TIMOTHY JORDAN: Hello, and welcome
to "The Developer Show."
I'm Timothy Jordan, and I'm standing here
with Mary Grove, director of Google for Entrepreneurs.
MARY GROVE: Hi, Timothy.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Hi, Mary.
How are you?
MARY GROVE: I'm great.
Thanks for having me.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Thanks for being here.
MARY GROVE: Absolutely.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: OK.
Let me jump to a question about Google for Entrepreneurs.
It's been on my mind for a little while,
because developers ask it, and I think it's fair,
and I think we should give them an answer.
Why is Google doing this?
MARY GROVE: It's a great question.
I'm glad you asked.
So there's two ways that I look at that.
One is if you look at Google's own history, our own journey
as a company, entrepreneurship is such a core part of our DNA.
Google began as a startup in a garage,
now almost 20 years ago.
We are a company founded by entrepreneurs,
built by entrepreneurial people, and it makes sense
that we are passionate about empowering the next generation
of startups like Google to become successful, to launch,
to use the internet to grow their business.
So that's the first reason.
The second reason, though, is actually an economic one.
We believe that by investing in communities, long term
investing in startup communities,
these are the next set of companies
who are going to come online, use the internet,
leverage Google's products as well,
so really, it's this notion that all boats rise,
and long, long term, it's also going
to benefit our own business too.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Now before you were
the director of this huge amazing thing,
you were a BD principal at Google,
and I'm curious, what did you learn
doing those global partnerships that brought you
into this new job?
MARY GROVE: Sure.
So my actual, my personal story with entrepreneurship
begins with my parents.
So my parents are both immigrants from Thailand,
and they moved to America, sort of
personified the quintessential American dream.
They were entrepreneurs and really showed me firsthand
that you can really create whatever future
you dream for yourself.
So at Google, fast forward many years later,
I was working in new business development, as you said,
looking at emerging markets for Google.
And everywhere we worked, we looked for three things.
One is how can we increase access, so internet and mobile
penetration.
Two is how can we increase content created
from these regions, and the third bucket,
which is my personal sort of passion, was entrepreneurship.
So how can we work with students,
developers in the emerging entrepreneur ecosystem
to really help them create the next generation of companies
and really create and grow their own economies?
TIMOTHY JORDAN: So let's say you're
a budding entrepreneur out there with an early stage startup.
What's your first step getting help from Google?
MARY GROVE: There's many ways to look at that.
There are so many amazing groups and networks that Google has,
of course, Google Developer groups being one of them,
Women Techmakers being another great example.
We at the heart of it are a technology company,
so we hope that our products, our platforms
can help you be successful.
Beyond that in the Google for Entrepreneurs umbrella,
our mission is really about bringing together
startup communities, so working with partners of all types,
whether that's physical space, co-working,
tech hub to accelerators and educational curricula.
We try to knit together this global partner
community of about 50 organizations
who are supporting entrepreneurs,
so we encourage you to get involved with one of them.
For example, Techstars is a global accelerator running all
sorts of programs ranging from startup weekend
to their vertical accelerators, and you can find all these
resources on our website, which is google.com/entrepreneurs.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Awesome.
Is there anything else that you'd
like to say about the program that you don't often
get to talk about?
MARY GROVE: I think that we're based here in Silicon Valley,
but Google is truly a global company.
The internet has really democratized access
to entrepreneurship.
You can launch a company from Sao Paulo, Brazil
and have users in Seoul, South Korea instantly,
and so what I would say is we passionately
believe that entrepreneurship is thriving all over the world.
It's about getting more access, getting more opportunity,
and helping companies really go global from day one
and think about their market opportunity
as not just their city or their country,
but really the whole world.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: Mary, thanks for joining me today.
MARY GROVE: Thanks, Timothy.
Thanks for having me.
TIMOTHY JORDAN: For more information
about Google for Entrepreneurs, make
sure to check out the show notes for all the links
that you need.
I'm Timothy Jordan, and we'll see you next time.
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