I am thrilled to announce the launch of Cherryrock Capital, the first fund focused on investing at the Series A & B stages in companies led by underinvested entrepreneurs. We have raised $172 million from Limited Partners that include a host of marquee institutions such as Goldman Sachs Asset Management, J.P. Morgan Asset Management, MassMutual, Top Tier Capital Partners, and Pivotal Ventures as well as individuals including Mellody Hobson, Reid Hoffman, and Sheryl Sandberg among others.
Cherryrock Capital invests in companies that have early product market fit and are on a path to achieving $100mm+ in revenue. We invest in high-growth industries with nascent markets across five areas: digital health, enterprise SaaS, fintech, future of work, and B2B2C.
I started Cherryrock Capital with my partner, Saydeah Howard, with a vision to change the face of wealth creation, by generating above-market returns for our limited partners through investments in the very best software companies. My journey to Silicon Valley and all things technology started 25 years ago when I attended business school at Stanford having written my admissions essay on becoming a venture investor. Applying my love for quantitative things to an industry where I felt I could have an impact was deeply compelling. But like all things in life, the road to venture capital took a detour and I became an operator at two of the most iconic companies of our time, Google and TaskRabbit.
I joined Google when the company was just over 1,000 people and at a seminal point, ultimately scaling to over 50,000 people. In a company that embraced meritocracy, I seized every opportunity to live and work all over the world, in roles with increasing responsibility across sales, operations, and finance – leading people, creating products, and building organizations that mattered. In 2013, I was recruited to another pivotal company, TaskRabbit, where I was the COO and later became the CEO. When I engineered the sale of the company to IKEA four years later, I had led it to over 10x in revenue and expanded from a US-only firm to a global force. After a smooth transition of leadership, I decided to step down and think about my next challenge.
While the logical path was to become the CEO of another company, and many great opportunities came my way – both public and private – I turned them all down. For me, there was one clear question – why lead one company when I could be a part of building hundreds of companies led by the next generation of entrepreneurs?
Although there are many great early investment firms who invest in pre-seed and seed rounds with small checks, there are fewer that focus on Series A and B rounds, and none leading investments with underinvested founders. These often overlooked and underestimated teams are creating companies at an unprecedented pace and are 11x more likely to build a business worth $1bn+. But, they face a stark funding deficit and often fail to realize their company’s full potential because they lack access to capital and other resources.
This is where we come in with unique scaling, board, and networking expertise to build companies and deliver returns for our investors. My work as a Board Member with HP, Nordstrom, Noom, StockX, and Joy gives me a sweeping view of how small and large companies operate across a number of industries. This is in addition to my investment experience having been at Google Ventures and General Catalyst as well as a co-founder of the Softbank Opportunity Fund.
We have already started making investments. Our first investment was in Coactive AI, a multimodal AI company that helps businesses search and analyze images, videos, and audio. We co-led their Series B with our friends at Emerson Collective, joining a16z and Bessemer Venture Partners. Our second investment was in Vitable Health, a YC company that provides affordable primary care driven health plans to businesses with hourly workers, where we led the Series A round joining Citi Impact Fund and First Round Capital on the cap table. Both companies have revenue, strong customer traction, and we are on the board of both organizations. We are close on a few other investments in the future of work and fintech spaces and expect to make investments in the range of $6-10mm.
With Cherryrock Capital, the team brings 60+ years of operating, board, and investing experience to build a different kind of venture firm. A firm that is audacious, accountable, and authentic to ourselves, our founders, our investors, and most of all, to the broader technology ecosystem. We want to become the go-to firm for founders who have the courage to be audacious in their vision, accountable to their goals, and authentic to who they are.
We are excited to partner with our founders, limited partners, and co-investors to build an institution that will be the foundation of success for the next generation of entrepreneurs.
Signed,
