Eric Tarczynski of Contrary Capital

Welcome to the Puck, Venture Capital and Beyond. A show that explores the evolving landscape in the venture capital world. We'll have candid conversations with today's VCs and entrepreneurs who are shaping those changes. I'm Jim Behr, the managing partner of Behr, Negron, and Troff and the president of CMEG Advisors. This podcast brings change makers to the table to discover the inner workings behind their decision making strategies and ultimately to how they got to where they are today.

Those people that are the 100 folks that are part of this community that we add every single year, we're extremely deliberate about making sure that this is a group of people that is diverse, comes from unique backgrounds. Because I think ultimately that's how you build a vibrant ecosystem. On today's Puck, we sit down with Eric Tarzinski, the founder of Contrary Capital, a venture fund focused on future leaders in engineering and design with a a commitment to long term support of companies and entrepreneurs. We discussed the advantages of being Contrarian and their commitment to diverse scouting in the quest to discover the top talent of the next generation. Okay.

So we are here with Eric Tarzinsky. We are thrilled to have you. And Eric is the founder, I believe, of contrary capital. Yep. And Eric, why don't you tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to form contrary capital?

Yeah, for sure. And thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. So in terms of my background and the contrary story, so I grew up in New Jersey, basically the Northwestern most part of New Jersey, which is actually the farm town in many ways. The Appalachians run through Northwestern New Jersey.

And so I grew up there, spent my whole life there, ultimately ended up going to school up in Boston. And while I was there, hatched the original idea for what became contrary because at the time and still today, I think, for that matter, you know, the vast majority of the smartest people from across the entire world at some point in their lives were flowing through the top 40 or so major research universities across The US. But what was always so interesting to me was that while people had been investing and identifying really sharp, talented people for twenty, thirty, forty years that were coming out of, let's say, a Stanford or an MIT, you know, that was mostly just being done in a silo. Right? That was mostly just being done at Stanford or at MIT.

And nobody had yet really built out this infrastructure layer to identify and support that talent, and specifically the world's top engineers, designers, and product folks systematically at scale. And so I kind of hatched the original idea because I was working on a company myself while I was in school and had friends and peers, you know, all across Boston who were doing similar things. And so it just only didn't feel like anybody had done that. And so we decided to do just that and kind of spent the past four or five years now building Contre, which is this tech driven venture firm backed by many of the world's best entrepreneurs. So founders from Facebook, Tesla, Airbnb, bunch of others.

And all we do is systematically identify and invest in the world's top talent. That's the super quick background on who we are and what we do. Jerome Lewis (zero 20 seven:forty four): Let's stay with that because you just said your goal is to invest in the world's top talent. As a corporate lawyer and as a restructuring guy, and having done this for a long time, I have my own theory as to what is the secret to venture capital investing. And I always use the analogy of sports where the top draft picks seem to do well and you give the football to somebody who can carry the football.

When Tom Brady left the Patriots, lo and behold, look what happened. So the challenge is, again, how do you how do you identify the top talent? We all know that if somebody exits from Facebook or from Google or from Tesla and they built and run a division successfully, those people have a higher level of chance and success. But you're taking people, as I understand it, that are out of school. Right?

What is your secret in terms of picking that top talent? Yeah. For sure. It's funny you mentioned giving the football analogy too. I sometimes jokingly call ourselves, you know, the Nick Saban's of startup world.

Same analogy. Right? Kind of going into in his case, it's high school. Right? But, you know, you're trying to find the best athletes, or, you know, in our case, maybe the best would be founders first.

Right? And and then kind of be in a position where you can maintain that relationship with them for life. That's very much how we think about it. It's multi prong is the short answer. It's not just kind of, you know, oh, one kind of secret sauce.

Right? You know, I think for us, it all starts with this underlying belief that by the time somebody is in college, oftentimes, if they're the kind of person that we think is going to be a great member of our community, they've very likely already done something exceptional in their lives. Right? And that doesn't have to be, you know, okay. They start a company prior.

Right? Because they very likely haven't. Right? They're in college. But they've done something.

Right? And maybe they were a world class athlete or pianist or whatever it might be. Right? And so we're looking at that past body of work which has shown exceptional grit and persistence or hustle or work ethic or whatever it might be. And then we're basically marrying that with what they have done while they're in school.

And you're marrying that with maybe where they've worked, where they've gone to school, projects they've done, whatever. Right? And then you're looking at, well, what do people say about them? What is their reputation? Right?

