Hiring the right people is shaping up as a central challenge for startup leaders, and a fresh call is rising to rethink how teams are built. This week, entrepreneur-turned-investor Leah Solivan joined the Build Mode show to talk about what it takes to find talent and open doors in a sector that still skews narrow. The conversation, centered on early-stage hiring and inclusion, points to a shift in how investors and founders set their priorities.
At its core, the message is simple. Résumés do not tell the whole story. The best teams widen their view and look for skill, grit, and fit in new places. The guest’s experience across operating and investing puts weight behind that idea, and the timing is hard to ignore as founders compete for scarce talent while also facing pressure to diversify.
The Talent Challenge at the Earliest Stage
If one thing has become clear this season, it’s that finding the right talent for your team isn’t as easy as picking from a pile of résumés.
Early teams often hire fast and under stress. That can lead to familiar networks and familiar profiles. It also risks missing people who can ship, learn, and lead but may not look “standard” on paper. The result is a cycle where similar groups repeat the same search patterns and reach the same limited pools of candidates.
From Operator to Investor
Leah Solivan founded Taskrabbit, a service that connects people who need help with workers who can do the job. The company grew into a well-known marketplace and was later acquired by IKEA in 2017. Now, as an early-stage investor, she draws on that operating arc to advise founders on how to hire and how to build culture from day one.
This week’s Build Mode guest is Leah Solivan, the founder of Taskrabbit and now an early-stage investor who has seen that the power to change a homogenous startup ecosystem…
Her point is about agency. Founders and check-writers decide how roles are defined, where searches run, and which signals matter. Those choices shape who gets a shot.
Why Homogenous Teams Persist
Homogeneity often starts with how jobs are scoped and where they are posted. Demanding narrow school pedigrees or specific former employers can filter out strong builders. So can referral-only hiring. Many early teams also skip structured interviews, which makes decisions depend on casual “fit” rather than proof of skill.
External data paints the picture. Women-founded startups still receive a small slice of venture funding in the United States, hovering near 2 percent in recent years, according to multiple industry reports. That funding gap reinforces uneven access to talent networks and mentorship.
Shifting From Résumés to Real Signals
Founders can reduce bias and raise the bar by testing for actual work. Short projects, portfolio reviews, and practical exercises reveal how a candidate solves problems and works with a team. Clear rubrics help interviewers compare answers on the same scale. This approach favors builders without glossy pedigrees but with strong output.
- Write job posts that focus on outcomes, not pedigree.
- Source from mixed channels, including community groups and bootcamps.
- Use structured interviews with defined scoring guides.
- Run paid trials or work samples tied to the role.
The Investor’s Hand on the Wheel
Investors can push for these practices early. They can ask for diverse slates before offers go out and back tools that broaden sourcing. They can also help founders benchmark pay and set transparent levels so offers land fairly. When investors tie follow-on support to clear hiring practices, habits change.
There is also a portfolio effect. LP updates that track team makeup, retention, and promotion set a norm across companies. The goal is not box-checking. It is building teams that can find new markets and move faster because they reflect a wider set of users.
What Success Looks Like
Signs of progress show up in product and in numbers. Teams that hire for skill over résumé tend to ship more inclusive features and expand into new segments sooner. They also reduce backfills, because people who succeed in structured trials are more likely to stick.
Founders can start small. Pilot a structured loop for one role. Add two new sourcing channels. Track the data. Wins in one function often spread across the company.
The latest conversation highlights a simple but urgent idea: who gets hired today sets the arc of a company for years. As Solivan’s path from founder to investor shows, the people with power to write job posts, set interview bars, and allocate capital also have power to open doors. Expect more operators and backers to make hiring rigor and inclusion part of the early-stage playbook. The teams that do will be better positioned to find overlooked talent and build products that serve more users.
Senior Software Engineer with a passion for building practical, user-centric applications. He specializes in full-stack development with a strong focus on crafting elegant, performant interfaces and scalable backend solutions. With experience leading teams and delivering robust, end-to-end products, he thrives on solving complex problems through clean and efficient code.
