Contrary Research Rundown #28
Building products for self-employed workers, and new memos on WHOOP, Shield AI and more
Research Rundown
Self-employed workers comprise the largest segment of US workers, with 10 million Americans working full-time in self-employment. This number equals the total of the three most common American jobs: retail sales, fast food counter work, and cashier. Self-employed workers typically earn double the national annual median income. Many of the highest-paying professions, such as professional services, are dominated by self-employed people. Solo workers can either be experienced professionals looking to establish their own business or career changers and young professionals entering a new profession without the support of a conventional organization. In either case, they may have felt overwhelmed by the risks and costs of independence.
Tech layoffs dominate headlines as we debate whether the economy is on the brink of a recession or a brief slowdown. Despite this turbulence, employment remains very strong. There are currently an estimated 73.3 million freelancers in the US, and 8.2 million have joined since the pandemic began. As people become more open to flexible jobs and schedules, this part of the workforce will continue to expand. The all-in-one back office platform Collective surveyed its freelancing customer base and found self-employed workers are optimistic about 2023. 81% reported that the last six months were the same or better for their businesses than they expected, and 83% expected the next six months to be the same or better than the previous six months for their businesses.
Roughly one-third of US workers have performed freelance work in the last year, and $1.4 trillion is paid out to contract workers annually. Banking, corporate cards, and vertical software tools serving startups and small businesses have become big, but only some good options exist for solopreneurs or businesses of one. Having the right tools to launch, sell, manage, and market their services is essential. Psychiatrists, insurance agents, fund managers, and tutors all need different tools to operate their businesses. San Francisco-based Found, for example, wants to offer full-stack financial services for self-employed workers and raised $60m in Series B funding led by Founders Fund last year. Wingspan recently announced a Series A led by a16z for its all-in-one payroll platform for contractors. There are great opportunities in building startups that help freelancers with financial offerings, demand generation, operational automation, trade network access, and more across industries.
Contrary Research has covered a few companies that serve small businesses and freelancers, like Ramp, Brex, Deel, Webflow, and Canva.
Modern Health is a mental well-being platform enabling companies to offer therapy, coaching, and self-guided courses in one app. To learn more, read our full memo here.
Shield AI builds AI systems, starting with autonomous quadcopters that collect data in dangerous environments and protect military personnel and civilians. To learn more, read our full memo here.
Culdesac is trying to reimagine cities for people, not cars. Their first neighborhood will be the first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US. To learn more, read our full memo here.
WHOOP builds a fitness and health wearable product to monitor recovery, sleep, and training, along with a membership for 24/7 coaching to improve health. To learn more, read our full memo here.
Hex is a collaborative data workspace that allows technical and non-technical users to analyze data, collaborate, and share work as interactive data apps. To learn more, read our full memo here.
First Citizens bank agreed to buy the commercial banking business of Silicon Valley Bank from the FDIC, including all deposits and loans.
The CFTC sued Binance, CEO CZ, and an ex-chief compliance officer, calling Binance’s compliance efforts “a sham.”
Incredible Health’s US Nursing Report is out. For our digital health ecosystem coverage, check out our memos on Ribbon Health, Memora Health, & Zocdoc.
Confluent Cofounder Neha Narkhede’s new fraud detecting startup Oscilar emerged from stealth. Check out our memo on fraud startup Sardine.
An interview with Khosla Ventures’ Vinod Khosla on AI.
Zoom partnered with OpenAI to expand its Zoom IQ assistant, allowing it to generate whiteboards using text prompts and provide recaps of meetings.
Microsoft said Teams has 280 million MAUs, up from 270 million in January 2022.
Microsoft launched Security Copilot, a GPT-4-powered assistant to help security professionals with incident investigations, event summaries, reporting, and more.
Apple began its rollout of Apple Pay Later service in the US for online and in-app purchases.
Google partnered with Replit, which uses AI to make coding tools, and will now rely on Google’s LLMs for its Ghostwriter product. To learn more about Replit, check out our memo.
An interview with Google CEO Sundar Pichai about Bard, competing with ChatGPT, regulations, and more.
Cerebras released 7 GPT-based LLMs, trained using its Andromeda supercomputer for AI on GitHub and Hugging Face. Check out our memo on Hugging Face.
Attentive launched its AI offering. For our marketing ecosystem coverage, check out our memos on People.ai, Mutiny, and 6sense.
Apple has quietly acquired WaveOne, which was developing AI algorithms for compressing video. Check out our memo on video editing startup Runway.
Google Brain and DeepMind have been asked to work together on a project known as Gemini to compete with OpenAI's GPT-4, after Bard's stumble .
Substack invited its newsletter writers to invest in the company. Check out our memo on Substack.
Instacart and DoorDash partnered with White House in the latest 'Food Is Medicine' push. Check out our memo on Instacart.
Ramp announced it has helped our 15,000+ customers reduce their spend by over $400 million since founding. Check out our memo on Ramp.
Chinese giant Alibaba plans to reorganize its businesses into six independent entities.
An interview with Mastodon CEO Eugen Rochko on open-source governance, business models, ActivityPub, content moderation, and more.