How I Built This with Guy Raz - Advice Line with Leah Solivan of Taskrabbit

Episode Date: September 12, 2024

Taskrabbit founder Leah Solivan joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three tech founders working to identify and grow their core customer base. First we meet Kate in Los Angeles, who wants her digital greeting cards to stand out in app stores. Then Shahn in Australia, who’s rethinking user acquisition for his couples coaching app. And Allen in Hawaii, who’s wondering about product-market fit for his online platform that teaches kids to play instruments.Thanks to the founders of Poppy Notes, My Love Your Love and Dynabuddy for being a part of our show.If you’d like to be featured on a future Advice Line episode, leave us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and a specific question you’d like answered. Send a voice memo to [e-mail] or call 1-800-433-1298.And be sure to listen to Taskrabbit's founding story as told by Leah on the show in 2022.This episode was produced by Kerry Thompson with music by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by John Isabella. Our audio engineer was Robert Rodriguez.You can follow HIBT on X & Instagram and sign up for Guy's free newsletter at guyraz.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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walking distance from so much of the city, made it feel less like a visit and more like we were actually living there. Plus, taking a trip is the perfect time to host your space on Airbnb. Your place with all of its personal touches and its amazing location could make someone else's vacation even better. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca.com slash host. Hello and welcome to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz. This is the place where we help try to solve your business challenges. Each week, I'm joined by a legendary founder, a former guest on the show,

who will attempt with me to help you. And if you're building something and you need advice, give us a call and you just might be the next guest on the show. Our number is 1-800-4331298. Send us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with. You can also send us a voice memo at hibt at ID.wondry.com and make sure to tell us how to reach you.

And also don't forget to sign up. For my newsletter, it's full of insights and ideas from the world's greatest entrepreneurs. You can sign up for free at gairoz.com. And we'll put all this info in the podcast description. All right. Let's get to it. Joining me this week is Leah Sullivan. She's the founder of TaskRabbit, the online marketplace for services like cleaning, assembling furniture, running errands, and a whole lot more. Leah, welcome back to the show.

Thanks for coming on. It's great to be back, guy. Thanks for having me. Super excited to have you back on the show because today we're going to talk to founders who are all building app-based or web-based products or services. And you're one of the OGs in this space movement. I mean, when ideas like Airbnb and Uber weren't yet fully formed, you actually launched TaskRabbit in 2008. And I mean, this is one of the first brands that became part of what we now call the digital sharing economy. And of course, in 2017, you guys were the company was acquired by.

by IKEA. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, it was early days and it's been awesome to see TaskRabbit and the brand live on. I was just at an IKEA store a couple weeks ago and kind of got a kick out of seeing all the branding around the store as well. Yeah. Leah, before we get to our callers, I suspect a lot of them are working on ideas that might seem a bit ahead of their time. Like it might be hard to convince people why they might need that product or service.

And when you ran into this dilemma, you know, with TaskRabbit at the beginning, how did you work to convince people that this was a service that they would want or need? Like they would actually have somebody come into their home and assemble their furniture or, you know, or go run an errand for them and bring into their house. Yeah, I mean, it seemed insane at the time to invite a stranger into your house to do things. And even stranger to jump into someone's car, right, for a ride down the street. That was never going to happen in 2008. But, you know, having experience now as an investor and having talked to hundreds, if not thousands of entrepreneurs, I really think it comes down to three things. Timing, technology, and Tam, the three T's. And, you know, for me with TaskRabbit, the technology was there.

The time was there. And it was an idea that everybody understood immediately. So I felt like there was a market there as well. And it still took a lot of education and trust building. And over time, you know, it really started to scale rather quickly. So you don't always have all three of those things at once. Yeah. And sometimes it's not the right time or the market or maybe the technology isn't advanced enough.

And so those are kind of the three things I would think about when you're looking at a new idea. and can you make those three things converge? When do you remember it really starting to gain traction? Because it didn't, it was not an immediate. It wasn't like all of a sudden you flip the switch and people were like, yes. No, it really wasn't. I mean, we were this tiny company in Boston for, you know, almost two years before we even opened the San Francisco market. But, you know, once we started opening new cities and we saw the people in every single city in every single market,

start to use the service, give us great reviews, tell their friends. It was a slow build, but then you know, you kind of start to build momentum. All right. Why don't we take our first caller? Let's do it. Hello, caller number one. Welcome to the device line. Hi, Guy, and Leah.

