Fundraising in a Crisis: Lessons From TaskRabbit

It was December 2008, and Leah Busque was broke. It had been six months since she had left her cushy job as an engineer for IBM to build a service helping people outsource their errands to folks looking for extra income. And despite months of conversations with investors—occurring against headwinds of the financial crisis—her credit cards were maxed out and her bank account was dry.

“I knew it was going to be an uphill battle,” she told me recently. But things got even tougher. A couple of angel investors she met with promised her $250,000 in the fall. But by the time December rolled around, the money hadn’t come in.