Stephanie Rich is Head of Platform at Bread & Butter Ventures where she works to add continuous value to portfolio companies and founders. She is the former Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Techstars Farm to Fork Accelerator in partnership with Cargill and Ecolab. Steph has worked with numerous early stage startups as a mentor and advisor, and has received the Techstars #givefirst award three separate times. She has hands-on expertise in bringing products and companies to market while building, cultivating and sustaining customer bases online and off.
Stephanie is the founder of Starting Up North, a publication focused on telling the stories and sharing the insights of Minnesota startups, innovators and their ecosystem, and Goby Partners, a marketing consultancy for startups and growing brands. Prior to Goby, Stephanie was employee #1 at Particle, the leading development platform for the Internet of Things. She established operational infrastructure and built the Particle brand in the marketplace by leading communications, social media, and product launches.
She received her BSJ at the Medill School of Journalism and her MBA at the University of Cambridge. Stephanie's bread and butter is connecting dots - whether that means facilitating unexpected collaborations, surfacing the right tools for solving a problem, or helping teams identify previously unknown strengths. She is also very good at logic puzzles and stopping to pet every dog she meets.