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Getro’s latest Platform Spotlight features Stephanie Rich, Partner & Head of Platform at Bread & Butter Ventures, whose “dot-connecting” superpower and founder-first mindset exemplify the collaboration and impact at the heart of the platform community.
At Getro, we’re lucky to work with platform leaders who shape the way founders learn, grow, hire, sell, and stay connected. These are the people building the “infrastructure of support” inside venture funds. The ones founders call on when they need clarity, introductions, strategy, or community.
This month, we’re excited to spotlight Stephanie Rich, Head of Platform at Bread & Butter Ventures, and a winner of this year’s VC Platform Day Giveaway. Stephanie represents exactly what makes the platform community so special: generosity, curiosity, and a bias toward building connections that truly move founders forward.
Partner & Head of Platform, Bread & Butter Ventures | Minneapolis, MN
Stephanie leads platform at Bread & Butter Ventures, where she supports founders through marketing, communications, corporate partnerships, and both one-to-one and one-to-many portfolio support. Before VC, she was employee #1 at a venture-backed IoT startup, a Techstars entrepreneur-in-residence (EIR), and a film rights sales agent. With a background in journalism, early-stage marketing, and startup building, Stephanie describes her “special sauce” as connecting the dots, making the right introductions at the right moment and helping founders break through walls that slow down momentum.
A: I have a bit of a weird story. I actually majored in journalism in college because I thought I’d become a magazine editor. But I got really into producing concerts in school, which pushed me toward the production side of the arts. After graduating, I moved to LA and fell into this strange little pocket of the film industry where I sold rights to movies as a way to finance them. It gave me this insane opportunity to travel to festivals and markets around the world, which was incredible.
But I realized that wasn’t what I wanted long-term. I felt like I needed a stronger business background to switch industries, so I went back to business school and ended up back in Minneapolis. And honestly, serendipity played a big role from there. I became employee number one at a venture-backed IoT startup and eventually ran marketing. That experience got me into working with early-stage teams.
Our product was used in other people’s products, and Kickstarter was huge at the time, so we helped a lot of teams with their campaigns. That’s how I got my intro to early-stage founders. Then I started mentoring with Techstars here in Minnesota, became an EIR in the Farm to Fork program, and that’s where I started working with the Bread and Butter team. Eventually, they asked if I wanted to be Head of Platform, and I said, “Yes… what is Head of Platform?”
A: The core is really the marketing work. Being super early at a company meant I got to stand up all kinds of things: customer success, a bit of finance, and even HR. Having that hands-on experience brings a lot of empathy into my platform work.
I also just really love to build and create. Wrapping all of that together makes me love what platform is. It’s this combination of building things, supporting teams, and helping them figure out what to do next.
A: My role has evolved mostly in terms of trust from my partners. They’ve given me a lot more autonomy over the years. I’ve also let go of some of the work I used to do. We now have an unbelievable ops manager who makes my life much easier, which lets me focus more on the hands-on work with founders.
Right now, I see my job in four buckets, though they’re never equal at the same time.
A: It’s a mix of looking inward at my own skill set and what the founders were actually asking for. You have to understand what you’re good at and what you don’t know or don’t have time for.
Our big pillars ended up being sales and BD, PR and marketing, and fundraising support. Those were the places where we felt we could make a meaningful impact.
A: These days, I measure my work by whether I’m breaking down walls and creating connections, not by the outcome in ten years. Venture timelines are so long. So I try to focus on the moments that matter right now. Did I connect them to someone who moved something forward? Did I help the founder get unstuck? That feels like a far more accurate way to judge platform work.
A: Some things that end up being huge, were unbelievably easy. I once introduced someone to their CRO without even realizing it. It took two emails and they were incredibly grateful. Then there are things you work on tirelessly that don’t land. It’s funny how that works.
I’m really proud of our Founder Summit. We do it every other year, and the next one is in May. There’s just something different about it. We’ve dialed in a great mix of content and connection. It makes me so happy to see founders in our portfolio talking all the time.
I’m also proud of the introductions that led to lead investors or major enterprise customers, and of helping companies land press stories. I’ve done a lot of seed-stage announcements, and it’s always exciting when a founder tells me their announcement brought in customers.
A: For me, connecting dots is just something I love. I love thinking, “You should meet this person,” or, “You should read this,” or, “You should look at this product.”
I think a huge part of it is curiosity and being able to learn about lots of different things. Journalism helped with that. Its all about asking the right questions, diving into many topics, and switching contexts really fast. When you’re writing, you’re always learning something new, and that’s a perfect training ground for platform.
A: Context switching is huge, and getting good at it pays dividends. One moment you’re planning a Founder Summit activity, the next you’re reading a pitch deck for a food tech company, and then you’re writing an intro blurb for a health tech founder. It’s all over the map.
I describe myself as a generalist with a strength in marketing. A lot of generalists are actually really strong in certain areas, they just do a lot of things. Being able to move between those things quickly is what makes platform work doable and fun.
A: I love the folks in VC Platform so much. Most of us are rowing in the same direction. We’re not taking full rounds, and we want later-stage funds to come in behind us with unbelievable platform teams, that help our founders, too.
I’ve learned so much from my peers. I respect them, I love them, and I want them to win. It’s incredibly collaborative, and I feel lucky to be part of it.
Platform leaders like Stephanie are the connective tissue of the venture ecosystem. They’re the ones founders turn to when they need clarity, momentum, or someone who simply “gets it.”
What stood out most in this conversation is Stephanie’s blend of humility and precision, the belief that small moments of connection can create outsized impact. That philosophy is exactly why we built Getro, and exactly why we love spotlighting people like Stephanie.
She’s a builder, a connector, and a generous collaborator and the kind of platform leader every founder hopes their fund has on their side.
If you’re part of the platform community and want to share your story (or nominate someone doing exceptional work), we’d love to hear from you.
Here’s to the people building better networks and the founders they lift up along the way.
Book a call to put your network to work.