My name is Kate Pitner, and I'm calling from Los Angeles. Welcome. And I am the founder and creator of the Poppy Notes app on the Apple App Store. I designed poppy notes to be an e-cards and greetings mobile app that will let you easily send text and email greeting cards and instant invites and thinking of your notes from the ease of your phone. Awesome. Well, welcome to the show. Thank you for calling in. Before we get to your question, let me ask you a couple questions. So this is an app that basically lets you send a card to somebody, just a digital card. Yes, yes. And it's designed to be very simple. That was the key. Right. And tell me how you, I'm assuming you have a design background. Yes. Yes. I have been a commercial graphic designer for over 20 years. And I partnered with companies like Hallmark, Flagology, Joanne Fabrics, Home Depot. But ever since I was a little girl, I always wanted to have my own greeting card line. And I used to sit in my room and draw, and my poor family had to take all of my cards for all of those years, many, many cards.

And when 2020 hit and the pandemic hit, and we all couldn't communicate like we were accustomed to and being able to stay connected to people, I started making greeting cards that I could text and email to family and friends. And people really loved them. and they kept going, where do you get these? I want to text and email these too. And that kind of started the whole process. And it took a couple years and a whole lot of time and stress and development. And I was able to launch two weeks before Christmas in 2022 on the App Store. And basically the app makes it easy to just like write a message to somebody on a

a card, a designed card, and you could just text it to them or you turn it into like a text or an email or or what? Yeah. Yeah. So you go on the app and you select, I have them categorized by different themes. So holidays or birthdays or thank you. You pick your card you want. You scroll through the options, tap on it, type your message. I've added some fun features where you can, you know, customize the font and color and the size and make it really personal. And then you just, click send and you can choose to text it to email it. You can social share. It kind of has a lot of fun options. Yeah. And did you have to make a like a sizable investment to make to develop this to get people to help you build it or did you build it yourself or yeah? Luckily, I could do

all the designing of the artwork. But I'm not a coder and that was my first hurdle. I asked a number friends, got some mentoring on what on earth this coding thing is and how to even do it. It's a whole different language. And I did find, I've had a few different developers. I have a great development team and that's how I kind of started. I had to teach myself how to do the basics, like the UIUX design. I did that myself and then we built from there. Got it. And the app is for like a freemium model so it's like free but then you pay for some stuff yeah so it's free to download and i have a welcome pack of cards that are free for everyone to use and um start using right away i also have a another category i just added called spotlight where i'm partnering with non-profits to create up their

own line of poppy notes cards like you know breast cancer awareness and then um to receive full access to the entire library it's um a low monthly subscription description, US $1.99 a month. Got it. Okay. And before we get to Leah, tell me what question you brought for us today. My problem is, or my biggest challenge is finding and reaching my audience, particularly as a tech product.

And it's easy to get lost on the app store. It's easy to get lost on Instagram. I'm trying to reach my audience. I know that was something you definitely dealt with Leah. Yeah. All right, Leah, before we get to the question, to Kate's question, do you have questions for Kate and for what she's building? Yeah, well, Kate, first off, super impressive that you've been able to build this much, you know, basically on your own and all of the design work that you've done. I mean, it's really, really incredible.

And so, yeah, I mean, I think I understand the question, just reaching that audience. And I think, you know, my main, I guess, question and feedback, and I'd love to hear how you think about this is I know that there's a lot of categories and a lot of designs available right now on Poppy Notes, which is amazing. The App Store is super, super crowded for lifestyle apps. I mean, it's just like crazy how many apps are in that category. And so it takes a lot to stand out. It takes a lot to rise above. the noise. So I'm wondering, how can we figure out what the wedge is that you can create, that differentiates you and what you're offering people? And maybe it starts with how people are using it already, or maybe it's something new and different that, you know, we haven't tried yet. So what are your thoughts there? That's a very good question. So in the category idea,

you're talking about different themes and different types of cards. So maybe I want to market a real specific theme to a specific audience so that I can hook that audience. Is that kind of what you're asking? That's kind of what I'm thinking. And I just wonder, like, if you kind of look at the competitive landscape of what's out there today, like I think paperless post, I think Evite, I think these big apps, you know, that, you know, have kind of built up their base over many, many years, even decades. And they're kind of have this generalist approach where they're available across all these categories. I wonder if, is there a kind of a kind of. Is there a category that maybe they're missing or maybe as an opportunity for you to focus on, like,

