From Day 1, Contrary's mission has been to identify and invest in the world's most exceptional people. It’s enabled us to be early backers of companies like Zepto, Ramp, Hallow, Anduril, and many others.
Our student Venture Partners are a key part of this process. They’re an exceptional team of builders who work closely with us to discover the next generation of founders at universities across the US and Canada.
Each year, we run a rigorous recruitment and selection process to identify a small number of VPs to join our community. This year was one of our most selective and competitive years yet: we received nearly 1500 applications, of which we ultimately accepted 20.
They are a diverse group of exceptional builders, founders, researchers, investors, writers, engineers, and everything in between, and we are thrilled today to welcome them to the Contrary family.
This year’s class includes:
• Current and former founders who have raised over $15M+ in venture capital
• Thiel fellows, competitive programmers, Wimbledon players, published researchers, and former investors
• Product builders with apps that have served 1M+ users
• Musicians (tabla and jori players, jazz singers, and violinists) who have performed at venues around the world
• Builders of spectrofluorometers, mushroom-picking robots, solar plants, and photonic chips
As we’ve gotten to know them over the past few weeks, we couldn’t be more excited to start working together. We’re thrilled to welcome the following new Venture Partners to the Contrary family!