A local venture capital firm that debuted in the early days of Covid-19 is back with a new, bigger fund and plans to invest it in dozens of early-stage businesses.

Bread & Butter Ventures, a Minneapolis-based early-stage VC firm, on Tuesday announced a fourth fund that totals $40 million. Brett Brohl, the firm’s managing partner, said he expects to invest that money into around 30 startups over the next few years.

The firm began formally operating under the Bread & Butter Ventures banner in 2020, but the company’s history actually dates back to 2017, when Brohl first launched a VC firm he dubbed the Syndicate Fund. Brohl teamed up with Minnesota transplant and ex-Googler Mary Grove in June 2020 to rebrand the firm as Bread & Butter Ventures. The firm also added Stephanie Rich, a longtime Techstars leader, around the time.

The group then widened the firm’s initial focus beyond just foodtech and into health care technology and enterprise software-as-a-service, or SaaS. Their aim, they’ve said, is to target startups working in industries where Minnesota has expertise. Just about a year ago, Bread & Butter announced a partnership with health-tech trade group Medical Alley to help identify promising health care startups.

“We’re trying, as a team, to build a tier-one venture capital firm based right here in the Midwest, specifically in Minnesota,” Grove said in an interview with TCB. The group aims to show that a such a firm can succeed “not in spite of our location, but really because of our location,” she said.

The firm has continued to grow and invest since its launch. Brohl noted that the fourth fund is nearly double the third, which was worth about $28 million. The firm’s second fund was just $8 million.

The amount Bread & Butter is investing per startup has grown, too: In its third fund, Bread & Butter wrote checks for startups of around $500,000 apiece. This time, Brohl expects to invest about $1 million per startup. The firm generally writes a single initial check for the startups it funds and then saves some capital for additional funding rounds down the road.

“We’re really excited about the ability to expand to larger checks,” Brohl said.

But, despite the increase in check size, Brohl noted that the firm is still targeting companies at the same stage of development – generally those looking for total investments between $1 million and $3 million. Hence, Bread & Butter still bills itself as an “early-stage” VC firm.

About half of Bread & Butter’s $40 million fund came from Minnesota-based investors. Most of the funders in this round were return investors, including the St. Paul-based F.R. Bigelow Foundation.

Bread & Butter formally announced the latest fund this week, but it’s already started making investments from it. Brohl said the firm has made ten such investments from the fourth fund since last year.

Across all of its funds to date, Bread & Butter has invested in 77 companies total. The company’s investment portfolio includes cold brew maker Bizzy Coffee and fishing equipment e-retailer Omnia Fishing.

Startups need not be based in Minnesota to get investments from Bread & Butter, but their business must align with one of the firm’s three “pillars” of foodtech, health care, or enterprise SaaS.

And though much has changed in business and culture since Brohl started the firm, he said the company keeps a sharp focus on the founders themselves, and their teams.

“Nothing is more important for a startup than the people that are running it,” he said. “We knew that when we got into this business, but it has crystalized even more over the last decade.”