Kyle Harrison

Eric Tarczynski

Contrary HQ

Jason Chen

Will Robbins

We met Jake Hillard and Rebecca Wong 4 years ago when they shared with us an ambitious vision: building a new approach to 3D Vision that makes sensing 100x more powerful.

This is no easy task: companies have spent billions of dollars over the past five years building large teams to push the boundaries of computer vision. "Hardware is hard" as the saying goes. But Jake and Rebecca are both persistent and brilliant. They literally invented mathematical theory and signal processing techniques that previously didn't exist, and spent years perfecting the technology.

This became Red Leader, and the results are revolutionary.

The story of Red Leader has been one of stealthy grit until now. I'll never forget how the specific configuration of cloud formations on a dreary day in Palo Alto was the deciding factor as to whether or not an early Red Leader demo unit worked properly. But with time, the hardware and software were ironed out, top executives from world-class companies joined Red Leader, and the product became ready to market.

The Red Leader difference can look like the difference between having your eyes open and closed. Look at this example -- one the current industry standard, and one using Red Leader -- moving down a street:

There's nothing else like it in the world. With this degree of 3D perception, problems such as autonomous driving will become far easier and safer. 

Jake and Rebecca are wonderful humans, stunningly smart, and their tech speaks for itself. This is why we're so excited to finally announce our pre-seed investment in Red Leader and publicly share that they have raised a $10M Series A.

Investing in Red Leader

I’m excited to share that Ryan Ma has joined from Stripe as our very first designer. I first met Ryan 10 years ago as classmates at Northeastern and distinctly remember thinking that he was exceptional — sharp, creative, hardworking and kind. Those characteristics continue to ring true today.

When it came time to bring on our first in-house designer, Ryan was the obvious choice and my first call. He brings with him world-class design experience from Stripe, Facebook and Lyft. In addition, we’re deeply aligned on Contrary’s people-first vision and team culture. We’re excited to see many of our internal and external initiatives come to life under Ryan’s design leadership.

We're thrilled to announce that Ryan Ma has joined our team to lead design.

Welcoming Ryan Ma

We've been living in a world devoid of human-to-human depth in the professional world for the past 20 years. Glassdoor and LinkedIn have been standard bearers of this era, which doesn't exactly set a high bar.

Kelsey and the team are reinventing this with Candor, building a humanity-filled product for people who care about knowing their colleagues on a personal level, all while improving themselves as teammates.

As with all things at Contrary, it comes back to the people. Kelsey’s a star who’s spent the bulk of the past five years deep in the operations and growth weeds of fast-growing startups like Vanta.

The more we spent time with her and witnessed her ability to execute, the more inspired we were. And when the opportunity to partner came along, it was an easy decision.

The future of work is going to look a lot like Candor, and we’re excited to back Kelsey and the team as they lead the way for the next generation.

Investing in Candor

I met Kyle Harrison 26 days after starting Contrary.

As with most of the early days, it was a matter of hustle and luck. I’d cold emailed him, wanting to build my network in Utah and BYU.

But unlike most cold emails, this one worked.

I’ll never forget how selfless Kyle was during our first conversation. He had no reason to help me – I was a nobody, and he surely wasn’t going to get anything out of this bargain.

And yet he went out of his way to help, introducing me to people like John Koelliker (whose company, Leland, we backed five years later) and the team at Album VC, among a dozen others.

We became fast friends and stayed close, with Kyle becoming an early advisor to Contrary six years ago.

And while our paths diverged for a few years, with me crisscrossing the country and Kyle doing true late-stage growth investing at TCV, a year and a half ago we went on a walk in San Francisco. While catching up on life, the conversation (inevitably) steered itself back to work, the future of venture, and what we both wanted out of our careers.

We believed deeply that venture was changing – fast – and that an opportunity existed to build one of the best venture firms of our generation.

It would be focused on identifying the brightest people in the world – first – and building infrastructure to relentlessly support those people for their entire careers.

