Chad Robey

Chad Robley grew up in Indiana and graduated from Indiana University. By his own account, he "packed up after graduating and moved to San Diego with about $200" to his name, and started his first business out of a one-bedroom apartment in 1993, which he sold in 2001. Later that same year he founded Mindgruve, describing it as "a small, scrappy agency of five people." Before Mindgruve, he spent more than a decade as a startup entrepreneur building and scaling early-stage businesses into mature companies.

Over the following two decades, Robley grew Mindgruve into an INC. 5000–recognized, digitally led marketing agency working with major global consumer and B2B brands including Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, Qualcomm, Oracle, Merck, DuPont, Live Nation, and House of Blues. In June 2024, Mindgruve merged with Denver-based retail-media agency Macarta to form MindgruveMacarta, with Robley serving as Chairman & CEO of the combined firm — a roughly 300-person global agency with offices in San Diego, Denver, Mexico City, São Paulo, Amsterdam, Madrid, and London. The combined company has since continued an aggressive roll-up, merging with Cincinnati's Icon Commerce (2024) and Levelwing (2025).

Alongside the agency, Robley is the Founder and Managing Partner of Mindgruve Ventures, the firm's investment arm, which he uses to "operationalize" the equity opportunities that grew naturally out of the agency business: "At times, we took equity instead of cash. Later, Mindgruve Ventures would be launched to operationalize these opportunities." He is also an active angel investor and advisor to fast-growth companies, and sits on multiple company and industry boards across the consumer, technology, healthcare, and B2B sectors. He is a frequent public speaker and writer (including for Inc.) on the convergence of marketing and technology, digital transformation, and performance-driven growth.

• Operator-led, "more than money" model: Mindgruve Ventures positions itself as "accelerating companies with marketing, tech, capital & counsel" — pairing capital with hands-on agency expertise rather than acting as a passive financial backer.
• Stage: Invests across the full early-stage spectrum — idea, prototype, pre-revenue, and early-revenue companies.
• Check size: $100K–$1M, sized to "the team, market opportunity and growth trajectory," and often deployed as co-investment alongside other PE and investment groups.
• Sectors: Consumer products, media, technology, and eCommerce — areas overlapping the agency's go-to-market strengths.
• What makes him say yes: A large addressable market plus a team he can back. Robley repeatedly emphasizes betting on people: "One of the best decisions I ever made was investing and trusting in a great executive team." His own path — taking equity in lieu of cash for agency services — shows a preference for companies where marketing/tech execution is a meaningful growth lever.