The precursor of TaskRabbit was RunMyErrand, which was launched in 2008 in Boston, Massachusetts with the first 100 "runners".[2][7] In 2009, Tim Ferriss became an advisor to the firm after meeting Busque at Facebook's startup incubator, fbFund.[8][9] The firm accumulated $1.8 million in seed funding from venture capital firms,[9][10] and hired the company's first full-time employee, Brian Leonard, a software engineer with whom she had worked at IBM.[7][11][12]