From Silicon Valley to the Twin Cities: Mary Grove’s Story

Mary Grove never planned to leave Silicon Valley. 

After 14 years at Google, where she helped build what is now Google for Startups and worked on the tech giant’s IPO deal team, the most natural next step would have been joining a Bay Area venture capital firm. She had the connections, the experience, and the geographic advantage that most VCs dream of. 

Instead, she packed up her life, her husband Steve, and their one-year-old twins, and headed to Minnesota. 

It definitely wasn’t where Grove had thought she would be when she graduated from college in California. “I was set on going to law school,” Grove reflects on her early career pivots. “But I kept asking myself, why do I really want to do that? What’s my driving force here?”

That question led to what she calls a “year” at Google that stretched into nearly a decade and a half. It also set the stage for a career defined by unplanned pivots that somehow always pointed toward the same guiding principle: building something meaningful in overlooked places. 

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The immigrant entrepreneur’s daughter 

Grove’s comfort with calculated risks comes from her childhood in San Diego, where she watched her parents build their version of the American dream from scratch. 

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“They had no safety net”, Grove explains. The lesson was simple: find a way through, build something, make it work.

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“I grew up in a really scrappy entrepreneurial family where it was about building and living out a version of the American dream,” she says. Both of her parents were Thai immigrants who came to the U.S. separately, worked as healthcare clinicians, and ran various small businesses on the side. 

“They had no safety net”, Grove explains. The lesson was simple: find a way through, build something, make it work. Her father, now in his 80s, remains the ultimate connector, still hosting dinner parties where he makes everyone give “a 60-second advertisement for themselves” and asking how the room can help each other. 

Those values of grit, gratitude, and genuine relationship-building would become the foundation of how Grove approaches venture capital decades later. 

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The Google years: learning to see opportunity 

Grove’s path into venture wasn’t linear. She joined Google in 2004 right after graduating from Stanford, planning to work for just one year before law school. That year turned into 14. 

“I was staffed on the Google IPO deal team, which was just a phenomenal entry point,” she remembers. When an opportunity came up to work for Megan Smith (who would later become Chief Technology Officer in the Obama Administration) on the business development side, Grove said yes, even though it meant abandoning her carefully laid law school plans. 

“It was totally unplanned,” she shared. “A path I hadn’t planned for myself, and it just turned out to be the greatest blessing and door opening.”

In the second half of her Google tenure, Grove helped build what became Google for Startups, the company’s umbrella for supporting early-stage companies globally. Working with emerging companies while watching Google grow from 2,000 to over 100,000 employees, gave her a unique perspective on both sides of the innovation equation. 

“Being at this enormous tech platform and then thinking about how we enable the next generation of Googles to launch, build and scale was really exciting.” she says.

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The Minnesota experiment 

When Grove decided to leave Google and transition into venture capital full-time, she and her husband faced a choice: stay in the heart of the venture capital world, or bet on something different. 

“This is a 10-year-plus commitment, a long-term asset class. If we wanted to make a move geographically or a major life shift, this would be an inflection point,” Grove explains. 

The couple decided to run what they called a “life pilot” - move to Minnesota, try it for a couple of years, and see what happened. The pull was both personal and professional: Steve was a Minnesota native with 75 family members scattered across the Midwest, providing the village they wanted for raising their twins. Professionally, Grove saw an underexplored opportunity. 

“I was really interested in looking at markets in between the coasts that have a lot of talent and resources but lack access to capital,” she says. Minnesota’s corporate backbone in healthcare, food systems, retail, and fintech made it particularly compelling. 

Eight years later, the pilot has become permanent. 

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Rewriting the venture playbook 

In 2020, Grove partnered with Brett Brohl on Bread & Butter Ventures, with the explicit goal of doing venture capital differently. The four-person team has raised funds totaling millions in capital, with half of their limited partners coming from outside Minnesota. The firm invests in seed stage companies across the US, and leans into the sectors of strength here at home.