okay, I have, I have babies on the mind. We're getting ready to have our fourth child. I wonder, like, is there something around like gender reveal or something that is like a little bit more, you know, unique, different where you start to build that wedge, you start to build an experience through the app, through your designs. That is, that's differentiated. No, that's really good. I actually am thinking, too, about babies and, you know, the idea of, I know when I was in that stage of life, too, it's just all encompassing. But I do know a lot of my really popular cards are school-age children cards, mom support cards. Those kind of things might be really perfect, what you're saying. Yeah. And even I would think through the full stack of how to reach your audience, are there influencers? Are there, you know, mommy bloggers, mommy influencers. I mean, that's a huge category. Yeah. Yeah. That I, you know, paperless post is not partnering with them. Like, you could be the one partnering with them, right? And it's differentiated. It's unique. It's custom. I mean, there is so much noise. But I think if you can find

the right ambassadors, the right influencers that align with your brand and values and voice, it can be really, really powerful. I would, you know, just looking at the app on the app, the app store as well. It's just, it's going to get lost in the app store. Like, I don't, I don't know how much time I would, you know, spend trying to optimize that. One thing you could do there, though, is if you start to build a wedge in a category that is standing out, maybe you can try to get on some lists in the app store that are, you know, like top five or top 10, like baby shower, you know, like not just the lifestyle brand, but very specific because it's just so hard to be in that big group.

I think you really got to hone in on something that's really differentiated. To me, a lot of these different apps are, I mean, you know, we've had Canva on the show and, you know, some of these other companies in the show and brands in the show, and they're awesome. They offer great products. Not always super easy for somebody like me to figure out quickly because I, I'm sort of useless. And so it seems like this is really, this is like super plug and play. Like yes, I can teach my, you know, 82 year old dad how to use this in like five minutes. That's the goal. Yeah. And that to me seems like an opportunity to sort of maybe senior citizens too. You know, I talk to my dad every day and my mom and they want to talk to their grandkids. And maybe this is

something that there's a way, especially on the blog, because I notice you've got a blog, which I think is great, because that's another way to reach people when they're doing searches, to maybe think about ways to direct some of the message to seniors as well. You know, hey, is this a way to send a message to your grandkids with just a funny photo and you're a funny message? That's a great idea. Actually, I mock up a lot of my cards in my marketing with that in mind. So I love that.

You tapped right in. I need to do a little bit more of that, I think. Yeah. quick thought, which is creating virality, right? And it's not so easy. But if you've heard the show before, you'll hear this theme pop up again and again, which is the number 1,000. And this is a highly researched number, which is the argument that to start something to create momentum for a brand or product, you need a thousand people who adopt it. And those thousand people become the force multipliers, right? And so is there a way, and I don't know. the exact answer, and I'm sure you've thought about this, but when you send this as a text, when you send it as an email, for there to be some kind of link that essentially says, want to make your own? I love that. And you click it. You know, I mean, this is the story of Slack or Dropbox or, you know, these other viral products, which is in order to use Dropbox, you got to set up a Dropbox.

So it invites you to do it. And I wonder whether it's like, hey, this, Do you like this? You know, click here to make your own poppy notes. Oh, that's a good idea. And then you get every member of your family, distant family relatives you haven't talked to for 25 years. People you thought you didn't have to see ever again Thanksgiving. Get all of them to use poppy notes. Everybody you know.

Because I'm sure if you think about it, you probably have hundreds of people, distant, you know, people all over, you know, loose connections that you can just send this out to. shamelessly and say, hey, try this and send it on to other people and tell me what you think. Absolutely. And now you have two more fans right here. Thank you so much. That means so much. Just about to send a poppy note right now, Leah. Yes, absolutely. I love it. Thank you very, very much, both of you. All right. Kate Pittener, Poppy Notes, good luck. Congrats.

Thank you so much. Take care. All right. Do you know, you probably had this experience, Leah, which is it's your very birthday and your kids are trying to figure out what to do for you and you say to them, I just want you to make me a card. Absolutely. That's all I want. Yes. I have all those cards for my kids.

Yes. Now I'm going to say, make me a poppy note. Make me a poppy note. You know the stick figures? It's like there's something really special about that. There is. Yeah. So I'm thinking about Kate as a little girl always wanting to have a grieving card company.

Yes. It's a dream. I love that. It's a dream. I love that. It's a dream. All right, we're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, another caller, another question, and another round of advice. I'm Guy Raz. Stick around. You're listening to the device line on how I built this.

