James Hennessy

Jen Yang-Wong

Jessica Retrum

Kyle Harrison

Eric Tarczynski

Contrary HQ

Jason Chen

Will Robbins

For the past five years, Contrary has been guided by the belief that people matter most.

Throughout that time, our most special moments have been in-person. Whether traveling to universities in the early days, bringing our entire community together for Retreat, or spontaneous meetups and hangouts which happen weekly from coast to coast — Contrary is at its best when we’re together.

Today, we’re excited to announce that we’re doubling down on our commitment to in-person collaboration. We’re officially launching Contrary NYC, a creative workspace in the heart of the Flatiron District, which serves as a beacon and hub for the city’s best technologists, thinkers, and builders.

The next Xerox PARC won’t be built over Zoom. It will be forged by brilliant minds coming together in one space, discussing ideas, collaborating with one another, and — most importantly — building.

Why New York? The city is undergoing a rebirth as a stomping ground for some of the brightest minds across many tech disciplines, and we’ve watched the Contrary community gravitate there at a remarkable pace – in fact, 40% of our entire community is now NYC-based. It’s our mission to be at the nucleus of the next generation of exceptional talent, and NYC was the natural choice.

We’ve already seen remarkable things come out of Contrary NYC following its soft launch earlier this year. Founders have come together, companies have been acquired, and startups have raised tens of millions of dollars from world-class investors and angels. It has already generated over $200M+ in cumulative value, and we can’t wait to achieve orders of magnitude more in the coming year.

If you’re interested in becoming a member of Contrary NYC, apply here or get referred by an existing member.

Announcing Contrary NYC. A creative workspace in Flatiron for the top technologists and builders in NYC.

Announcing Contrary NYC

Today, we’re excited to share that Judith Lao has joined the engineering team.

The Contrary community is a collection of the world’s most ambitious, curious and kind people. We look for the same when bringing anyone on to our HQ team — and Judith is no exception. From our very first conversation with her, each member of the team that met Judith walked away energized and excited to have her join our engineering team. She’s a perfect cultural fit with the same curiosity, ambition and kindness that we embody and strive for.

Prior to joining us, Judith was an engineer at Bloomberg where she worked on their global search widget, a reusable application for surfacing n data sets that could be embedded within Bloomberg’s main websites. She studied Neuroscience at Brown, where she was heavily involved in disability justice.

We're thrilled to announce that Judith has joined our team as an engineer

Welcoming Judith Lao

As the pace of technological development continues to accelerate, new things happen fast. Almost too fast to keep up with, at times.

When coming across James Hennessy's work, we were captivated by the breadth of focus. He's covered everything from the politics of facial recognition, to gaming, to Twitter's controversial acquisition.

As a people-driven firm investing in massive opportunities no matter how obscure, we couldn't help but think to ourselves: "James gets it."

Beyond an appetite for all things interesting, James has appeared or been syndicated in The Guardian, The Outline, SBS, the ABC, The Monthly, Business Insider, Yahoo! Finance, MSN, and more. He most recently served as Editor at Business Insider Australia before embarking on his own freelance entrepreneurial journey.

Today, James joins us as a Writer, and we can't wait to share more about the projects he'll work on.

We're thrilled to announce James has joined our team as a writer

Welcoming James Hennessy

Every company represents a story. While Contrary has traditionally focused on people leading up to company formation and through the early life of a young startup, the technology and markets also tell stories fundamental to each iconic business.

In this spirit, we've launched a new initiative to better understand and communicate the bigger picture of every private company: Contrary Research.

Contrary Research is central hub for thoughtful analysis of the world's fastest-growing technology companies. We do the hard work of bringing disparate insights together in a clear and concise way to help you better understand companies that are otherwise hard to dig into.

We touch on all types of technology companies, because their stories so often weave together: public, private, early and late stage, hardware, software, and everything in between. But as our content base develops, private technology companies will continue to be the focus.

So whether you're a founder, investor, operator, journalist, limited partner, or just a tech fan, Contrary Research is your home for understanding any private technology company.

To build out Contrary Research we’re excited to announce two new additions to the Contrary team. Abdullah Al-Rezwan has joined as Director of Research and Francis Odum has joined us as a Research Analyst.