Given Kyle had spent the better part of seven years across Index, Coatue, and TCV focused on working with founders later in their journeys, he’d play an integral role in building out this infrastructure.

A year and a half of sales efforts later (and with massive thanks to his wife Camden and children Dax, Jed, and Eve), I’m thrilled to share that Kyle Harrison has joined Contrary as a General Partner to co-found our later-stage practice.

There couldn’t be a better person at the helm. Welcome, Kyle!

We're thrilled to announce that Kyle has joined our investing team as General Partner.

Welcoming Kyle Harrison

Seven months ago, we led Leland’s pre-seed. Today, we are thrilled to share that we’ve doubled down and have led Leland’s seed, alongside friends like FJ Labs, Goodwater Capital, and strategic angels.

At its core, Leland is a bet on the belief in human potential. That with the right expertise and opportunities, anyone is capable of achieving their most ambitious goals. 

In the last nine months, young professionals have purchased over 2,500 hours of coaching on Leland, and coach orders have grown 90% every quarter since launching. Thousands of people on Leland are now reaching their goals—breaking into the best schools and companies in the world.

Best of all, we believe deeply in the team that John continues to build, and their execution over the past seven months has been nothing short of remarkable.

So if you’re looking for help with any career or educational goal, sign up for Leland.

And if you have a skill you’d like to share (and monetize), apply to be a coach.

Doubling Down on Leland

Today, we're excited to share that Megan Kao has joined the investment team.

The Contrary community is a collection of the world's most ambitious and curious people building across categories. When someone joins our investment team, we look for the same level of curiosity and drive -- and Megan is no exception. She's a perfect cultural fit with the ambitions we have for Contrary.

Prior to joining us, Megan was on the finance and strategy team at DoorDash, and spent several years at Goldman Sachs working with companies like Tesla, Uber, and Nvidia.

We're thrilled to announce that Megan has joined our investing team.

Welcoming Megan Kao

We’re excited to share that Nathan Chiu has joined us as a Software Engineer. Over the past few months, we’ve had conversations with multiple engineers. It was clear that Nathan was head-and-shoulders above the crowd — product-minded, experienced in building from zero to one, and most importantly a great cultural fit. We can’t wait to accelerate our engineering efforts with Nathan leading the effort on product engineering.

Prior to joining Contrary, Nathan was an early engineer at Stytch and a former engineer at Carta. He studied mathematics and economics at UT Austin and grew up in Dallas.

We're thrilled to announce that Nathan has joined our team as a software engineer.

Welcoming Nathan Chiu

As AI-enabled technology becomes increasingly democratized across industries, consumers have reaped the benefits - more personalized recommendations, improved product quality, and better customer service.

But, this advancement has not always been equitable. Questions of access and bias have persisted across the industry and diverse applications of AI technology are both rare and sorely needed.

Enter Parfait. Building for Black women, and starting with a highly fragmented wig market, Parfait is bringing innovation to what has historically been a cumbersome and manual fitting and purchasing process. Marrying a direct-to-consumer model with computer vision technology that effortlessly detects head measurements and skin tone, Parfait provides a digital-first purchasing process and a vastly improved customer experience.

At Contrary, we care deeply about founder-market fit and we can't think of a better team to build Parfait than Iso, Ifueko, Marlyse, and Simone. MIT PhDs and Wharton MBAs with experience at Amazon, Microsoft, Waymo, NASA, and others, they have both the operational expertise and the personal understanding of the pain point to build what we believe will be a truly transformational business.

Today is the first step toward their mission of building technology that enables beauty experiences for all people, and especially recognizes and prioritizes communities of color. We couldn't be more excited to announce our early support, and are thrilled to welcome our friends at Upfront Ventures, Serena Ventures, and many others to this growing team.

Investing in Parfait

I’m excited to share that Michelle Brown has joined Contrary from General Catalyst as our very first CFO. 

