Diverse teams start with diverse VCs

Startups are often quick to say they value diversity but are slow to implement hiring practices that reflect that. It is the path of least resistance for a growth-stage company to hire from the familiar Silicon Valley pipelines, but if a founder wants a diverse team, that value has to be put into practice from the very first hire. 

Leah Solivan, the founder of Taskrabbit and founder and managing director of Precedent.VC, joined Isabelle Johannessen on Build Mode to discuss how she thought about hiring while leading Taskrabbit. As the company scaled from being bootstrapped on Solivan’s personal credit cards to becoming one of the defining platforms of the gig economy, the leadership team intentionally sought out diverse talent for each role.

Diversity doesn’t happen by accident. Solivan and their team built it into every aspect of their recruiting and hiring process. “But if you do that from the beginning, then it becomes easier, because the culture that’s built, the team that’s built, the network that you’ve built as a company, is more diverse, and it feeds itself. It becomes an ecosystem. It’s too late if you wait until you’ve scaled and it’s at the end,” said Solivan.

Every startup has a network of talent with the founder at its center, and it stands to reason that the network will reflect the founder’s community. So a more diverse tech industry, in many ways, begins with who is investing in these founders. As an early-stage investor, Solivan has seen the flow of money from both sides of the table. 

“If you follow the money through the system, it comes from limited partners, and they’re the ones that decide who to give the money to, venture capitalists. And from there, then the venture capitalists choose which founders they’re going to invest in,“ said Solivan. “The money is there, but it’s being controlled by people that have different biases.”

However, a founder or the VCs backing them don’t have to be underrepresented to intentionally hire from a diverse talent pool. Solivan suggests setting the goal of seeing two résumés from female candidates for every one male résumé, tapping into a wider range of networks, and promoting people from different backgrounds into leadership roles.

“You’re asking someone to walk off the edge of a cliff — let’s build a net for them to jump into,” said Solivan

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New episodes of Build Mode drop every Thursday. Hosted by Isabelle Johannessen. Produced and edited by Maggie Nye. Audience development led by Morgan Little. Special thanks to the Foundry and Cheddar video teams.