Are are they well respected? Do people like them, etcetera? And then when we talk to them, we wanna understand their ambition as well. Right? So what do you wanna do?

Do you wanna just go and work at Facebook or Google for your whole career? Or do you want to be a builder, be a founder, right, and be an early employer, start your own company over the next few years. And so I think those are kind of the different lenses that we think about it through and then ultimately make the decision as to whether or not somebody is going to be the kind of person that we wanna have as a part of our community. And so that's how we do it. Obviously, it's not perfect, but it gets us, I think, really close to where we want to be oftentimes.

And that makes sense. I love the fact that you used the word grit because I think that one of the secrets that I've seen with people that successfully build companies is they're like a dog with a bone. They do not let go. They throw their backpack over the wall. They do not take no for an answer.

They may pivot, but they have that natural grit. So let's stay with that for a second. It's a big country, and you've got thousands of these potential superstars out there that you wanna get to come to you, that you can mentor and invest in and so forth. How do you organize the country and find these people, and how do they find you? Yes.

In terms of kind of how they find us, so we've been doing this now for the better part of four or five years. And, you know, I I think we've built arguably most recognized brand that exists within our niche. Right? And and obviously, in the venture world, brand is extremely important. Right?

And and so if you were to go talk with any bright, young entrepreneurial person, let's say, they'll all know about Contre at this point. Right? And and so as a result of that, we get a lot of top of funnel, a lot of inbound, a lot of people reaching out to us, a lot of people that want to be a part of this. Right? I think they that it's a high bar.

Right? We only kind of are admitting about a 100 people a year to be a part of this community. The people that ultimately do become a part of it are exceptional, and exceptional people want to be with exceptional people oftentimes. Right? And so I think that's kind of the one piece.

And then the other piece for us is the genesis of contrary historically was a lot more deeply rooted in universities. And so we kind of, in the early days, very much used the university as this one giant filter and then applied our own filter on top of that, right? And so kind of as time has gone on now, you know, obviously that community has grown up. We've been doing this for two, three, four, five years. And so we're now at this point where we kind of started to think about ourselves as, hey, we should also be, you know, identifying and backing these people for their entire professional careers.

What started, you know, maybe a couple of years ago as, hey, let's just try and find really bright young people first, has now just kind of organically become, well, why not do this at scale for people for life? You end up building this incredibly powerful ecosystem over time, right, where you have people that are three, four, five, six, seven, eight, whatever year is post grad, and they're now directors of product at great companies. They're now, you know, starting their own companies. They're now working at the top venture firms in the world, all the while having deep affinity for contrary. Right?

And so I think ultimately, that's something that's incredibly powerful and takes years to build, I think. But we're now at that point. What is contrary? I think of certain things with contrary. What does contrary mean to you and what why the name is Andre?

Yeah. So the name is actually kind of funny. So so I kind of weird guy, I guess. When I was in college, I worked in a quant fund for, I remember, a couple of years with some of my friends. So I was a lot more interested in public markets when I was in college and undergrad and then towards the back half of college, and I started getting more into tech and tech entrepreneurship.

But in the early years, it was very into public markets. And I'm sure you know or have heard of him, Howard Marks, right, from Oak Creek Capital, a very famous investor, right? So Howard, this is probably several decades ago at this point, popularized that matrix about how in order to generate alpha over the long term, right, you need to be both contrarian and right. So you have that matrix with four different quadrants. And, you know, on the top left is market and wrong.

You're this idiot, right? You know, kind of market and right, you do not perform. You're contrarian and wrong, you're this pariah. And if you're contrarian and right is when you win. When we thought about this in the context of contrary, it was not so much that the kinds of investments that we were making would be massively contrary.

And I mean, we do make some to be sure. Right? You know, we've invested in computational biology companies and software defined lidar companies and things like that. But we are also now and again going to invest in enterprise software company much like the next person. What was really kind of contrarian and kind of unique about the model was that we were doing something, and still to this day, I think doing something that no other venture firm in the world is doing.

There are 50,000 venture funds out there. Right? And many of them are venture fund x in Boston or New York or San Francisco that chases the same deals as everybody else does. But there was really no venture firm that was saying, hey. We are going to be laser focused on systematically identifying kind of the brightest folks in the world and then supporting them relentlessly for their entire professional careers.

It's kind of a radical narrative. So I thought that ultimately, if we were successful with that, we would end up being an n of one venture firm. Right? We'd end up being a a venture firm that looked different than basically all other venture firms. And as a result of that, would allow us to generate durable alpha for the long haul.

