Leah Busque
General Partner, Fuel Capital. On 2 shows, 1 appearance, plus 1 compilation re-air not counted. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
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.
2shows
1appearances
16statements
1resolved
1supported
0contradicted
100%fully supported
8said about them ↓ Everything Leah Busque said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Busque: Founders Must Be Willing to Fire Legacy Customers to Scale
“We realized that, you know what, maybe a lot of these customers that had been with us for a long time that just really loved this auction bidding based platform, maybe they were the wrong customers. Maybe they were the ones that weren't going to take us into t…”
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.”
Busque: TaskRabbit's NPS Plunged to Negative After Overnight US Product Pivot
“We also had net promoter score which you might be familiar with, measuring just that customer happiness on the marketplace. It went from, like, we were probably in, like, the sixties or seventies, it went down to, like, negative.”
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.”
Busque: TaskRabbit Threw Away Its Entire Codebase in 2014
“In 2014, we threw away the entire code base and started from scratch.”
Busque: Instant Booking Launch in London Doubled Core Metrics at TaskRabbit
“We launched London and we immediately saw a lift actually doubling in core metrics, like repeat usage, like the number of tasks posted on a daily basis, like the engagement from our tasker community even, and how many jobs that they were completing. So all of …”
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.”
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…”
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.”
Busque: TaskRabbit Presented Disaster Relief Tech to Obama at White House
“Now fast forward three years later, we actually were invited to the White House to present to President Obama and his team about how TaskRabbit and the technology platform could be used to connect people in disaster recovery and relief situations.”
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.”
Fuel Capital typically avoids leading investment rounds despite past exceptions
“We don't typically lead deals, although we have in the past.”
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 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.”
Fuel Capital completes approximately one startup investment deal per month
“We at Fuel do about a deal a month-ish, something like that”
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 across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 5Ann Miura-Ko 3
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 8
2018 5 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: Lessons From Scaling Trulia to IPO, How To Maximise Your Impact within Your Organisation and Why No One Is Ever 100% Ready For The Next Job with Heather Fernandez, Founder @ CEO @ Solv
- 20VC: Why Your Board Are Right 50% of The Time, Biggest Lessons From Being Mentored By Reed Hastings & Raising $130m in Funding and The Balance Between Growth and Capital Efficiency with James Reinhart, Founder & CEO @ ThredUp
- 20VC: Why VCs Are Wrong About Single Founders, The Benefits of Party Rounds At Seed and How To Pre-Game Your Launch To Have Customers From Day 1 with Amanda Bradford, Founder & CEO @ The League
- every mention in 2018, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Leah's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | General Partner, Fuel Capital | 1 | 10 | 100% 1/1 | full record on 20VC → |
 SAASTRLEDGER | General Partner, Fuel Capital | 0 +1 | 6 | — | full record on the Official SaaStr Podcast → |