Startups are often quick to say they value diversity, but slow to implement hiring practices that reflect it. It’s the path of least resistance for a growth-stage company to hire from Silicon Valley’s established pipelines, but if a founder wants a diverse team, that value must be put into practice from the very first hire.
Leah Solivan, the founder of Taskrabbit and its founder and CEO Precedent.VCjoined Isabelle Johannessen at Build Mode to discuss how she thought about hiring while leading Taskrabbit. As the company scaled from Solivan’s personal credit card startup to one of the gig economy’s defining platforms, the leadership team intentionally sought out different talent for each role.
Diversity does not happen by accident. Solivan and their team built this into every aspect of the 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, it’s more diverse and it feeds on itself. It becomes an ecosystem. It’s too late if you wait until you scale and it’s at the end,” Solivan said.
Every startup has a talent network 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, starts with who invests in those founders. As an early-stage investor, Solivan has seen money flow from both sides of the table.
“If you follow the money through the system, it comes from limited partners and they’re the ones who decide who to give the money to, the venture capitalists. And from there, the venture capitalists choose which founders to invest in,” Solivan said. “The money is there, but it’s controlled by people who have different biases.”
However, a founder or the VCs backing them need not be underrepresented to purposefully hire from a diverse pool of talent. Solivan suggests aiming to see two resumes from female candidates for every male resume, tap into a wider range of networks, and promote people from diverse backgrounds into leadership roles.
“You’re asking someone to walk off the edge of a cliff — let’s make a net for them to jump over,” Sullivan said.
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New episodes of Construction mode drop every Thursday. Isabelle Johannessen introduced. Produced and edited by Maggie Nye. Audience Development led by Morgan Little. Special thanks to the Foundry and Cheddar video teams.
