Risa Stack

Background

Risa Stack, Ph.D., is a Partner at The Production Board (TPB), a San Francisco-based venture foundry and permanent holding company founded by David Friedberg ¹². She joined TPB in May 2022 ³.

Stack holds a B.S. in Genetics and Development with distinction from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a Ph.D. in Immunology from the University of Chicago ⁴⁵. While completing her doctorate, she traded derivatives on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, specializing in yield curve futures and options on government securities ⁴⁶.

Stack was a member of the second class of Kauffman Fellows, with Mitchell Blutt at Chase Capital Partners as her fellowship mentor ⁵. She began her venture career as a Principal at J.P. Morgan Partners, where she sponsored healthcare venture and growth investments ⁵⁷. She then spent nearly a decade as a Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), where she founded and developed therapeutics, tools, and molecular diagnostics companies ⁵⁷⁸.

In 2013, Stack joined GE Ventures as General Manager of New Business Creation, where she created and led a team that founded seven new companies across healthcare, aviation, and energy sectors, including Evidation Health, Vineti, Menlo Microsystems (Menlo Micro), Drawbridge Health, and Avitas Systems ⁵⁷⁸. She is a co-founder of Veracyte (NASDAQ: VCYT), a global diagnostics company, alongside CEO Bonnie Anderson ⁴⁶⁹. She also co-founded Menlo Micro, an electronic switchmaker spun out of GE, where she remains an adviser ⁸.

Prior to joining TPB, Stack served as Venture Partner at RA Capital Management from September 2020 to March 2022 ³¹⁰. She is also a co-founder of BEVC, a venture fund that invests at the intersection of science, computation, and engineering in partnership with the University of California Berkeley and UCSF ⁸¹¹. Stack has served on the boards of more than 10 early-stage companies over a 20+ year career ⁸⁷.

She currently serves on the board of the COPD Foundation (elected February 2022), as a board member at PinkDx, and as a board director at Dextera Biosciences (since April 2022) ¹²¹³¹⁴. She has previously served on the boards of Metagenomi, Vineti, Avitas Systems, Drawbridge Health, Trius Therapeutics, and Corthera ¹²¹³.

Stated Thesis

(Self-reported: These represent what Stack says publicly about her investing approach. See Inferred Thesis for analysis of actual investment behavior.)

Stack has described her core investment mantra, learned at Kleiner Perkins, as “invest in people, not just products,” emphasizing that team chemistry — particularly partnerships between scientific and business founders — is essential ⁶.

She has stated her preference for taking “one but not both” types of risk: either technical risk in established markets or market risk in proven technologies. She favors targeting “technical risk in established markets” and has found this approach yields the best outcomes ⁶.

On her approach to company building, Stack has said that “starting companies is hard and it is important to get all the right people around the table to mitigate risk and execute efficiently” ¹⁰. She emphasizes that the venture creation model produces higher-quality companies tackling harder problems and moving faster than traditional approaches ¹⁰.

Stack has stated she focuses on early-stage businesses developing diagnostic tools, spending significant time at universities consulting with professors, surveying physicians about unsolved clinical problems, and directly consulting patients on needed products ⁴.

Stack has also publicly emphasized relationships as foundational to venture capital, advocating for “developing substantial relationships through personal interactions” and maintaining that “authentic connections are more beneficial for long-term business success” ¹⁵.

Inferred Thesis

The analysis below is based on Stack’s verified investment and company-building history across her career at Kleiner Perkins, GE Ventures, RA Capital, BEVC, and The Production Board. The portfolio table contains 22 verified entries.

Sector concentration (based on 22 verified entries): - Healthcare / life sciences / diagnostics: 15 of 22 (68%) — Veracyte, Foundation Medicine, Pacific Biosciences, Epizyme, CardioDx, Corthera, Trius, Nodality, Orexigen, Ilex Oncology, Triangle Pharmaceuticals, Drawbridge Health, PinkDx, Dextera Biosciences, Metagenomi - Industrial / electronics / energy: 3 of 22 (14%) — Menlo Micro, Avitas Systems, NuVera Medical - Software / digital health: 2 of 22 (9%) — Vineti, Evidation Health - Agriculture / food: 2 of 22 (9%) — companies within TPB portfolio where Stack participates as Partner

Stage distribution: Stack’s career has been predominantly early-stage, with the vast majority of her investments and company-building at the seed through Series A stages. At Kleiner Perkins, she focused on founding and developing companies from inception ⁷. At GE Ventures, she created companies from scratch ⁸. At TPB, the firm invests from seed through public markets but Stack’s focus is on building new businesses ².