Welcome back to the device line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz. And my guest today is Task Rabbit founder Leah Sullivan. So Leah, let's bring in our next caller. Hello. Welcome to the advice line. Hello, Leah and Guy. My name is Sean Sirakley, and I'm from Sydney, Australia. And I'm delighted to be here talking to you. today. Welcome to the show. Tell us a little bit about the name of your product and what it does. Yeah, so along with my wife, I'm the co-founder of My Love, Your Love, which is a couple's coaching app, which is designed to take couples on a journey to unlock all the amazing benefits of long-term relationships. Wow. I'm sure there's a lot to ask you about because you are, I imagine if you and your partner are doing a couple's therapy thing, then there's a lot to to unpack here. Tell me about how, so how does it work? It's an app you download and presumably

designed for people who are having problems or more or what? Actually, it's designed for anybody in a relationship. And one of the main reasons to create this app is because people come to therapy way too late. And we know the longer you've had problems in your relationship, the more likely it is that you're going to break up and that interventions aren't going to be as helpful. So this app is for anybody. If you do have problems, yes, it is going to help you. But it's really designed to make your relationship robust and deepen your bonds over the lifetime.

And tell me a little bit about you and your wife. I'm imagining both of you guys are therapists. We are indeed. So we're both clinical psychologists and we're both couples therapists as well. So it means that, you know, I can tell you we have a great relationship, but we've had plenty of conflict. And, you know, part of the app is actually wanting to take all of our clinical knowledge, take all the research and distill it into an app. Coming back to that question before, how does it work?

Well, both parties have to download the app. It's fully synchronized. You go on a journey together through a map, through many different interventions and strategies. And as you move through that journey, two things happen. One is you unlock your toolbox so that when problems arise in real life, you can go straight to your toolbox and access them in real time. And on the other side, you actually build out your relationship profile. So you get to learn about your own vulnerabilities,

your vulnerabilities of your partner, your conflict styles, your values and your desires. And there's more features to the app than that actually also. Huh. Wow. And so how did this idea come about? I mean, imagine you guys were and are busy doing in real life couples therapy in Sydney. So how did you guys come up with the idea of like, let's make an app? And was it like because presumably you want to reach more people because it's expensive to go to couples therapy and you want a more affordable option? Tell me about it. Absolutely. All of those things. I think couples. therapy is universally expensive and separation in divorce is astronomically expensive. So we wanted to create a product that anybody can get access to. And look, I've been a psychologist for 23 years now and I've seen the power of a positive relationship.

And sadly, I've seen how devastating, you know, conflictual and toxic relationships can be, not just on the people in the relationship, but those around them as well. and there's a lot of focus on curing disorders, but there's not a lot of focus on preventing and promoting good mental health. So we thought, how can we make the biggest impact? And also, there's not really a good guide or handbook about how to have a relationship.

So we thought, we need to get this out there to prevent the problems before they happen. So basically, based on your experience, right? And this seems intuitive, but, you know, there's so many things it seems so plainly obvious that we just don't do or ignore. But essentially what you're saying is if you can sort of focus on conflict resolution quickly, then that kind of opens up the possibility of strengthening a relationship and preventing it from spiraling.

Absolutely. So relationships and behaviors run in cycles and feedback loops. And the longer conflict goes on for, the more damage you use. do. But more than that, we also know that, you know, positive behaviors are protective of the relationship. So, for example, if you have a habit of being loving or kind towards your partner, you're going to be more uncomfortable with conflict and want to go back to the status quo. Now, a lot of people, great relationships have that habit and a lot of relationships don't. So the app actually helps you identify what cycles do you have, which are,

good. What are the patterns and cycles and vulnerabilities that you have, which you probably picked up from your family of origin, from past relationships? How do we find the antidote to those as a couple? And then we put in the positive behaviors as well. And what's the cost? Okay, so it's $108 per year if you want to get the yearly version or $17.98 per month. So on the higher end of apps, but presumably a lot cheaper than going to a therapist. Well, absolutely. It's a lot cheaper than just one couple's therapy session. And, Sean, what's the question you brought for us today? Okay, so my question is about user acquisition.

So we do have a social media campaign going and we do have a monthly newsletter, which has about 1100 subscribers to it. But user acquisition has been slow going. And I guess one thing that we didn't think a lot about, which is the whole point of the app, actually, is that you need two people committed to take the My Love Your Love journey. And so my question is, how do we find our couples and drive up user acquisition, our committed couples that want to work on their relationship? Because each couple has to, every user pays the monthly or the yearly fee, right?

