Contrary Research Rundown #53

Celebrating one year of Contrary Research, plus updated memos on Instacart, Scale AI, and more

Research Rundown

One year ago we launched Contrary Research as the best resource to understand any private tech company. Since then, we've published ~250 pieces, written 500K+ words, hit 40K+ subscribers, and launched a podcast. To celebrate, we’ve put together 5 key takeaways from building Contrary Research:

(1) The market demand for understanding private companies has been more significant than even we expected!

You can see in the image above which memos jumped to the top of our site traffic each week. As these companies launch new products, announce new funding, or hire for new roles, people want to understand the stories behind these companies.

We’ve built Contrary Research into the best starting place to understand private tech companies. But moving forward, we’re going to go deeper on the companies we cover. Some companies have more complex stories than others. Making sense of that complexity means doubling down on high-quality analysis and research.

(2) Companies are evolving rapidly (some faster than others)! Building an up-to-date repository of company breakdowns is as much a muscle as covering them in the first place.

So many company breakdowns represent a snapshot in time. No matter how interesting they are, once they’re a year or two old, they no longer represent the true story of the company. At Contrary Research, we’ve built an engine to ensure that every 3-6 months we’re doing a full refresh on our coverage of each company.

We’re not interested in being a historical record; Contrary Research is meant to be a repository for the best (and most up-to-date) coverage of each company’s story.

(3) The world is filled with information on these companies, just waiting for someone to bring it all together.

Along the way, we found exceptional partners doing their part to tell these company stories. With each company, we’ve built a section of in-depth resources to go deeper into the best deep dives, podcasts, and white papers for each business. Contrary Research can be the starting point, and a guide to the best sources of information.

(4) A company’s story is more than just its team, product, market, and traction. Jobs and culture play a huge part

Earlier this year, we announced the combination of Contrary Research + Startup Search. Now, each week we share open roles from the companies we cover. As we go deeper into these companies, we’ll not only cover what a company does, but also how they do it, and what it’s like to work there, and the culture the company is built on.

(5) Our readers are the best guides to where the most interesting stories are!

There’s a huge variety of interest in all sorts of different companies across AI, fintech, hardware, marketplaces, and more. As we increase the level of depth we go into many of these companies, we’ll use the excitement of you, as our existing audience, to gauge where we should spend even more time going even deeper.

Instacart is the leading grocery delivery company in the United States. To learn more, read our full memo here and check out some open roles below:

• Senior Engineering Manager, Infrastructure Security - Remote

• Senior Data Scientist, Connected Stores - Remote

Airbase is designed to replace all of the tools typically used by mid-market businesses to manage non-payroll spend with one platform. To learn more, read our full memo here and check out some open roles below:

• Senior Software Engineer - I, Backend - India (Remote)

• Product Marketing Manager - Canada (Remote)

Fireblocks is a blockchain security service provider for moving, storing, and issuing digital assets. To learn more, read our full memo here and check out some open roles below:

• VP Customer Success - US (Remote)

• Senior Backend Engineer, Web3 - Tel Aviv

Miro is a cloud-based platform for whiteboarding to allow distributed teams to work effectively together. To learn more, read our full memo here and check out some open roles below:

• Senior Product Design Manager (Growth) - Amsterdam

• Lead Technical Product Manager (Data) - Amsterdam

Scale is a provider of cloud-based data training and validation solutions. To learn more, read our full memo here and check out some open roles below:

• Machine Learning Engineer, LLM Infrastructure - SF

• Business Data Analyst - Mexico City

Check out some standout roles from this week.

• Gantry | Remote - Product Designer

• Hightouch | US (Remote) - Senior Product Designer - General

• Pinecone | New York - SWE Intern: Distributed Systems

• Cohere | London (Hybrid) - Senior Product Manager, Foundation Models

• AI startup Writer announced that it raised a $100 million Series B led by Iconiq Capital.

• Tesla’s former CTO and current CEO of Redwood Materials, JB Straubel, discussed his predictions for the future of battery recycling with MIT Technology Review. To learn more about Redwood Materials, check out our memo.

• Amjad Masad, Founder of Replit, publicly shared the company’s weekly wins and discussed its broader mission. To learn more about Replit, check out our memo.

• Instacart officially priced its IPO at $30 per share, implying a $10 billion market cap. The stock opened at $40 per share, but on the second day of trading fell to approximately $30.10, eliminating most of its IPO gains. To learn more about Instacart, check out our memo.

• Speaking of Instacart, Apoorva Mehta, the founder and former CEO of the company, interviewed with Forbes to discuss how Instacart’s IPO is the ‘end of the road’ for him.

• DoorDash announced that it is broadening its grocery offering with new grocery partners. The timing of the move is notable in the wake of Instacart’s IPO.

• Elon Musk’s ‘Idiot Index’ was recently described and explains how SpaceX cut costs and improved efficiency. To learn more about SpaceX, check out our memo.

• Speaking of Elon Musk, Neuralink announced that it is recruiting for its first human clinical trial.

• Jeff Shiner, CEO of 1Password, announced that the company surpassed $250 million in ARR. To learn more about 1Password, check out our memo.

• Alex Bouaziz, Co-Founder and CEO of Deel, announced that the company has been profitable for over a year. To learn more about Deel, check out our memo.

• Cybersecurity company CrowdStrike announced that it is acquiring Bionic to extend cloud security leadership. To learn more about Crowdstrike and cybersecurity, check out our deep dive.

• Scooter rental company Bird announced that it is acquiring its competitor, Spin, for $19 million.

• Modern Healthcare discussed in an article how Epic took over the hospital EHR market.

• Financial Times writers speculate that TikTok could be aiming to become the ‘Amazon of Gen Z.’ To learn more, check out our newsletter on this topic.

• Cyber billionaire Shlomo Kramer is reportedly eyeing his third security IPO. Cato Networks, valued at $3.1 billion, is reportedly planning to go public in 2024.

• Cisco announced that it is purchasing cybersecurity company Splunk in a $28 billion cash deal.

Register here to join us on Thursday, October 5th for Contrary’s first Tech Talk — an evening of technical demos and conversation featuring senior leaders from Hugging Face, Graphite, Replit, Slingshot AI, and Nomic.

Check out our latest episode of Research Radio, where we sit down with Common Room CEO, Linda Lian, to unpack how her company’s platform is enabling community-led companies like Figma, OpenAI, and Confluent, to be able to best understand and serve their user communities. For more on Common Room, you can also check out our memo!