Contrary Capital is hiring Venture Partners at UMD
Applications are now closed. Interested in applying in the future? Reach out to Colin at colin@contrarycap.com.
Contrary Capital is a pre-seed, university-focused VC firm with Venture Partners at each of the 40+ top entrepreneurship universities, including UMD. Each campus is run by the local Venture Partners who are students that are embedded into the campus ecosystem. Many of whom are startup founders themselves. They are responsible for sourcing startups, conducting due diligence, building relationships with entrepreneurs, faculty and staff, running entrepreneurship events on campus, and advising entrepreneurs.
Contrary has been operating under the radar for about two years now, as we worked on raising our fund, recruiting Venture Partners, and building a presence on each campus. We just launched on UMD’s campus this semester — you can read more about Contrary and how we fit into the UMD ecosystem here.
Now that we’ve launched, we’re looking to bring on two new Venture Partners at UMD.
Why Join Contrary?
If one day, you would like to become a startup founder, then you will need to understand what makes a company great. You’ll want to be able to see the common pitfalls of startups so that you can avoid them. And, you’ll want to understand where the overall market is going and how startups adapt and grow within their chosen market.
There’s no better place to learn all of that than on the other side of the table.
And if you want to start doing all of that while you are a student, then there is no better place than at Contrary.
Here are some of the other benefits of working as a Contrary Venture Partner:
- Direct access to successful entrepreneurs, especially Terp alums.
- Access to our tight-knit community of 100+ like-minded fellow students.
- Early access to job opportunities at high-growth startups and top venture capital firms. Alums have gone off to work at VC firms like Bessemer and Stripes Group, consulting firms like McKinsey and Deloitte, and startups like Facebook and Google. Others have gone to start their own startups, with full access to our VC network when they are ready to raise.
- The opportunity to give back to the UMD entrepreneurship community, and empower entrepreneurs to take their startups from dorm room to boardroom.
- Intensive training over the winter on venture capital and evaluating startups/founders.
We don’t expect students to come in with a background in venture capital, but it certainly makes folks stand out. Above all, we’re really looking for folks that are hard-working and ambitious.
Community
We take community-building very seriously within Contrary. After all, we’re a decentralized organization where each VP operates with a significant amount of autonomy and responsibility. Therefore, it’s not just important that we recruit extremely high-caliber students, we also have to make sure that they get to know each other and spread what they learn from working on their campus.
So once you are in, we do everything we can to make sure that you can build meaningful relationships with your fellow VPs.
The Application
With that said, if this interests you, then you should apply to join as a Venture Partner. We’re looking to bring on two VPs, at least one of which will be well-connected in the business school and at least one will be an underclassman. Any major, undergraduate or graduate, may apply!
Applications are open until November 6th. Keep in mind that you must be graduating in Fall 2018 or later.
Applications are now closed. Interested in applying in the future? Reach out to Colin at colin@contrarycap.com.
Upcoming Events
Want to hear more about Contrary Capital?
Our founder and General Partner, Eric Tarczynski, 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 the venture capital fund, and his thoughts on student entrepreneurship as a whole. I’ll be there, too, and I’m happy to answer any of your questions about working as a Venture Partner.
Questions
If you have any questions about the role or about Contrary, feel free to reach out to me at: colin@contrarycap.com. You can find more information on my background at: colinking.co.
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!