Yes. Yes, but to be clear, when I say $508 per year, it's $54. Per person. Or at 1798, it's $8.99 each. So we like to advertise the total price per couple, so people don't get a shot with that. Right. All right, Leah Sullivan, I'm going to bring you in here before we answer Sean's question. Any questions for him?

I have so many questions, Sean. You are doing such important work. I love it. It feels like the real question is, how do you get people to take their vitamins every day, right? It's like all about prevention and healthy relationships. I mean, in technology, we always talk about, okay, is this product a vitamin or is it a painkiller? And you've got a vitamin here. So we've got to think about how do you sell vitamins, right?

Absolutely. Are you tied to making both couples sign up? at once? At the moment, yes, it's the way the app works. But I can tell you, we did get people saying, how do I get access to this information if my partner's not ready? Yeah. So I'm very excited to announce what we did in response to this. After we're exhausted, finishing the app, is we wrote a book and the book's called The Eight Love Links. So that's going to be out any day now. And people can take the solo journey and the book is a standalone product, but it does mention the app. It says in parts, when you're ready, you can take the practical application with your partner. That's great.

That's so exciting. I love that. Yeah. So I think if there are other ways to soften the onboarding, because you're immediately shrinking your market down to couples, two people who are willing to both onboard at the same time. So just it's going to be a smaller market from the beginning. Absolutely. So thinking through, can I soften this? Are there ways to onboard? Are there interactions that become the on-ramp to both couples? I would think through that a little bit more from an app standpoint. You know, I would think about where are the couples, but where are they happy and where are they already doing some of this work? Are there couples retreats? Are there travel, hotels, resorts, something that you could kind of partner with to, you know, offer this as part of their check-in process or part of their package, you know, or something? And so I would just think about, okay, where are the couples right now today at this moment, you know, that would use this? They're probably not in therapy, right? Because they're already feeling the pain killers. They're needing. the painkillers. You need to sell the vitamins.

Absolutely. So would you recommend, for example, that we try and get in front of these couples and like maybe give them some free, like a free workshop? Yeah. I mean, and then mention something to that sort of this. Yeah. Okay, that sounds like a good idea. Yeah. And then and then the other question I have, Sean, Leah and Sean, I mean, you know, obviously for couples therapy to work, you need both partners, willing to do it. But I think in a lot of cases, Sean, and you probably experience this, it's one partner who really kind of drags the other partner in. And the other partner is often kicking and screaming or, you know, just not interested. But, you know, it can be really beneficial.

So I wonder whether there's a world where, you know, going back to Leah's analogy of the painkiller versus the vitamin, where this is a painkiller, where essentially you are pushing this towards people to people who are struggling and are looking for ways to resolve, you know, the crises in their relationship. And it may not be that you have to look for the couple, but you just have to look for the one person first. You know, I've got to say, Guy, like, that definitely parallels what we see in therapy. Don't get me wrong.

I always say, when we have two invested parties, we're going to get the best results. However, often there's an over, somebody who over functions a bit for the relationship that brings the couple in, and we still do get amazing results. So I think that's a really good idea. We just need to really connect with that one person who will then kind of like be the encourager for the couple. I would also think about along those lines, are there certain, I think you called them interventions or interactions or certain modules that could entourage.

the other person in the relationship. And can you, you know, give that the other person who's kind of dragging the other one along some tools. Can you empower them through these interventions to kind of bring in the other person in the relationship? Leah, do you mean through the app, like get them on the app first and then give them the strategies to do that? Yes, yes.

You know, I've never thought about that, but that is a really fantastic idea for us to think about because we do get, like we get registrations and we have reached out to people who have registered but not gone on to use the app. And sometimes the feedback is, you know, my part, I'm looking, I'm not sure my partner's ready. So that's a really good idea. Yeah, just offer them maybe one module or one intervention and just say, hey, could you just try this one, one interaction through that? Yeah, great. I don't think that would be too hard. I think actually, I haven't thought about it in this sense, but we could do like an extra module. that is just for each partner to do on their own.