So that was where the name came from. Help me understand this a little again. An entrepreneur comes to you whether or not they're right out of college or otherwise, but you're trying to get to them when they're young. Yep. Is your initial thing to mentor them and give them an initial investment to help launch whatever it is they're building?

Yep. And then my question is, let's say that person shuts that company down, they call CMVG, which is my company, and I restructure them, or I do an assignment for the benefit creditors, and now they've cleaned up their balance sheet, but they've taken a job at Procter and Gamble, or they've gone to Facebook. It sounds like you would still stay with them. That's right. Yeah.

So the model itself, to kind of walk you through how we think about it. Right? So every year, as of today at least, we add about a 100 people a year to this community. And these are people that, again, we think that they're going to be either early employees at companies or start companies of their own over the next five years, let's say. Throughout that journey, we support them however we can.

And so whether that's introducing them to companies that they might want to join, whether that's providing them with cool networking opportunities, whether that's our annual retreat that we run where we can fly all of our community members out to the Bay Area for a long weekend and bring in cool luminaries and give talks and we do workshops, you know, all the way through. Many of them are are living in houses together across the country right now, specifically given the pandemic. Right? It is a deep, deep community in every sense of the word. And the idea is we just want to support them however we can in the interim because we know that these are exceptional people that are going to do exceptional things.

And so if we can find them first, right, and if we can build that affinity with them early in their careers, it's the equivalent of, you know, I'm sure you and I both have this, Jim, where whoever kind of gave you your shot in life professionally, whether it's your first job or whatever, right, I'm sure you have this degree of affinity and gratitude for that person or that firm or whatever it is. And so, you know, that is really what we're doing with the fellowship as we call it, you know, at scale. So, yeah, the idea is absolutely. You know, you go start a company then and we invest in that company. And let's say it doesn't work out, but you go start another one in two or three or four years, you know, we're still going to be there with you.

We're still going to be investing in that company because we're playing the long game. There are some companies we're actually finalizing a a deal right now. We met this founder five years ago. It took him five years. This kind of cycle to basically come full circle.

But you ultimately end up with this closed loop ecosystem where because you've built that relationship, you end up playing a different game than everybody else plays. That's how we think about it. Back in the day in LA, there was a company called Idealab that Bill Gross started where you had this incubator for tech companies, whether or not you call it accelerators or otherwise. There's a lot of people that have toyed around with these different communities where Techstars, which does a lot of small investing. With you and your niche, for instance, do you have a team of people that help mentor and bring these people along, or is it equally the fact that you're creating this community where you're bringing these people together and they share some of their experiences?

The answer is both. The more nuanced answer is we have a team of about 10 people full time right now, and so that's split across, obviously, our investment team, right? At the end of the day, we are a venture fund, right? And then our platform team, as we call it. The platform team is really focused on helping us execute our job to the best of our ability, right?

Which is being in the talent identification business, business, as we call it, and then supporting those fellows through their entire professional careers. Right? And so we have an events lead and a community lead and a software engineer full time and a director of platform. Right? So kind of all people focused on helping us run that operation as smoothly as possible.

And so I think, you know, the answer is both ultimately. And then, you know, we have a community. Right? And we have people that, again, have that affinity and pride and and loyalty for contrary. And, yeah, they themselves are, you know, into the organizing talks or houses where people can live together with one another or whatever it might be.

In the world of COVID and space and so forth, are you finding, like, the 10 of you? Are you spread out all over the country? Are you all in San Francisco? How are you operating now, and how do you see yourself changed by COVID? Jason Brett (zero zero three:thirty seven): Yeah.

The interesting thing about Contrary is we were remote before it was cool. So we've been remote all along, actually. And I think that speaks to maybe more of the original DNA of the firm, right, which was since day one, we've had this degree of scale. Right? Since day one, we've been focused on kind of identifying the world's top talent across the country.

As a result of that, it never really made much sense for us to plant our flag in the ground in a specific city or whatever it might be and have the entire team be there when in reality, we need to be all across the country oftentimes. From a critical mass point of view today, I'd say the majority of us are based here in San Francisco. We have one or two down in LA as well. But then we also have folks on the East Coast and somebody in Nashville as well. It's very much across the country.

And I think, to some extent, the pandemic put us in an advantageous position where we already played that playbook, playbook. Right? We already built that playbook, and we already knew how to operate. We already knew how to make investments over Zoom and things like that. Right?