As we got to know Michelle over the prior few months, it became immediately apparent that she was unique. She’s a natural leader, and has an ability to distill the complex into the easily understood. 

Perhaps most importantly, we were deeply aligned with a shared vision for Contrary and what we expect it to become over the years ahead. Bringing the finance function in-house was a natural next step, and having a world-class leader in Michelle at the helm became an obvious choice.

We're thrilled to announce that Michelle has joined as our first CFO.

Welcoming Michelle Brown

We’re thrilled to share that Hiroki Hayama has joined the team from Uber Eats as Staff Data Scientist.

Hiroki spent the past eight years building Uber’s ride sharing and food delivery businesses, including being the founding applied scientist for Uber Pool and an early applied scientist on UberEats. In his time, he has touched nearly every facet of Eats, and helped scale the business to double digit billions.

Over the past five years, Contrary has been on a mission to identify, invest and relentlessly support the world’s top talent. With the addition of Hiroki leading Data, we’re excited to build and refine how we identify talent through data science and engineering.

More important than his impressive and extensive data science experience is our deep alignment in Contrary’s people-first vision and team culture.

We're thrilled to announce that Hiroki has joined the HQ team to lead data science.

Welcoming Hiroki Hayama

Get your startup’s first check from Contrary to quit your job, skip an internship, or take time off of school.

With our *First Check* program, 5 teams will receive up to $100k (as an uncapped note) to build companies.

It doesn’t matter who you are or where you’re from. We also don’t let visa status or sector get in the way of investing in great teams.

The only requirement is that you commit to working full-time on your company this summer. Applications open now, and will be evaluated on a rolling basis until 4/8. You can submit [here](https://airtable.com/shrkq9pKBdc2q85eZ). 

The process is simple:

- Apply [here](https://airtable.com/shrkq9pKBdc2q85eZ).
- We may invite you to a 15 minute chat with someone on the Contrary investing team.
- After that, we may have another ~30 minute discussion with others on the investing team.
- We’ll get back to you with a decision within a week.

We invest in people, and like to build relationships from the very start. With support from the Contrary investing team, the broader Contrary network of backers, and, depending on city, office space to work, we’re excited to get working.

Start a company with a $100k uncapped note.

First Check Program

Throughout history, advancements in technology have shown outsized impact on the mechanics of war and power. This was true at the Battle of Königgrätz in 1866 when an incremental innovation in rifle-loading allowed the Prussians to defeat the Austrians, who were still using slower and less agile muzzle-loaded weapons. This was equally true in August 1945 when the development of the atomic bomb — a technological revolution — decisively ended World War II.

Today, we live through a fast-changing Digital Age that poses crucial yet unsolved questions for the future of defense.

For example: would a swarm of 10,000 autonomous drones sink an aircraft carrier? The asymmetries are both physical (no anti-aircraft system could deal with so many objects at one time) and economic (even at $5,000 per drone, it would merely cost $50 million to destroy an asset worth more than $10 billion).

And while we have more sensors and data-streams than ever to observe the world that we operate in, the unsolved questions rarely come with actionable answers. This is why Modern Intelligence is building the new standard for AI in Defense.

Modern's platform pulls in data from all types of sources. It applies cutting edge AI advances to solve sensor-fusion problems. It allows users to find signal in deafening noise. And we think that over time, it will become the unifying AI layer for American defense.

Part of why we're so excited to invest in Modern is that Contrary Fellow John Dulin is CEO. We became close to John years before he started Modern, and have gotten to know him quite well. It was always hard to overlook his brilliance, but beyond having the raw horsepower needed to tackle military go-to-market challenges and hardcore AI research, cofounders John and Tristan both carry a sense of seriousness and responsibility commensurate with the task at hand.

We're proud to back Modern Intelligence and support the bold mission of taking America's capabilities into the 21st century. And if you're an aligned research scientist or machine learning engineer, visit Modern's website and consider joining the team!

Announcing our investment in Modern Intelligence's seed round.

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