And even if they both connect at the same time, they can work through the introductory model first. And we can kind of really talk about some tips and insights to really try and get both people invested. Right. And are you, and you mentioned doing like sort of seminars and talking to people and giving them the opportunity to use this for free,

which I think is an interesting and smart way to go about it. And I'm looking at your website here for your landing page. And I see you've got some press coverage. I mean, you've got coverage certainly on Australia and podcasts and the Times. I don't know if that's from the UK or from Australia. And are you finding those, I mean, have those generated interest, I mean, at the very least, or users? Yeah, absolutely. I think when we've had good press, we get a spike in registrations and users.

one thing I'm really delighted to say is between 70 and 75% of all people who do the free trial. I don't know if I mentioned that actually. You get a seven-day free trial before you get charged. 70 to 75% of those people go on to subscribe to the app. So I think the thing with media is it is hard to get. And some of the, unfortunately, I think we went to market a little bit too early. And some of the great media we got, the app was not in its current form. We've had many iterations of the app.

In fact, we totally redesigned it and changed it for user experience. It's been in this best form probably since about March of this year. But with the book, we are hoping to generate more publicity around the book and then secondary publicity for the app as well. Well, the book is a great excuse, too, to take it on the road, right? Do a book tour, get on the road, do some seminars that are connected to the book. And that seems like an awesome opportunity. Yeah, absolutely.

For sure. The product is called My Love, Your Love. It's an app. Sean Sireckley, thanks so much. Good luck. Thank you both for having me. I am a big fan of the show also, and it's been an absolute delight. I feel very privileged.

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it seems like a great, right? Because couples therapies, I mean, we've had Esther Perel on my other shows in the past, and I always think of Esther when I think of couple's therapy, because she, of course, she's like the, you know, sort of the guru of it, you know, probably the best-known couples therapist in the world. I mean, that's cool. It's a cool idea, right?

Because a lot of, it's expensive for people to go and pay for any kind of therapy. It is. No, it's a great idea. I mean, it's, like I said, it's really important work. I mean, how good are you, though, at taking your vitamins every day? Well, you must know. I'm pretty good at it. Are you?

Yeah, I'm pretty good at it. But I hate to say that. I know, I sound self-righteous. but I have them. Here's my secret. I have them next to the coffee machine. Yeah. And it drives my wife crazy.

Maybe we should go use this app. It drives her crazy because she's like, people come into our house. They see your vitamins all laid on the shelf next to the kind. And what I say, can you hide them? And I say, if I hide them, I will not remember to take them. I will literally forget. Like, that's how my brain works. I love that.

So, yeah. That's the point. It's like you've got to have a. routine, right? It's got to have routine. It's good. It's got to be just, it's like a Pavlovian response. I don't even think about it. I just make my coffee. I've got my vitamins. They put them down. I take them. I'm going to try this tomorrow. Yeah. It's a way to go. Yeah. I wish I could do that with everything, like with meditation because I forget to do it. Yes. Or stretching. When I stretch every night, it's great. Maybe I should put my stretching next to the coffee machine. Coffee machine. Coffee machine. That's the answer.

That's the answer, you know. All right. Stay with us. Because. After the break, we'll talk to another founder working to take their business to the next level. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to The Advice Line right here on How I Built This Lab. Hey, welcome back to the Advice Line on How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. And today I'm taking calls with Leah Sullivan, the founder of the company TaskRabbit. So, Leah, let's bring in our last caller. Let's do it.

Hello, caller. Welcome to the Advice Line here on How I Built Us. Please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your business. My name is Alan Ward and I'm calling from Honolulu, Hawaii. Nice. I'm the co-founder of Dinabuddy. Dinabuddy is a streaming service that helps kids learn to play music. Our goal is to give more people access to high-quality music education at an affordable price.

Amazing. Okay, well, first of all, Mahalo. So good to have you here. Thank you. Alan, thanks for calling in. I wish I was there. I'm in California, so it's not too bad. So, all right, so tell me a little bit about Dinabody.

It is an online platform that teaches kids how to play instruments. Correct. Yeah, so it's a streaming service. So online play along videos. And the videos are carefully sequenced to teach kids from day one who may have never held an instrument, like how to play. And we'll work them through about the equivalent of the first two years. years of band instruction. My wife helped me design it. She's a musician too. And we carefully set up our scope and sequence our whole curriculum to align with national standards. And we have videos and curriculum

for all standard band instruments. So all of the woodwinds, the brass and percussion instruments that kids may typically learn in public schools. Got it. Okay. So these are streaming videos. It's called Dinah Buddy because it's their dinosaur characters that teach kids how to do these things? Dinah Buddy, yes, you got it. The name of the company is a play on words. And so we wanted to take the word dynamic, D-Y-N-A, which is a musical term, and like fuse that with dinosaur to sort of imply music friend. and my cousin was the graphic designer for this, and he described the whole project as sort of a Trojan horse for music education, where the kids are just having a fun time doing this thing, and they walk away being able to play and understand music a whole lot more.