Because we've been doing it for the better part of three, four years prior to that. So one of the things we've been doing at the Puck in terms of pivoting ourselves, just like companies pivot, is, you know, where's the world going in terms of from a technology perspective? The whole idea was using the hockey analogy of where is the puck going. And the best players anticipate where the puck is and they go there as opposed to waiting for the puck to come to them. One of the things we have focused on is we've looked at the world and we've looked at, for instance, income inequality, and we've looked at the disparity between those people coming out of college making $200,000 working for Google, disparity between those people coming out of college making $200,000 working for Google and able to get money to finance a company, versus those people making $8 an hour working at Walmart, for instance.

When you're talking to these entrepreneurs and you're helping them get started, is there any thought to what the country needs, not just focusing on how we can make more money, but actually from a societal perspective, how do we make the world a little better place? 100%. The way we've always looked at it with contrary is we view ourselves as being in the business of, as I mentioned a couple of times, systematically identifying the brightest people in the world, but regardless of where they come from and regardless of what their background is prior. For us in particular, we do this across a couple of different pieces. Number one is through our scouts.

So we work with about a 100 different scouts across 35 different university campuses today, much in the same way we have since inception. And we've been very, very deliberate since day one about building a diverse scout contingent because we know that our scouts today are going to be the venture capitalists of the world five or ten or fifteen years from now. Right? And so if they're all white dudes like me and you, right? Like, it's probably not the best thing for the industry and maybe for society at large then.

Right? And so as a result of that, we've said, okay. Well, we view ourselves as being pretty close to the top of that funnel. And people don't come into college, let's say their freshman year of undergrad saying oftentimes, I wanna be a venture capitalist. Right?

Many people don't even know that venture capital is a thing or that it even exists maybe until their middle end of college at the earliest. Right? And so for us, we've then said, okay. Well, as long as you just raise your hand. Right?

And say, hey. I'm curious. I'm excited. I'm interested in learning about venture capital. We can handle the rest.

Right? We can teach you. We built out our own content and curriculum at this point. And so it's our hope that the foundation that we're laying is going to set the stage for, you know, who are the VCs of the world five or ten years from now. And and that's really started proving itself out.

When I look at, you know, we're five years in. Right? And when I look at our community members now that have gone out and gone into industry, and when I look at the ones that are in venture specifically, almost all of them, I think literally all that makes up one that I can think of come from, you know, underrepresented and diverse backgrounds. That's amazing. And these are people that are working at, you know, Sequoia and Bessemer and Bain Capital Ventures and some of the top venture firms in the world.

And I think in some way, that was due to us giving them a jump start. I think that's how we think about it from scout point of view. And then very similar, I think, from our fellows' point of view, right? Those people that are the 100 folks that are part of this community that we add every single year, we're extremely deliberate about making sure that this is a group of people that is diverse, comes from unique backgrounds. Because I think ultimately that's how you build a vibrant ecosystem, right?

You don't build a vibrant ecosystem by having people that all say and act and look like one another. I think that's our version, and that's always been our version of what is the best way for us to affect change in the world. It's been that we are the top of the funnel, and we view it as our obligation, I think, in many ways to make sure that the next generation of venture tech, etcetera, looks different from what it looks like in the past. When you're talking to these people and you're seeing the different types of companies and the things they're doing, are there any particular products or technologies that you're looking at right now that you think are going to be what I would call twenty first, twenty second century technologies? I mean, we've looked at self driving cars, we've looked at cryptocurrencies, and we've looked at AI and big data.

In terms of trying to stay ahead of where the puck is going, what interesting things are you seeing that are going to change the way we think of the world? Jerome Maldonado (zero twenty seven:thirty seven): So we have a couple. I think on a little bit more of a short to medium term perspective first, we've spent a lot of time in and around digital health over the past twelve to eighteen months. And I think specifically given the pandemic, I think you've seen a huge rollback of many regulations that for a while were inhibiting company success in this space. And so we've backed a couple of companies that come to mind.

You know, one is called Tava Health, t a v a, which is in the mental health and wellness space. And obviously, an incredibly important issue topic, building a personalized approach to mental health. This is something that as a society, we're kind of increasingly becoming more and more cognizant of, and and it's becoming less taboo than it maybe once was. And so companies like TABA and then the other one that we come back and we're a long term investors in a company called Amora Health, which is building a really kind of a smart operating system for health care. And so originally started as being kind of call or follow-up management software for patients post ops, so kind of the moment they leave the health care facility, and then really being able to track them once they leave and say, hey, if you just had this procedure right here, the different medications that you need to be taking at what time, all that kind of stuff.

