Leah Solivan Speaking Fee: $20,000 to $30,000

Leah Solivan sits at an intersection most people only read about: she has been the founder in the room, the CEO making the call, the seller across the table from a Fortune 500 acquirer, and now the investor deciding which founders get the chance to do it all over again. What she brings to a stage is not a single story — it's a complete view of what building actually looks like across every phase. Today, Leah is a Managing Director at Precedent.vc, where she manages three funds and a portfolio of more than 150 companies—including Nanit, Ourplace, and Pacaso—across AI, fintech, consumer, retail, digital health, and marketplace businesses. In 2022, she launched Precedent Collective, an investment initiative dedicated to extending her commitment to building a more equitable capital landscape. She joined the board of PetMed Express, where she chairs the Compensation and Human Capital Committee. She also served as Chair of the Pacific Region of YPO, on the International Board, and as a Board Trustee for the San Francisco Ballet. A member of the Young Presidents' Organization since 2014 and recipient of its highest membership honor — the Alexander Capello Award, recognizing her work in gender equity — Leah currently chairs YPO's Regional Board and serves on a global committee of the YPO International Board, giving her access to senior business leaders across 142 countries. She is a regular speaker at the World Economic Forum in Davos and has appeared at Tina Brown's Women in the World Summit and dozens of corporate and technology events worldwide. Leah founded TaskRabbit in 2008 — before "the gig economy" was a phrase anyone used, before two-sided marketplaces were a known category, and before most investors had a framework for saying yes to what she was building. As CEO for eight years, she raised more than $50 million, scaled operations across 44 cities, and in 2017 completed the company's acquisition by IKEA — one of the defining exits of the on-demand economy. She was not only the CEO; in the early days, she was the first Tasker, tooling around Boston on her Honda Scooter, running errands for strangers, and proving the model worked. Leah holds a B.S. in Mathematics and Computer Science from Sweet Briar College and began her career as a software engineer at IBM. She is one of the few Latina technologists to raise institutional venture capital and achieve a major platform exit — and she brings that full arc, unedited, to every stage she stands on. She is the creator and host of Breaking Precedent, a multi-season podcast featuring founders, athletes, artists, and investors who rewrote the rules of their fields.