Why I’m joining Revolution’s Rise of the Rest
Mary Grove, @marygrove
I couldn’t be more excited to be joining the team at Rise of the Rest as a Partner this spring, and I wanted to take a moment to share with you why.
For the past 14 years, I’ve been fortunate to work at Google — a company that has taught me so much about innovation in today’s economy. In 2011, I was given the opportunity to build and lead a team called Google for Entrepreneurs, an effort to bring the best of Google’s technology, talent, and resources to startup ecosystems worldwide. We built startup Campuses and a global partner network of 50 of the leading organizations in the world to support entrepreneurs in over 140 countries. My experiences on the ground in cities ranging from Islamabad to Seoul, Sao Paulo to Dublin, Tel Aviv to Austin, have consistently shown me that entrepreneurship is thriving in all corners of the world — not just in Silicon Valley.
My own roots are from places that couldn’t be further from your typical startup hotspots. My parents grew up in rural villages in Thailand, and each found their way to the U.S., met and married in Chicago, and had three children. They started and ran a small business together in San Diego for 30 years, and sought to create every opportunity possible for my siblings and me. I watched my parents achieve the American dream through sheer tenacity and determination, and they gave me early experience in the challenges and rewards of entrepreneurship.
It’s that spirit that has drawn me to love working with startups, and to believe in the power of entrepreneurship to change people’s lives in communities all over the world.
In 2014, I joined Steve Case as he kicked off the first Rise of the Rest tour in Detroit. Since then we’ve teamed up on Google Demo Days to identify and support top startups from outside of Silicon Valley, Boston, and NYC. Over the past 4 years, I’ve become more and more inspired by the power of the Rise of the Rest platform. Innovative startups and communities are beginning to get some of the national recognition they’ve long deserved — and Rise of the Rest is providing access to opportunity for new startup communities, along with tangible resources and investment to catalyze these ecosystems.
Quite simply, I’ve fallen in love with the vision that Steve and his amazing team have built to invest in and grow startups outside of Silicon Valley. It speaks not only to my personal values and experience, but also to my belief in the future of where the innovation economy is headed.
That’s also why I’m not only joining Rise of the Rest as a Partner, but I’m also leaving Silicon Valley with my family and moving to Minnesota. I was born in Iowa,my husband Steve is from Minnesota, and we have a huge family and roots in the Midwest. We also started and run a nonprofit together called Silicon North Stars, whose mission is to inspire young Minnesotans from economically underserved communities toward futures in tech. The opportunity to be closer to the startup ecosystems that Rise of the Rest focuses on, while also being close to family, is a dream come true. We can’t wait to move to Minnesota with our young family, to introduce our one-year-old twins to the snow, and to be more actively involved in the entrepreneurial community there.
I’ve been blessed with wonderful parents, a great family, and a great decade and a half at Google. It feels like the right time for my next chapter. I look forward to rolling up my sleeves this spring and working hard with entrepreneurs across the country to help drive the growth of their companies and the economic development of their cities, in the hopes that more tenacious entrepreneurs might have a shot — as my family did — at the American dream.
Bio:
Mary Grove is the Director of Google for Entrepreneurs where she leads Google for Entrepreneurs, the company’s programs and partnerships to support startups and entrepreneurs in over 100 countries around the world. She earned her BA and MA from Stanford University. Mary joined Google in 2004 as part of the legal team working on the company’s IPO then moved to New Business Development where she spent 6 years focused on a range of early stage product incubation and led over 100 strategic partnerships. Mary is passionate about building community and has led exploratory outreach for Google and work with entrepreneurs for Google in Pakistan, Iraq, Gaza, and Afghanistan. She is the co-founder of Silicon North Stars, a nonprofit that connects youth from the Midwest to Silicon Valley and has served on the Boards of the Stanford Alumni Association and UP Global, and the Advisory Boards of Techstars Foundation and Astia.
Twitter: @marygrove
