In a changed VC landscape, this exec is doubling down on overlooked founders

Much of Silicon Valley has spent years chasing mega-rounds and buzzy AI deals. Meanwhile, Stacy Brown-Philpot is moving Cherryrock Capital similar a throwback to task capital’s earlier days, penning smaller Series A and B checks to founders that larger firms routinely overlook.

The erstwhile TaskRabbit CEO and decade-long Google seasoned launched Cherryrock a twelvemonth agone aft seeing what she calls a persistent gap: entree to superior for “underinvested entrepreneurs” gathering bundle companies astatine the important maturation stage.

“When I near TaskRabbit, I took immoderate clip disconnected to fig retired what was adjacent and saw this spread successful the market, which was entree to capital, peculiarly for underinvested entrepreneurs,” Brown-Philpot told TechCrunch. She’d primitively travel to the Bay Area 25 years ago, readying to go a VC and adjacent penning her Stanford Business School effort astir it. After spending a decennary astatine Google and starring TaskRabbit to a palmy exit to IKEA, she’s yet backmost to that archetypal plan.

She circled backmost to it for a reason. Before launching Cherryrock, Brown-Philpot was a subordinate of the concern committee for the SoftBank Opportunity Fund, a $100 cardinal conveyance started successful 2020 to backmost underserved entrepreneurs. That acquisition proved determination was nary shortage of overlooked founders.

SoftBank itself sold the Opportunity Fund to its enactment squad successful precocious 2023, divesting from the diversity-focused initiative. Brown-Philpot, meanwhile, doubled down, and launched her ain fund. By the clip she closed Cherryrock’s debut money successful February 2025, she already had much than 2,000 companies successful her pipeline. 

Cherryrock is targeting 12 to 15 investments from its archetypal money — a concentrated attack and stark opposition to the effect funds that marque dozens of bets, oregon monolithic funds that constitute nine-figure checks. Brown-Philpot’s besides taking her time; a twelvemonth aft announcing the fund, she and her team, including cofounder Saydeah Howard, who spent 9 years astatine the task steadfast IVP, person backed conscionable 5 companies, putting them astir a 3rd of the mode toward their goal. In an epoch erstwhile galore funds contention to deploy superior astir arsenic rapidly arsenic it’s raised, Brown-Philpot’s measured gait is different throwback to an earlier procreation of VCs.

Brown-Philpot’s absorption connected “underinvested” founders — a cautious prime of words successful today’s governmental clime — means backing entrepreneurs who mightiness not acceptable the emblematic Silicon Valley mold.

When asked straight astir the existent governmental environment, wherever DEI has go a lightning rod, Brown-Philpot is unfazed. “It doesn’t alteration the transportation astatine all,” she said. “When we look astatine the radical who decided to backmost Cherryrock, similar JPMorgan and Bank of America…these are fiscal institutions who expect to make a return. Our occupation arsenic investors is to bash conscionable that.”

In summation to those investors, Cherryrock’s LP roster includes Goldman Sachs Asset Management, MassMutual, Top Tier Capital Partners, and Melinda Gates’s Pivotal Ventures. Some of these person stepped backmost from explicit diverseness pledges amid unit from the Trump administration. Yet Brown-Philpot whitethorn find herself successful an unexpectedly advantageous position. 

A caller diversity reporting law successful California requires VC firms with a California nexus to study demographic information connected their portfolio companies’ founding teams, with the archetypal deadline successful April. Unlike immoderate firm diverseness initiatives that person faced ineligible challenges, the law focuses connected transparency alternatively than mandates, requiring reporting but not quotas. For a steadfast similar Cherryrock that’s already tracking and prioritizing investments successful divers founders, compliance is “table stakes,” arsenic Brown-Philpot puts it. “You execute what you measure.”

Brown-Philpot’s position is informed by her vantage constituent crossed aggregate institutions. Beyond Cherryrock, she sits connected the boards of HP, StockX, and Stanford University — roles that springiness her penetration into some endeavor buyers and the adjacent procreation of founders. At Stanford, she’s watching students navigate questions astir AI’s interaction connected employment. “What I spot connected field is the students are charting a way and uncovering a mode to make opportunities for themselves,” she said.

Her portfolio reflects her thesis. One concern is Coactive AI, led by Cody Coleman, an MIT grad with precocious degrees successful doctrine and engineering from MIT and Stanford. The institution provides multimodal AI infrastructure to the media and amusement industry, a assemblage present nether aggravated scrutiny pursuing controversies astir AI-generated content. Cherryrock led Coactive’s Series B alongside Emerson Collective.

Another stake is Vitable Health, founded by Joseph Kitonga, a Thiel Fellow and Y Combinator alum. The Philadelphia-based institution provides on-demand, superior care-based wellness security to employers and hourly workers – the benignant of colonisation Brown-Philpot came to cognize good arsenic the CEO of TaskRabbit during its past years arsenic a standalone company. Kitonga “is the nonstop benignant of laminitis that we privation to back,” Brown-Philpot said. “He does what helium says he’s going to do.” Brown-Philpot archetypal invested astatine the effect signifier of Vitable done her enactment with the SoftBank Opportunity Fund.

When asked astir her operating philosophy, Brown-Philpot is pragmatic astir exits. “It’s precise hard to spell public,” she said. “Most companies don’t spell public, they bash get acquired.” It’s a refreshingly honorable instrumentality successful an manufacture that often overpromises connected IPO prospects. She points to TaskRabbit’s merchantability to IKEA arsenic impervious that the close acquisition tin make lasting value.

As for 2026, Brown-Philpot’s precedence is simple: “We are actively deploying capital.” She’s looking for Series A and B companies that person achieved product-market acceptable astatine scale, letting founders specify what that means. And portion the broader task ecosystem debates the aboriginal of diverseness initiatives, she is focused connected uncovering large founders, wherever they are.

“I’m from Detroit,” she says. “Hard things are hard, but we cognize however to bash hard things.”