Key patterns:

• Company builder, not just investor: Stack is distinguished by her role as a co-founder and company creator rather than a pure financial investor. She co-founded Veracyte, co-founded Menlo Micro, and built seven companies at GE Ventures ⁴⁷⁸. This venture creation approach — identifying unmet clinical or technical needs and assembling teams around them — is her defining mode of operation.

• Diagnostics as dominant sub-sector: Within healthcare, molecular diagnostics is Stack’s signature sector. Veracyte (thyroid cancer diagnostics), Foundation Medicine (genomic profiling), CardioDx (cardiovascular diagnostics), Drawbridge Health (blood collection), and PinkDx (gynecological cancer diagnostics) all sit squarely in diagnostics ⁴⁶⁹. This represents at least 5 of 22 verified entries (23%).

• Repeat collaborations: Stack has worked repeatedly with the same co-founders and executives. PinkDx was founded by Bonnie Anderson (her Veracyte co-founder) and includes Eric Wang and Giulia Kennedy from Veracyte ⁹¹⁶. This pattern of deep, repeated professional partnerships is consistent across her career.

• Women’s health emerging focus: Through BEVC and her board seat at PinkDx, Stack has developed a visible focus on women’s health diagnostics, an area she has described as “vastly underserved” ¹¹¹⁶.

• PhD-level scientific depth: Stack’s immunology PhD is not decorative — she evaluates founders through working sessions and whiteboarding to assess whether they can articulate and execute on scientific hypotheses ⁶. She favors backing repeat entrepreneurs who have navigated technical challenges previously ⁶.

• Exit track record heavily pharma/biotech: Multiple portfolio companies achieved successful exits through acquisition by pharma companies — Corthera (acquired by Novartis), Trius (acquired by Cubist), Triangle Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Gilead), Ilex Oncology (acquired by Genzyme) ⁷. This suggests a thesis oriented toward building clinical-stage companies attractive as acquisition targets for large pharma.

• Co-investor patterns: At Kleiner Perkins, Stack would have co-invested with KPCB’s healthcare syndicate partners. At GE Ventures, she worked with Mayo Clinic Ventures and DFJ on Vineti ¹⁷. At BEVC, she co-invests with Blue Venture Fund and Sandbox Clinical Ventures ¹⁶. At TPB, she works alongside Catalio Capital Management and Mountain Group Partners on PinkDx ⁹¹⁶.

Portfolio

This table represents 22 verified investments and company-building roles. Stack has stated involvement in the early operations, financing, and development of over 50 companies ⁵; only those with independent sourcing are listed. Years marked with ~ are approximate based on founding year or earliest public mention. Investments at Kleiner Perkins (~2003-2013) lack precise year data for individual deals.

In Their Own Words

“Invest in people, not just products.” — Risa Stack, The Full Ratchet podcast, Episode 403 ⁶

“The biggest challenges is really it’s not that the science doesn’t work, it’s tricky getting it from the science to something that looks like a product.” — Risa Stack, The Full Ratchet podcast, Episode 403 ⁶

“I’d say the two projects I’m working on right now I’m backing people who have started and taken companies public before.” — Risa Stack, The Full Ratchet podcast, Episode 403 ⁶

“Starting companies is hard and it is important to get all the right people around the table to mitigate risk and execute efficiently.” — Risa Stack, RApport (RA Capital blog), accessed April 2026 ¹⁰

“Women’s medical needs have been vastly underserved to date. PinkDx is going to fundamentally change this.” — Risa Stack, PinkDx Series A extension press release, January 2025 ¹⁶

“The most wonderful thing about the University of Chicago was the strong scientific training I received.” — Risa Stack, Chicago Maroon interview ⁴

What Founders Say

No independently sourced founder testimonials found. Stack’s career has been primarily as a company co-founder and builder rather than a traditional external investor, which limits the availability of typical founder-investor testimonials. Her co-founding partners (such as Bonnie Anderson at Veracyte) are professional collaborators rather than founders commenting on an investor relationship. Dedicated searches across Twitter/X, podcast transcripts, and press coverage did not yield independent founder quotes about Stack as an investor or board member.

Sources