“We have the opportunity to rewrite the playbook for how venture capital is done,” Grove explains. “We’re 100% financial return driven, like a lot of our peer firms. But we have the opportunity to try to build a model from scratch that is venture the way we dream of it being.” 

The Bread & Butter Ventures team focuses on building “genuine, built-to-last relationships” and emphasizes operating with empathy while maintaining astute business sense. Most importantly, they’re working to democratize access to quality capital rather than relying on warm introductions and closed networks. 

“What frustrates me a lot is it’s a closed network access industry,” Grove says of traditional venture capital. “Our goal is to democratize access to quality capital for all. And we want to be able to prove that that is actually a better path to financial return.” 

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Building the Minnesota network

Something Grove is proud of in the Minnesota ecosystem is the Minnesota Investors Network, a peer-run effort for the venture capital community that she credits Matt Lewis and the team at GreaterMSP for enabling and facilitating investors coming together. When she first arrived in 2018, the group consisted of about six people meeting quarterly over breakfast at the same restaurant, trading deal flow and thesis updates. 

Today, the network includes over 35 institutional investors, from emerging managers to managers that have raised 6 funds, representing both local firms and national firms with Minnesota presence. 

“We are growing, even though we need so much more venture capital in Minnesota,” Grove acknowledges. “But it’s a group of people that really cares and is collaborative and wants to do more together and with the community here.” 

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The Midwest opportunity 

Grove’s thesis extends beyond Minnesota’s borders. She sees massive untapped potential across the broader Midwest, particularly in leveraging the region’s corporate assets and talent pools. 

“Minnesota’s large enterprise and corporate presence, which is unparalleled in certain multi-trillion dollar global industries like the food system and healthcare, is our prized asset,” she explains. “If we can unlock how to connect those types of industry with the earliest stage emerging tech, we are truly going to accelerate beyond our dreams.” 

But Grove’s vision encompasses strengthening collaboration across the entire region. She sees untapped potential in sharing best practices and LP networks between Midwest states, “There’s a lot we can learn from each other in terms of best practices,” she explains, noting that she sees more deal flow from California and New York than from neighboring states like Wisconsin or Illinois. 

“I have a strong desire to spend more time on the ground in our neighboring states,” Grove says, pointing to opportunities for leveraging each other’s corporate presence and local assets. The regional approach isn’t just about deal flow, it’s about creating a unified Midwest innovation network that can compete with the coasts. 

The challenge, she believes, is creating the flywheel between established enterprises and emerging startups: getting talent from big industry to innovate and start companies, then eventually exit back into those larger corporations. 

Bread & Butter Ventures is actively working to build those connections through their Innovation Circle, a private network of Minnesota-based companies committed to fostering innovation. The group includes industry titans like 3M, Cargill, General Mills, Mayo Clinic, Target, and U.S. Bank, creating direct pathways between established corporations and emerging startups in their sectors. 

“We have the ingredients in our backyard that so many ecosystems don’t have.”

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Looking forward

As Grove looks toward the next decade, her vision for Minnesota is both ambitious and grounded in the state’s existing strengths. 

“My hope is that Minnesota continues to define our own course by just leaning into our identity,” she says. “If we can continue to be the epicenter of excellence for these industries, we will naturally, bottoms up and top down, start to create some of these venture-backable, publicly traded companies of the future.” 

But she also issues a challenge to her adopted home state: “We have to be as aggressive as we can about keeping our foot on the gas pedal, recognizing the urgency, and leaning into new technology like AI.”

For someone who never planned to leave the coasts, Grove has found her calling in championing the opportunities that exist between them. Her parent’s lesson about building something from nothing has taken on new meaning in Minnesota, not just surviving, but helping an entire ecosystem thrive. 

“We want to bring the best of Minnesota to the world,” she says. “And we want to bring the best of the world to Minnesota.”

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Elise Riniker is an Associate at Mairs and Power Venture Capital in St. Paul, a firm which focuses its investments on businesses in Minnesota and the Upper Midwest. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Marketing from the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management, and has previously worked at Techstars and Bread & Butter Ventures.