Some of you may know Abdullah as Mostly Borrowed Ideas on Twitter. After spending a few years in the investing world Abdullah founded MBI Deep Dives where he provides in-depth research on a different company every month. He’s covered companies like Uber, Etsy, Shopify, and Crowdstrike. As a long-time Twitter friend, we stumbled into a conversation about the importance of private market research alongside public company research, and I knew we simply had to find a way to work together.

Francis started his career as a product manager working on data and ML tools. He became so enamored by the intersection of technology and business strategy that he founded InvestiAnalyst to share research coverage of companies like Datadog and Snowflake. With an in-the-trenches operating background, Francis elegantly approaches research from a technology-first perspective, and has been instrumental getting Contrary Research off the ground.

We couldn’t be more excited to have Abdullah and Francis helping us build Contrary Research!

To learn more about Contrary Research, check out our new website and subscribe or follow us on Twitter to get the latest private market insights.

Announcing Contrary Research. Illuminating private markets through in-depth research.

Contrary Research

Contrary is a venture firm, backed by the world's most iconic entrepreneurs, that identifies and invests in exceptional talent. We invest up to $2M in a small number of startups each year, and work closely alongside them to build enduring businesses.

Each year, we assemble a team of exceptional student Venture Partners (VPs) to work closely with us on the HQ team. They hail from 30 universities across the US and Canada, and are a diverse group of founders, engineers, designers, hustlers, researchers, writers, and everything in between.

As we head into this next school year, we're excited to recruit the next generation of students to join the Contrary family.

Your role as a Venture Partner is to be the go-to resource for founders on campus. One day you might grab coffee with someone working on a side project. The next day, you might research embedded fintech or enterprise sales software because we're evaluating relevant companies. You'll learn how to make investment decisions, how to tell a story, and how to build a startup.

We look for independent thinkers with diverse experiences -- underestimated backgrounds make for the best VPs! Previous VPs have given up a career as a pro climber to attend college, written apps with 100k+ downloads, and filmed a documentary in the Arctic. There is no specific VP archetype. The only requirements are that you love tech and early-stage startups, and will put in the time and effort to make the most of the opportunity.

We're hosting a national info session virtually on Tuesday, September 6th at 5pm PT/8pm ET. We'll give an in-depth overview of Contrary and the Venture Partner role. RSVP below.

We will review applications as they come in, so apply now. The sooner the better. We have a final deadline of September 15th at 11:59pm PT.

We generally prefer people with more than one year of school left, but have made exceptions in the past, especially for MBA students.

Our process generally includes 3 steps: a chat with a member of the Contrary HQ team, a casual interview with existing VPs at your school (if applicable), and a conversation with our founder Eric.

Reach out to vp@contrary.com with any additional questions. We're always happy to chat.

The Venture Partner role is a school-year commitment that lasts until you graduate.

Genuinely, we can't wait to hear from you, and we look forward to reading your applications!

Calling all builders, engineers, designers, investors, and everything in between - Venture Partner applications for 2022 are now open

Venture Partner Applications 2022

We first met AtoB cofounder Tushar Misra nearly 5 years ago. His experience as one of Uber India's first employees developed a deep love for all things transportation.

After leaving Uber, Tushar set out to build the infrastructure for all things mobility by starting a company called Grido. It was an ambitious undertaking: the logistics (and finances) of mobility hardware are notoriously difficult.

We were honored to invest in Grido, but COVID was a death knell, and the company went to zero.

As we worked with Tushar, our conviction in him as a founder only increased. His clarity, speed, and ambition were remarkable. Although his first company didn't work out, we were eager for another run.

That's when Tushar met AtoB cofounders Vignan and Harshita, and decided to swing for the fences.

In the couple of years since, AtoB has quietly become one of the fastest growing companies we've ever seen.

Starting with fuel cards, the AtoB team is building the financial layer for the transportation industry — the vital logistics platform that powers the rest of our economy.

We're elated to finally share more about the company, and look forward to many more years of working with Tushar and team.

In The Media

Announcing Contrary NYC

Welcoming Judith Lao

Welcoming James Hennessy

Contrary Research

Venture Partner Applications 2022

Investing in AtoB