The title says it all. You’ll do a wide variety of things at Contrary alongside me, Will Robbins.
Still, let me be clear with what I intend for this job to be: a career-launching experience for a prodigious future founder/investor that leads to high professional, personal, and philosophical growth.
Sound interesting? Read on to the formal job description…
About Contrary
Contrary is a venture fund that identifies the world’s top early-career engineers, designers, and product minds, connects them with a close-knit, career-long support community, and invests in companies they start or join.
Backed by the founders of Tesla, Reddit, Facebook, and many more iconic companies, we’re building the de facto platform for talented builders early in their careers.
We started out in 2016 with a venture capital fund laser-focused on backing a small number of exceptional entrepreneurs.
Over time, we’ve continued doubling down on our strategy, expanding our reach along the way. Contrary Talent is the most recent example of this.
The role
Ultimately, our mission is to build the layer connecting every talented, ambitious, and ethical young person nationwide, for life. Your mission is to be the multi-talented executor who operates and invests with me.
What you’ll do
We considered naming this role Apprentice or Chief of Staff. But Associate is the easiest to promote.
Contrary has always been half startup, and half venture fund. Historically, we’ve all worn multiple hats. Our small team runs the back office, fundraises, manages our deal pipeline, operates the venture partner community, does marketing, and more.
Together, we will:
- Recruit and onboard Venture Parters, the 100 brightest students nationwide who make up the Contrary community.
- Talk with founders and select startups to partner with.
- Support companies in our portfolio as they scale.
- Market ourselves and the firm through owned channels, national media, etc.
- Execute a couple new initiatives that I won’t mention publicly for now ;)
What’s in it for you
Ideally, joining me, Eric, and the rest of the team will be the start of a life-long working relationship and friendship. Here are a few of the unique things to consider about Contrary:
- Very few people actually get to see the behind-the-scenes of building a venture fund. Most investor roles have the fundraising, ops, and other core components abstracted away from them.
- If you want to start a company, join a high-growth startup, or work at a fund outside of Contrary’s scope, we’ll be your earliest and biggest backer.
- We’re in the business of meeting the top 0.1% early in their careers. The people you build deep relationships with now will go on to do interesting things. (And this is already happening — our alumni have already become executives at name-brand startups and raised millions from world-class investors.)
- We’re maniacal. There’s a certain energy that comes with a team like this. You know it when you see it, and hopefully you find it hard to resist.
Who you are
I love working with individuals from diverse, underestimated backgrounds. Here are some of the qualities I’m thinking about:
- You will certainly have built something that nobody told you to build. Whether it be a software side-project, an insightful blog, or a lemonade stand.
- That said, nobody on the Contrary team does things for the sake of it. Ideally, you have a clear conception of why everything described above actually matters for the world.
- A technical background is not necessarily required, but our culture is builder-oriented at heart. In any case, you must be fluent enough to work with technical entrepreneurs.
- The 9-to-5 routine may or may not bore you, but the startup grind will energize you. We work hard. That said, I value relationships as well as health. You will never have to lose a minute of sleep working with me (unless we’re waking up at 8:00am for a special event!)
- Nobody taught you most of what you’ve learned.. There are almost too many VC/startup resources out there these days, and you’ve read enough to have general knowledge.
- You can identify and associate with people who are of excellent character, diverse, and exceedingly intelligent.
How to apply
Email Will at will@contrarycap.com. We’re looking to hire as soon as we find the right fit, so get in touch today.
We’ll carefully read everything sent, but due to volume, we will likely be unable to provide meaningful feedback to everyone.
We don’t believe that highly-structured interview processes make much sense for such “artisanal” roles. After reviewing everyone interested, we’ll take a subset and do casual chats to get to know each other. If our skills and personalities are a match, we’ll dig into some things you’ve done previously, and then we’ll have follow-on conversations until we decide there’s a mutual fit or one of us decides there isn’t.
