Contrary Capital launches at the University of Maryland
University of Maryland has long been the home of incredible innovation and entrepreneurship. We’ve seen massive tech startups from College Park, like Oculus and FiscalNote, along with billion-dollar bioscience companies, like Digene and Martek Biosciences. In fact, the University System of Maryland, as a whole, has fostered more than 500 startups over the past 5 years.
This innovative spirit is deeply engrained in the entrepreneurial education at UMD, which was recently ranked as top-10 in the nation by the Princeton Review. More than that, UMD entrepreneurship has the full support of the state of Maryland and UMD leadership. You don’t have to look far from the Campus Drive gates to see the impact of that, through the multi-billion dollar Greater College Park Initiative, which includes the Iribe Center and the 20,000 ft² of space for startups in the brand-new Hotel.
Now is the time to be an entrepreneur in the College Park ecosystem.
All of this infrastructure investment in College Park, combined with our track record of innovation, is attracting all kinds of interest. Last year, we saw the launch of 301 Ventures, and earlier this year, the Maryland Momentum Fund. Before that, there has been the UMD VentureAccelerator Program and Dingman Center Angels. In fact, UMD was ranked as 27th worldwide by PitchBook after 291 Terps cumulatively raised over $3.1B of funding between 2006 and 2016.
But, for the first time ever, a national venture fund will be coming to UMD.
Contrary Capital
Contrary Capital is a pre-seed, university-focused VC firm with a nationwide network of 100+ talented students across 40+ of the top entrepreneurship universities. Every campus is run by local Venture Partners who are embedded into the campus ecosystem, many of whom are startup founders themselves. And it’s not just our partners who are founders — 80% of our backers co-founded $1B+ tech startups, like Tesla, Twitch, and SoFi.
Our Venture Partners source, evaluate, and lead investments on their campus. So far, we’ve made two public investments so far, in Additive Rocket Corp from UCSD (led by Martin Arreola) and Cortex Healthcare from BYU (led collaboratively by the BYU pod). Overall, we are industry-agnostic, and work with university experts from across the country to evaluate investment decisions.
Our goal is to build a fund with reach unlike any other university-focused fund before it — one where we can invest and empower the brightest student entrepreneurs across the country, whether they are in Salt Lake City or New York City.
But above all, we are a returns-focused organization. Contrary isn’t a resume booster, publicity tool, or side project. We select serious entrepreneurs, remove barriers, and stay out of your way.
How We Can Help
In Silicon Valley, university entrepreneurs have access to support not just from their universities, but from an ecosystem of experienced mentorship, startup accelerators, support systems, and talent. With Contrary at UMD, all of that comes with us and more.
Beyond a SAFE investment between $50k and $200k, the support of Contrary comes with some handy perks:
- An intensive, hands-on summer accelerator in the Bay Area where you’ll live and work alongside the most recent batch of Contrary entrepreneurs, with access to unparalleled mentorship and opportunities to scale your business.
- Warm introductions to any venture fund, and guidance with deciding on the best possible investors for your startup.
- Focused mentorship from successful entrepreneurs, including Terp alums.
- Access to our nationwide community of experienced Venture Partners, from a variety of fields (agriculture, healthcare, robotics, etc.) who’ve taken startups from the dorm room to the boardroom.
- Access to top talent, from across the country, no matter the niche.
- Access to tools like Stripe Atlas, so you can skip some red tape.
Looking for investment?
Are you working on startup? Whether you are currently looking to raise, or just looking for feedback and advice, feel free to reach out to me at colin@contrarycap.com.
Upcoming Fall Events
Going forward, we will be running a variety of events for entrepreneurs on campus. Look out for the following over the next month:
- Eric Tarczynski, the General Partner and Founder of Contrary Capital, will be on campus on Thursday, October 26th. Come meet us at the Startup Shell at 7PM (RSVP here), where he will be speaking about his journey launching a venture capital fund, and his thoughts on student entrepreneurship as a whole.
- Our first “Contrary Speaker Series” events in mid-November with Jonathan Chen of FiscalNote and Brendan Iribe of Oculus.
Become a Venture Partner
Are you interested in venture capital and startups? Want to contribute to the UMD entrepreneurship community? Apply to join as a Venture Partner at Contrary where you will work with me to find the best startups on campus.
Read more about the position here. However, applications are now closed. Interested in applying in the future? Reach out to Colin at colin@contrarycap.com.
Follow Contrary Capital on Medium to stay up-to-date on , as well as receive weekly entrepreneurship advice, such as Zach’s recent article on The Fallacy of Decreasing CAC.
A big thanks to Will Robbins, Sean Bae, Indra Sofian, Eric Tarczynski, Kyle King, and bkadams for their help in editing this post!
