Finding VC Partners That Look Beyond The Numbers, The Black Box of VC Secrets That Needs To Be Shared & The 1,000 Reasons A VC Won't Invest In You When It Has Nothing To Do With You with Leah Busque, General Partner @ Fuel Capital

How they sound: speaking style how? →

207 words/min while actually speaking · 2.5 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Leah Busque: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews. Their coarse estimate from 26 exchanges on the produced feed is ≈4.0/5, shown at half point precision because the sample is small and produced tape scores higher.

Measured by listening to 4,877 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Leah Busque is the aired feed, and an editor cleaned that audio before release. Some of the hesitation was cut before we ever heard it, so read these as floors: the true rates are at least this high. These are measurements of speaking style, not scores. How it's measured →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Across 1 rated episode:

host pushback ▾ 2/10
pushed back at the host 1/10
setup questions received 85%

Everything Leah Busque said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Prediction Not checkable as stated
The next billion-dollar business will come from an underrepresented founder
“I believe that the next billion dollar business Is going to come from a woman. It's going to come from a person of color. It's going to come from someone who does not fit the typical mold.”
Leah Busque Mar 19, 2018 ▶ 18:42 20VC: Finding VC Partners That Look Beyond The Numbers, The Black Box of VC Secrets That Needs To Be Shared & The 1,000 Reasons A VC Won't Invest In You When It Has Nothing To Do With You with Leah Busque, General Partner @ Fuel Capital
Insight
Venture success is not about squeezing founders for extra equity ownership
“I don't think it's about optimizing the deal and the structure and, you know, squeezing out that extra 50 basis points of ownership. I just don't think it's about that in the long run.”
Leah Busque Mar 19, 2018 ▶ 15:32 20VC: Finding VC Partners That Look Beyond The Numbers, The Black Box of VC Secrets That Needs To Be Shared & The 1,000 Reasons A VC Won't Invest In You When It Has Nothing To Do With You with Leah Busque, General Partner @ Fuel Capital
Insight
Venture capital returns flow sequentially from founder and company success
“When the founder is successful, the company is successful, and the venture investor is successful. And it happens in that order.”
Leah Busque Mar 19, 2018 ▶ 15:05 20VC: Finding VC Partners That Look Beyond The Numbers, The Black Box of VC Secrets That Needs To Be Shared & The 1,000 Reasons A VC Won't Invest In You When It Has Nothing To Do With You with Leah Busque, General Partner @ Fuel Capital
Insight
Pleasing one side of a marketplace platform usually angers the other
“Okay, so no one is ever happy with you. If you change things on one side and customers are really happy, chances are that on the other side of the marketplace, you've really made someone mad, and that, that is also just the complex nature of a marketplace busi…”
Leah Busque Mar 19, 2018 ▶ 25:59 20VC: Finding VC Partners That Look Beyond The Numbers, The Black Box of VC Secrets That Needs To Be Shared & The 1,000 Reasons A VC Won't Invest In You When It Has Nothing To Do With You with Leah Busque, General Partner @ Fuel Capital
Assertion Supported
TaskRabbit employees were sometimes unaware Leah Busque's direct report was her husband
“In fact, people at TaskRabbit sometimes did not know that we were married. And Kevin sat in exec meetings. He reported directly to me.”
Leah Busque Mar 19, 2018 ▶ 30:41 20VC: Finding VC Partners That Look Beyond The Numbers, The Black Box of VC Secrets That Needs To Be Shared & The 1,000 Reasons A VC Won't Invest In You When It Has Nothing To Do With You with Leah Busque, General Partner @ Fuel Capital
Disclosure
Fuel Capital targets pre-seed, seed, and small Series A funding rounds
“So at fuel we tend to get involved at the earliest stages. If you're raising a pre-seed round or a seed round or maybe a small series A round, that's usually our sweet spot.”
Leah Busque Mar 19, 2018 ▶ 11:18 20VC: Finding VC Partners That Look Beyond The Numbers, The Black Box of VC Secrets That Needs To Be Shared & The 1,000 Reasons A VC Won't Invest In You When It Has Nothing To Do With You with Leah Busque, General Partner @ Fuel Capital
Disclosure
Fuel Capital typically avoids leading investment rounds despite past exceptions
“We don't typically lead deals, although we have in the past.”
Leah Busque Mar 19, 2018 ▶ 11:32 20VC: Finding VC Partners That Look Beyond The Numbers, The Black Box of VC Secrets That Needs To Be Shared & The 1,000 Reasons A VC Won't Invest In You When It Has Nothing To Do With You with Leah Busque, General Partner @ Fuel Capital
Disclosure
TaskRabbit consistently operated with positive contribution margins and fiscal responsibility
“For TaskRabbit, we always operated in a way that we were contribution positive and very, very fiscally responsible”
Leah Busque Mar 19, 2018 ▶ 16:39 20VC: Finding VC Partners That Look Beyond The Numbers, The Black Box of VC Secrets That Needs To Be Shared & The 1,000 Reasons A VC Won't Invest In You When It Has Nothing To Do With You with Leah Busque, General Partner @ Fuel Capital
Disclosure
Leah Busque meets with between 30 and 100 startups every month
“Now that I meet 30 companies a month minimum, I mean, sometimes it's more, sometimes it's a hundred. You're meeting two or three companies a day.”
Leah Busque Mar 19, 2018 ▶ 19:29 20VC: Finding VC Partners That Look Beyond The Numbers, The Black Box of VC Secrets That Needs To Be Shared & The 1,000 Reasons A VC Won't Invest In You When It Has Nothing To Do With You with Leah Busque, General Partner @ Fuel Capital
Disclosure
Fuel Capital completes approximately one startup investment deal per month
“We at Fuel do about a deal a month-ish, something like that”
Leah Busque Mar 19, 2018 ▶ 20:25 20VC: Finding VC Partners That Look Beyond The Numbers, The Black Box of VC Secrets That Needs To Be Shared & The 1,000 Reasons A VC Won't Invest In You When It Has Nothing To Do With You with Leah Busque, General Partner @ Fuel Capital

The other half of the tape: Leah Busque's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 8 times in 4 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 5Ann Miura-Ko 3

Every mention by year

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: Finding VC Partners That Look Beyond The Numbers, The Black Box of VC Secrets That N Mar 19, 2018 25m
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