So digital health has been a big focus for us both pre but also during and and I think post pandemic. And then on a surely more long term basis, I mean, we've done everything from companies in the computational biology space, so companies that are thinking about how can we basically kind of invent novel compounds to significantly reduce the cost to manufacture these in the first place, right? And then make along those same lines, make a lot of existing products a lot more green and eco friendly and things like that, all the way to, you know, a company that we're looking at right now, which is in the wearable space. And they're quite literally trying to put a product together where you'll be able to think something, and it will appear, as a as a text message, let's say, whatever on your phone. And kind of thinking about how can we take our thoughts basically and apply them in the right format.

So the question, the debate that we're having right now is we think that augmented reality, for example, fundamentally will not ever really be a thing until somebody can actually think something and it gets affected through their smartphone or whatever it might be. Going back to Google Glass a decade ago, whatever. Right? The existing AR solutions have always been very clunky, and they've always needed some other kind of supporting technology. Thinking about due to the past couple of years of AI machine learning advances, feeling like we're ever closer to that point where, you know, you might be able to think something and out comes an action on the other end of it.

So, yeah, those are a couple of areas where we're spending some time. So a couple of questions. One is you touched on following patients as they leave the healthcare. And I was the general counsel for a hospital for seven years. And so I'm aware of, for instance, the reimbursement rates that Medicare and Medi Cal have.

And for instance, there's higher reimbursement rates if you are managing people well and you're keeping them out of the hospital. And so there are, as you said, a lot of people focusing on that. That's right. Let's go back to mental health first thing because it's an area I'm interested in. My mom was a therapist and she taught at USC for years.

I understand the model there where you have personal therapy, and whether or not you go to a regular therapist that's $300 an hour, or you go to a clinic where somebody is just starting out. What is transformational about what your company is doing in the mental health space? Think of what's transformational about what the companies are doing. We've actually backed companies in the direct to consumer space, and then TABA specifically is more employer focused. But what's transformational ultimately is on the enterprise side, the affordability aspect of it, and providing people with on call, high quality mental health services for a price point that is very, very reasonable.

In addition to their employers saying and acknowledging that this is okay. Right? Like, we fully support you. Like, we encourage you to take a call with a therapist, whatever it might be. Right?

And that alone is really empowering. Right? And then on the consumer side of the equation, we backed a company called Prairie Health that is a direct to consumer mental health and wellness startup. And they're partnering with a couple of groups and getting access to pretty large datasets. And ultimately, what they do is they provide you with a prescription if needed or whatever, right, that they think is the most accurate prescription that you might be able to get for independent mental health issue or depression or whatever it might be.

Historically, it's been so much more of this back and forth, right? You go to a therapist or whomever and they say, hey, you know, well, let's try this, right? Let's start you out with this, right? And then you go back or you start gaining weight or, you know, whatever it might be, right? And you're not happy, right?

And it's this it can sometimes be a multi year process before you figure out what is right for you, if ever. So what Prairie is trying to do is solve that the very first time once and for all. So that's kind of what's transformational to me, I think, about both those two companies, is they're taking slightly different tax, but each of them, I think, delivering a pretty powerful and valuable value prop. There's a trend out there if you look at the Pew Report where, for instance, people are going to church much less, but they are craving community. They're craving spirituality.

They're craving mindfulness. There's an uptick on yoga. There's an uptick on mindfulness, meditation. Therapy, at the end of the day, is having a whether or not you're an AA and you've got a sponsor, having somebody to talk to. Do you see a sea change out there that as the millennials, the baby boomers top out, that your generation, that the people coming up are aware of the need for these kinds of mindfulness practices, more balance.

We talk about in America, this notion of work life balance. I have to tell you, having been at two large law firms in my life, and then now running a firm where we do try to have work life balance, It's easy to say it, but then do entrepreneurs really have life work balance? And can you have work life balance and be an entrepreneur? Do you have the time to go talk to a therapist? How do you see all that playing out with these hotshots right now?

I mean, I personally have never been a believer in the term work life balance. I think for anybody who is ambitious, entrepreneurial, whatever, it in many ways becomes all consuming. And I think you need to understand what your own lines are. There is no such thing as work life balance in many ways. Right?

I think you figure out what your swim lanes are and then you swim in them. Right? And so work becomes this constant and then you have to carve out deliberate time saying, hey, you know, I'm going to block this off, spend time with my family, or I'm going to do this. But it's not balanced. It's certainly not fiftyfifty for many folks.