Got it. Okay. So, and tell me what your question is for us. Yeah, so Guy and Leah, from your perspective, how can we recruit early adopters and find our ideal product market fit? All right. Okay. Lots to unpack here. Leah, questions for Alan? Alan, tell us a little bit more about the specific target age group that this is best for?

Yeah. So ideally, the target age range is, you know, about the fourth to sixth grader and would support them. currently what we have up would support them for about two years, and we have our curriculum map to support students all the way through the end of high school. Okay, got it. And, you know, it seems like the idea and the strategy and sort of the go-to-market plan has been through the school system. Is that correct? Are you really tied to that as the strategy? That was the original idea. And one thing I've been paying attention to is the rapidly changing educational demographics in our country. And especially the prevalence of homeschools, microschools, charter schools,

and the increasing number of families that are looking for alternatives to the public school experience. And so, yeah, I am not tied to the public schools as our market. Yeah. I mean, I think that's good to hear just because I do think that, you know, from a venture investor standpoint, which is where my brain works, you know, the industry is so fragmented. It's slow. It's underfunded. And there's not a lot of room, you know, to innovate. And so I think thinking through, you know, other strategies of getting Dinobody into the right audience, into, you know, that early adopter. as you said, that's really going to grasp what you're doing here and take it and run with it, I think is what you want.

I mean, one idea I have for you, Alan, is have you thought about there are a lot of, I think, music teachers or people that are passionate about teaching music to kids? I just wonder if there are ambassadors or people that could utilize this as part of their curriculum and kind of helping to streamline, you know, what they're, what they're teaching and how they're teaching it. And can you make this kind of a standard for music teachers who want to help kids at that age? That is a phenomenal idea and something we've thought of and I'm trying to actively set up at the moment. I have been doing clinics in local public schools and would love to get this into a teacher training program. Say, for example, at a, you know, university where they're

sending out the next generation of music teachers. And those people are much more open to new ideas, usually than establish teachers on the ground. And we see that as a huge opportunity. One of the things, Alan, that you probably have come across, and I know that you have been kind of seeing if you could connect with homeschoolers, a lot more kids being home. which is a really interesting phenomenon in market. And I have a kids media company. We make kids podcasts and other kids' books, science around science. And with a lot of homeschooled kids who listen to Wow in the World or read our books. But the challenge, as I'm sure you've faced, is schools. It's really hard to get anything into schools. There's big bureaucracies. And they're

also strapped. You know, they just don't have the budgets. But one one thing that that is been successful for us at Tinkercast. We have an online platform that teaches kids, you know, critical thinking skills using our audio podcasts is we basically, every time somebody buys, you know, a membership, we gift one to a classroom. So, you know, we're giving it away, but we're also encouraging people to use it and with the hopes that some of the kids might come home and say, can we get this too? And so there's, there's an opportunity here, I think, for you to create a way, and certainly starting it in Honolulu, where you're based, but trying to expand it from there, where somebody could buy a membership and then you will gift one to a classroom, or that they can gift one to a classroom. I think that you might want to experiment with these kinds of tiers, because what you really want to do is get it in, and I know you're doing this, but you really need to get it in front of as many eyes as possible, and you want to.

be able to go all over the country to do that. You need it to grow without you being there. And so one of the ways to do that, I think, is to try this gifting subscription model. Love that idea. Yeah. And the way you have that structured is the person who's purchasing the product and then electing to give the gift. Are they choosing where the gift goes or is that an internal decision? We usually give them to like Title I schools around the country, you know, where kids don't have access to the same kinds of resources. So, you know, that's one approach. You can decide how you want to do it. You know, maybe it's for homeschoolers. Whatever, however you decide it to do it, you can create a mechanism where kids get exposed to this. I mean, look, we know there's so much research

behind this. And I'd love to see you push this a little bit more on your website because your website's nice, but it's very simple. And I understand that you probably are limited in your budget, but there are things you can do even on a limited budget to get that message across, which is to say, parents and Leah, I think you can attest to this. We're interested in enhancing our kids' brains, right? Yes. Whether it's keeping them away from screens or, you know, exposing them to different activities. And music is like number one at the top of that list. You get kids playing an instrument, and I'm sorry my kids just, I couldn't get them to keep practicing piano.

