Contrary Research Rundown #48
Announcing our Living Landscape market map series, Research Radio with AirGarage, plus new memos on Front, Boulevard, and more.
Research Rundown
No company exists in a vacuum. For every business, their market landscape is a part of the story as much as anything else. However, companies and markets change too quickly for a static map.
Last week, we announced the launch of our Living Landscape series — starting with climate tech. Our market maps are intended to be living documents, fully dynamic and interactive.
Check out the full Figma market map here. What did we miss? Who should be in multiple categories? You can view links to each name and leave comments. We will update it periodically.
We’ve talked about reducing our dependency on fossil fuels for almost half a century. In 2022, the US took action through a series of infrastructure bills to accelerate the energy transition, including the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Federal Sustainability Plan, and the SEC Climate Proposal. Each bill is a multi-billion dollar carrot. Many startups are emerging as these legislations cut the red tape around energy markets. As of Q1 2023, climate tech still represents ~20% of global tech funding despite the venture slowdown.
The living landscape for climate tech is just getting started. Unpack the world of energy and materials from Helion and Solugen to carbon accounting and offset platforms like Patch, Pachama, Persefoni, and more.
We also released Contrary Research Radio’s second episode, where we sat down with Jonathon Barkl, the CEO of AirGarage. As anyone has who has tried finding a spot on a busy weekend will tell you: parking can be a nightmare. It’s also a big business — and it might be an even bigger than you imagined. There’s a world of ‘sneaky big problems’ that exist in the economy for founders to solve.
The global parking management market grew to $3.6 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow to $5.2 billion by 2027. Moreover, Americans spend an average of 17 hours per year searching for parking, costing an average of $345 per driver in wasted time, fuel, and emissions, and overpaying for parking. In total, this leads to $20 billion a year that goes to waste.
AirGarage is a full-stack parking management platform, taking on legacy parking facility operators like LAZ and SP+ to offer a streamlined experience from marketing to payments. Rather than acting as a third-party point solution, AirGarage takes over the entire lot operations process in a way that aligns incentives between itself and the owners it works with.
Listen to the full episode here, and subscribe on your favorite podcast player to catch our next episode.
Front is a communication hub for building strong customer relationships, disrupting two of the largest and most established markets in SaaS: email and customer support. To learn more, read our full memo here and check out some open roles below:
Boulevard is an LA-based company that describes itself as a “client experience platform for appointment-based, self-care businesses.” To learn more, read our full memo here and check out some open roles below:
Senior Product Analyst - US, Canada (Remote)
Senior Frontend Engineer II - US, Canada (Remote)
EquipmentShare offers subscription-based software and telematics solutions to contractors, either as a standalone service or integrated with their rental and purchasing options for construction equipment. To learn more, read our full memo here and check out some open roles below:
Mechanical Design Engineer - Austin
Financial Systems Analyst - Remote
Check out some standout roles from this week.
SpaceX | Starbase - Application Software Engineer
WorkOS | Remote - Infrastructure Engineering Manager, Software Engineer
Baseten | Remote - Senior Frontend Engineer
Hex | US (Remote) - Fullstack Engineer, Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
SelectStar | Remote - Senior Product Designer, Senior Backend Engineer
Resourcely | US (Remote) - Software Engineer
Vareto | US, Canada (Remote) - Senior Product Designer
Microsoft plans AI service with Databricks that could hurt OpenAI by selling a new version of Databricks’ software that helps customers make AI apps for their businesses.
Meta Platforms is preparing to launch a code-generating AI model (dubbed Code Llama) to help developers automatically generate programming code, a challenge to proprietary software from OpenAI and Google.
Arm is preparing for what would be the biggest IPO of 2023 at a $60 billion to $70 billion valuation. Latest draft filings show that Arm’s revenue declined ~1% in the last fiscal year.
Global Illumination, a digital economy company led by Thomas Dimson and based in NYC, has been acqui-hired by OpenAI.
Vitalik Buterin released an essay on Community Notes, calling it “the closest thing to an instantiation of "crypto values" that we have seen in the mainstream world.”
Keith Rabois announced the launch of OpenStore Boost, a 10-week cohort that, in exchange for a percentage of net sales, aims to help boost e-commerce businesses.
After a reported “$380 million operating loss in its recent fiscal year,” Databricks is in talks conversations to raise more funding.
A recent report from engineering firm BryceTech indicates that in Q2, 2023, SpaceX has launched more than 10x the mass of its closest competitor, China.
McKinsey pushlished a report on product-led growth hype, determining (not so shockingly) that a hybrid method of product-led sales is the key to “actually achieve [outsized] performance.”
Clari, a Series F startup aimed at helping companies take control of their revenue process, has acquired sales engagement platform Grove.
Yieldstreet, a private market investment platform aiming to help people dive into alternative investing, is in talks to acquire Cadre for well below it’s six-year-old $800 million valuation.
Netflix is beta testing cloud-streaming video games.
Contrary Research Fellowship
At Contrary Research our vision is to cover hundreds of companies. We can't do it alone, nor would we want to. We focus on bringing together a variety of different perspectives.
That's why we're opening applications for our Research Fellowship. In the past we've worked with software engineers, product managers, consultants, and more. If you're interested in researching and writing about tech companies, apply here!