And I'd say younger founders, whatever. I think everybody falls into the same bucket, really. Ambitious entrepreneurial folks, I don't think anybody is really a massive practicer of that. To answer your question, though, about more going back to mental health, wellness, spirituality, things like that, I actually think this is really interesting, and I'm going to plug one of our portfolio companies here because it's right along the lines of what you mentioned, so portfolio companies here because it's right along the lines of what you mentioned. So the company is called the Hallow, and you should take a look.

I think the website is hallow.com. But basically, they are building a a you can kind of think about it as like a calmer headspace for Catholics and Christians. And the entire idea behind it is that, as you said, meditation is exploding. Right? You know, secular meditation for calms head spaces of the world and of which many young people are using daily and practicing meditation.

But it's still small. It's something like 10% or 15% of the people in The US are meditating. But that bigger opportunity, Hallow thinks, is in spirituality. So people think that in many ways it is dying, but spirituality really is not. Institutional religion might be, but spirituality is not.

And so they're kind of taking the tack, which is, hey, let's focus on this generation of folks that maybe kind of grew up in the church or whatever, right, and maybe somewhere in their journey lost their their faith but are now swinging back around to it. And something like Hallow feels a real void for them. And so to answer your question, kind of younger generations absolutely are excited about, interested in, spending time in roll call, the meditation space, whether that's secular or companies like Halo. And I think that all comes full circle with this mental health and wellness space. I think even when you are an ambitious entrepreneurial person, you often have some degree of rigor in your schedule, in your lives.

So carving out a little bit of time every day to meditate or whatever it might be, you know, I think it's not a big ask for most folks. And again, going back to this notion of pivoting, when you look at the history of the human race and you look at the history of religion, when I was a young person, I remember thinking that religion was the opiate of the masses and that there was all this, Don't do as I do, do as I say. There was all this hypocrisy. As I've gotten older, I've realized that there's this tendency for people to use black and white thinking, and see things as all or nothing. And when you're dealing with spirituality and religion, it's very easy to fall into this category of, well, look at all these bad people out there doing bad things and saying that, you know, if you don't do it my way, it's the highway.

And people are smart enough to know that hypocrisy and black and white thinking is not going to get them to the promised land, and yet I would like to think that we would learn not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, that realizing that spirituality in and of itself can become a very narcissistic, eye oriented practice, and it's not about building community and loving your neighbor as yourself and everything else. I hope that the hallows of the world and these companies, as they're doing this, recognize that, yes, we do need to have a spiritual practice and meditate and find meaning in our lives, but if we don't figure out a way to do that in the form of community and studying and passing it on to the next generation, it leads to a very lonely existence. And that's where I think as a society we're struggling with, we look at these organized religions and the hypocrisy, and it's not a place that people want to go to. Yeah. But we've gotta recreate better companies and better religion.

That's my pitch at least to your entrepreneurs and to halo and other people to say, how do we reform this without throwing out the baby with the bathwater? Yeah. For Hallow in particular in a community, yeah, has been a core piece of their focus almost since the outset. It's again, right, I mean, people would say that their church oftentimes is their community. Right?

And so this is the version of the virtual church. Right? You're a virtual community. Right? And people who are holding you accountable or people who are staying close to you, seeing how you're doing, whatever it might be.

I think community is deeply ingrained, I think, in religion in general. Right? And I think it's super important. But I think the younger generation is very focused and mindful of of those kinds of things. So where do you see Contrary going?

Like, if you're looking at your five year plan and what you wanna accomplish, where do you wanna be in five years? For us, we're building the next iconic venture franchise. That's been the vision since day one and very much continues to be. You know, when I look out five years, you know, I think we're very much in in a one venture firm and a firm that is doing something that is fundamentally different, much in the same way that y combinator fifteen years ago popularized slash invented that accelerator model. I very much view contrary in kind of a similar lens.

So that's how I think about it, and we're excited to continue chasing ambition. Well, Eric, look. This has been wonderful. Yeah. I really enjoyed this.

And I love what you're doing. I love the kind of approach. You know, we're trying to say, it doesn't really matter where you are, what you're doing, whatever. Right? Like, if you are a super sharp, ambitious, entrepreneurial person, that's the qualification.

We'll take care of the rest. Well, listen. It's been really fun. For sure. And we'll stay in touch here.

No. Likewise. Yeah. I really enjoyed it. Thanks for having me on.