But, you know, you get them doing that. it switches something on in their brains early in their lives. And that's also something I'd love to see more of on your website. I agree with that too. And I think to guys' point, just the homepage of your website too, making that more geared to parents or who the decision maker is going to be, right? Because it looks super fun for the kids, which is awesome. But as a parent, I want to come here and I want to be compelled to, oh, yeah, I'm going to get my little guy signed up for this because it's going to have X, Y, and Z benefits and look how fun and easy this is going to be.

So I would think a little bit more, too, about who the decision maker is, who is the buyer, and kind of reposition the brand and the ask to those people. That makes complete sense. Yes. Originally, we had designed things to make it fun and appealing for the young ones. And yeah, as the more I've thought about it and gone through things, it realized I'm really just speaking to the parents and need to message towards that. But yeah, I hear what you're saying and agree with it and we'll follow through with those changes. Alan Ward, Dinah, buddy. Thanks so much for calling in. Good luck, man. Thank you so much. I've been a huge fan of the show listening for years. Thank you. Thank you. Well, Leah, did you get your kids to any of your kids instruments?

You know, the middle guy right now, he's just really, we started with piano. Yeah. Now he's into guitar, you know, anything. Yeah. Percussion. Yeah. Some kids just get, you know, I do another show called The Great Creators. I interview a lot of musicians. And it doesn't matter who it is, Jeff Tweedy or, you know, or Bjork or any of these people that have done on a show. They all just something in their brains clicked when they were little. Yeah.

And they just wanted to play instruments. And I think there's some kids who are forced to do it. And then eventually they just like, you know, surrender. And they're like, actually like this, you know. Right. Right. And then there's some kids who just, it's punishing, you know. But our kids were good at piano. We just, the pandemic happened.

And then, like, we tried online piano and it just kind of fizzled away. So I failed. A failed is apparently. Well, I'm sure you're succeeding in many other ways, Guy. I'm not worried about you. Don't have future members of the New York Philharmonic. Oh, well. All right.

Well, Leah, hopefully we can check back in in a couple years with some of these folks. And they'll be like, yeah, that was it. That advice turned it around. I would love that. I would love to see it. I think all of these companies are doing something so unique and really special. So it was really fun to talk with them. When you think about what you wish you knew or what you might have told yourself early on in 2008, that, you know, like knowing what you know now with all your experience and, I mean, just, you know, you've sort of seen hundreds of companies now as an investor.

What do you, what would you advise yourself or told yourself back then? Yeah. I mean, I think it really is. And we saw this today with all of these founders and companies. It's about focus and prioritization. I think as a founder, you have so many ideas, you see all the possibilities. And really, you have to pitch all of those possibilities to kind of bring people in and inspire them and get the company off the ground. But when it comes down to execution and customer acquisition, you've really got to be focused.

You've got to create that wedge in the market. And you've got to understand you've got to build brick by brick, baby steps, you know, to get to that full North Star Vision. Yeah, totally, totally agree. Leah Sullivan, founder of TaskRabbit, thank you so much for coming back onto the show. Thanks so much for having me, guys. It was a lot of fun. And by the way, if you guys haven't heard Leah's original

how I built this episode, you have to go back and check it out. You can find a link to it in the podcast description. But here's one of my favorite moments from that interview. So we're scaling up, and we're also realizing that the product now in 2011 is it's just not working. It's just not working.

And at this point, there are competitors coming out that are launching mobile first, mobile only. And we've been on the web. I mean, honestly, it's like the entire consumer market and expectation just changed underneath us, and we missed it. Thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to check out my newsletter. You can sign up for it for free at gairoze.com. Each week it's packed with tons of insights from entrepreneurs and my own observations and experiences interviewing some of the greatest entrepreneurs ever. And if you're working on a business and you'd like to be on this show, send us a one minute message that tells us about your business, the issues or questions you'd like help with, and hopefully we can help you with them.

And make sure to tell us how to reach you. You can send us a voice memo at hibt at id.wondry.com or call us at 1-800-433-1298 and leave a message there. And we'll put all this in the podcast description as well. This episode was produced by Carrie Thompson with music composed by Ramtina Rablui. It was edited by John Isabella. Our audio engineer was Robert Rodriguez. Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, Chris Messini, Carla Estevez, Elaine Coates, J.C. Howard, Catherine Seifer, Devin Schwartz, Neva Grant, and Sam Paulson.

I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to The Advice Line on How I Built This Lab.