Ex-TaskRabbit CEO Launches VC Fund for Overlooked Founders

Stacy Brown-Philpot spent 25 years preparing for this moment, and she's not rushing it now.

The former TaskRabbit CEO and Google veteran launched Cherryrock Capital a year ago to fill a gap she kept seeing: talented founders building strong companies but getting passed over by traditional venture capital. While most of Silicon Valley races after mega-rounds and buzzy AI startups, Brown-Philpot is taking her time with smaller, smarter bets.

Her approach looks almost old-fashioned in today's venture world. Cherryrock writes Series A and B checks to software companies at crucial growth stages, the kind of investments that built Silicon Valley before billion-dollar valuations became the only story worth telling.

Brown-Philpot came to the Bay Area planning to become a VC and even wrote her Stanford Business School essay about it. After a decade at Google and leading TaskRabbit to a successful exit to IKEA, she finally circled back to that original dream.

The opportunity became crystal clear during her time on the investment committee for the SoftBank Opportunity Fund. She saw thousands of overlooked founders with solid businesses and real traction. When SoftBank sold that fund in 2023, Brown-Philpot doubled down and launched her own.

By the time Cherryrock closed its first fund in February 2025, she already had more than 2,000 companies in her pipeline. That's not a typo—two thousand opportunities that traditional VCs routinely skip.

Her roster of investors includes JPMorgan, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, and Melinda Gates's Pivotal Ventures. These aren't charitable donations—they're bets on returns from a market others are leaving untapped.

The Ripple Effect

Brown-Philpot's measured approach is already producing results. She's targeting just 12 to 15 investments from her first fund, and one year in, she's backed five companies.

One investment, Coactive AI, provides infrastructure to the media and entertainment industry. Founder Cody Coleman brings advanced degrees from MIT and Stanford to a sector desperately needing smart AI solutions.

Another bet, Vitable Health, brings on-demand health insurance to hourly workers and employers. Founder Joseph Kitonga, a Thiel Fellow and Y Combinator alum, is solving real problems for the kind of workers Brown-Philpot came to know well at TaskRabbit.

Her board positions at HP, StockX, and Stanford University give her unique insight into both enterprise buyers and emerging founders. She's watching the next generation figure out how to create opportunities in an AI-transformed world.

A new California law requiring VCs to report demographic data on portfolio companies might actually give firms like Cherryrock an advantage. Brown-Philpot calls compliance "table stakes" for her operation.

She's proving what many suspected: there's massive untapped potential in founders the industry has trained itself to overlook, and backing them isn't just good ethics—it's good business.