When Stacy Brown-Philpot stepped down as CEO of Taskrabbit in 2020, following a successful acquisition by IKEA, she became one of the most sought-after board members in the country.
With a $172 million venture fund, Brown-Philpot, a former executive at Google and co-founder of Softbank Opportunity Fund, and partner Saydeah Howard will put their expertise to work for diverse and underinvested founders of growth-stage digital health, fintech and future of work startups.
“Overlooked and underestimated teams are creating companies at an unprecedented pace,” Brown-Philpot wrote in a blog post announcing Cherryrock Capital. Lack of access to capital keeps many such founders from realizing their companies’ full potential.“ This is where we come in with unique scaling, board, and networking expertise to build companies and deliver returns for our investors.”
Among the limited partners: Goldman Sachs Asset Management, JP Morgan Asset Management, MassMutual, Pivotal Ventures and Spring Point Partners. Individuals including Mellody Hobson, Reid Hoffman and Sheryl Sandberg also joined the fund, one of the largest debut venture funds led by Black women.
Alpha opportunity
The raise took place during one of the biggest venture droughts of recent decades.
Spring Point, the Philadelphia-based social investment firm of the Berwind family, joined the first close of the fund last year with Pivotal Ventures.
“We wanted to help them establish fundraising momentum,” Spring Point’s Margot Kane told ImpactAlpha. Brown-Philpot’s reputation will help Cherryrock win deals, she said. “The opportunity for alpha is the founders knowing they have someone who has their backs, understands where they’re coming from and is going to fight for them.”
Later-stage gap
Brown-Philpot’s team includes Howard, who led talent at venture firm IVP; Christa Williams, who joins from Citi Impact Fund; and Adrianna Samaniego, previously with Female Founders Fund.
While a number of pre-seed and seed funds now focus on diverse founders, very few funds, if any, lead Series A and B rounds for such underinvested founders, says Brown-Philpot.
Cherryrock has backed Coactive AI, which helps businesses analyze images, videos, and audio; and Vitable Health, which provides affordable primary-care driven health plans to businesses with hourly workers.
“These founders are often over-mentored and underfunded,” said Kane. Cherryrock is “going to mentor them, sure, but they’re also going to fund them.”
