Contrary Research Rundown #49
Our latest deep dive on a decarbonized economy, plus new memos on Charm Industrial, Calm, and more
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Research Rundown
This week, we published our latest deep dive: The Decarbonized Economy. In it, we unpack the interconnected network of attempts to both reduce and remove carbon from the atmosphere. Below is an excerpt from the piece:
When it comes to climate change, consensus has it that the Earth is getting warmer and fossil fuels are a contributor. At the same time, fossil fuels are likely to remain in use for the foreseeable future. ~94% of all cars still ran on internal combustion engines as of 2022, and while that’s lower than the previous year at 97%, EVs remain a minority of vehicles globally. Further, fossil fuels are necessary for air travel and used in a wide array of everyday items – paint, plastics, asphalt, and more.
It’s common to address climate-related topics by starting with the nuances of a particular category, whether that's carbon accounting, carbon sequestration, or some other specific component. The focus of this report, by contrast, is on unpacking the path towards decarbonization as an ecosystem of solutions that are interconnected: from how the climate discussion has evolved, to what solutions have emerged to date, to the most likely trends that will make a difference in addressing climate change before it becomes unaddressable.
The Paris Agreement was signed by 196 countries on December 12, 2015 and put into effect on November 4, 2016. Its overall goal was to coordinate a global effort to limit the increase in Earth’s average temperature to less than 2 degrees Celsius (°C) above pre-industrial levels. Each country agreed to work together to limit the increase in global temperatures to less than 1.5 degrees by the end of the century.
There are two possible methods of slowing down climate change: (1) reduce the amount of greenhouse gasses (GHGs) entering the atmosphere, or (2) remove the greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere via carbon removal. In this deep dive, we unpack the details behind both.
To read the full piece, check out The Decarbonized Economy.
Revolut is a London, UK-based neobank that initially offered money transfer and exchange services to reduce the costs of international exchange rates charged by traditional banks. To learn more, read our full memo here and check out some open roles below:
Designer (Graphics) - Krakow, Madrid, Porto, Vilnius
Account Management Lead (Lifestyle) - Remote (Ireland)
Charm Industrial captures CO₂ for carbon offsets by converting biomass into carbon-rich bio-oil and injecting it into retired gas and oil wells for long-term carbon storage. To learn more, read our full memo here and check out some open roles below:
Head of People - SF
Calm is a mental wellness platform that offers meditation, sleep, and relaxation resources for users. To learn more, read our full memo here and check out some open roles below:
Staff Backend Engineer - Remote (US)
Lead Product Manager, B2B - Remote (US)
Check out some standout roles from this week.
222 | LA - Founding Engineer
Vareto | US, Canada (Remote) - Senior Backend Engineer
StarTree | Mountain View (Remote) - Product Manager
Vesto | NYC - Account Executive
Stealth Startup, Health Tech | NYC - Founding Designer, Founding Engineer
Nvidia hosted a podcast with Replit CEO, Amjad Masad. In the podcast, Masad discussed how advances in generative AI can help bridge the gap between ideas and software development. To learn more about Replit, check out our memo.
Ramp reportedly raised a $300 million Series D at a $5.8 billion valuation. This round was 28% lower than Ramp’s 2022 valuation of $8.1 billion. To learn more about Ramp, check out our memo.
Lenny Rachitsky shared the founding story of Databricks, last valued at $38 billion. This is the first part of a seven-part series on “How the most successful B2B startups came up with their original idea.” To learn more about Databricks, check out our memo.
Andreas Beznar shared an article on “Why Venture Capital Secondaries are Gaining Momentum.” Some reasons that Beznar notes are that there is access to hot companies at a discount and that investors can tap into secular trends for increased upside.
Bloomberg published an article about how “Norway’s $1.4 Trillion Wealth Fund Wants ESG Ratings Overhauled.” The European Commission has proposed a major crackdown on ESG raters. We dug into some of the complexity around ESG in our latest deep dive, The Decarbonized Economy.
Marcelo Lima released an article titled “Stripe vs. Adyen: Collision Course.” The article was written in response to the release of Adyen’s reported earnings last week. To learn more about Stripe, check out our memo.
Bloomberg reported that Instacart is planning an IPO, hopefully in September. In the article, Bloomberg mentions that Klaviyo is also aiming to list next month. To learn more about Instacart, check out our memo.
Meta is reportedly planning to launch software to help developers automatically generate code. This product will reportedly build on Meta’s Llama 2 and will likely compete directly with Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot. To learn more about the open source ecosystem in AI, check out our deep dive; The Openness of AI.
Self-driving taxi company Cruise was reportedly told by regulators to reduce its fleet size by 50% following an accident with a fire truck in San Francisco.
Tiger Global is nearing a deal to sell a part of its stake in Cohere at a $3 billion valuation, which is over 40% higher than Cohere’s $2.2 billion valuation round in June. To learn more about Cohere, check out our memo.
OpenAI announced a partnership with Scale AI to help companies benefit from fine-tuning advanced models. To learn more about Scale AI, check out our memo.
Quick-commerce startup Zepto announced that it became the first Indian unicorn of 2023, raising $200 million at a $1.4 billion valuation. To learn more about Zepto, check out our memo.
Hugging Face announced that it has raised a $235 million Series D at a $4.5 billion valuation. Investors in the round included Salesforce and Nvidia. To learn more about Hugging Face, check out our memo.
Ali Rohde, General Partner at Outset Capital, hosted a conversation with Linus Lee, research engineer at Notion. In the conversation, Linus discussed the shortcomings of chat interfaces in AI, comparing it to “[locking ourselves] in a blank room with no walls and no context.” To learn more about Notion, check out our memo.
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