Equal To The Task

Leah Busque made outsourcing small jobs and errands easy by creating TaskRabbit. Here’s how she built the web platform that helped spawn the gig economy.

- Dinah Eng

VENTURE WHEN I WAS 8, I asked my dad what was the highest role in a company, and he said, “It’s the CEO.” That’s when I decided what I wanted to be. I started a recycling program in our elementary school and set up an office in our basement, where I was the CEO.

When it was time to go to college, I majored in computer science and mathematics with a minor in dance. I graduated from Sweet Briar College in Virginia in 2001 and worked at a startup that was quickly swallowed by IBM. I worked on messaging and collaboration products for about seven years and learned how to create software that was used around the globe on a daily basis.

As an engineer, I was passionate about technology. In early 2008, there was no Apple App Store yet. I was living in Boston with [my then husband] Kevin, and we had a 100-pound yellow Lab. We were getting ready to go out to dinner one night when we realized we were out of dog food. I thought it would be great if I could find someone to help, maybe someone who was at the store that very moment. I grabbed my iPhone and typed RunMyErrand .com. No such service existed. The domain name was available, so I bought it on the spot.

I saw the potential of combining emerging mobile and location technologies with the social graph [the people you’re connected to online] and decided to build a platform for what I called service networking.