Contrary Research Rundown #63

Identity is the endgame for cybersecurity, plus new memos on PhonePe, Envoy, and more

Research Rundown

While social media, digital payments, and NFTs are all post-internet creations, there are some fundamental aspects of technology that date back to the very beginning of the internet. When the government first started using an early version of the internet in the 60’s to share files, there was one component that quickly followed: online identity.

Around the same time as the birth of the internet, a computer scientist at MIT in the 60s created a framework for the earliest form of identity management; usernames and passwords. Since then, identity has woven its way deeper and deeper into the foundations of our digital lives.

Social accounts and profiles, anonymous vs. identity verifications, digital fraud prevention, and on and on. There are very few aspects of our digital lives that don’t rely on some system understanding that we are who we say we are.

Identity has, historically, acted as an adjacency to cybersecurity. Identity stood at the beginning to make sure no bad actors got in. Security was in place to look out for that bad behavior if something at the entryway failed. But increasingly, that just isn’t the case. Identity has stepped into the very center of the security paradigm.

This past week, Okta alerted customers that it had suffered a breach. Always scary when something like that happens; you hope you weren’t one of the customers affected. Unfortunately, in this instance? 100% of customers were impacted. Back in October, Okta had estimated the impact was only felt by ~1% of customers. Missed it by a mile.

But Okta isn’t alone. A staggering 80% of breaches occur as a result of identity issues, such as compromised credentials. Firms like MGM, Caeser’s, Atlassian, and New Relic join Okta among the identity-impacted breaches just over the last few months. Losses from these breaches can add up to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Okta is the pinnacle of identity management. But even they fell victim to the threat of identity vulnerabilities. Increasingly, it seems identity management will be the main battlefield for security practitioners going forward. The only question is what approach will finally fill the gaps in securing an organization’s network of identities?

Instawork is a labor marketplace that matches businesses with short-term, seasonal, temp-to-hire, and full-time workers. To learn more, read our full memo here and check out some open roles below:

• ML Engineer - SF

• Senior Product Analyst - SF

To learn more, read our full memo here and check out some open roles below:

• Senior Software Engineer - Belfast

• Enterprise Account Executive - NYC

PhonePe has built a digital wallet and financial services platform. To learn more, read our full memo here and check out some open roles below:

• Engineering Manager - Bangalore

• Software Engineer (iOS) - Bangalore

Envoy is a workplace solutions company looking to streamline the hybrid work experience for both employers and employees. To learn more, read our full memo here and check out some open roles below:

• Product Designer - SF

• Senior Data Analyst - SF

Vendr is a SaaS buying, procurement, and spend management platform. To learn more, read our full memo here and check out some open roles below:

Vendr doesn’t have any open roles at the moment. For updates, check out their careers page here.

Check out some standout roles from this week.

• MosaicML (Databricks) | SF - GenAI Research Scientist Intern, GenAI Machine Learning Engineer Intern

• Clay | NYC - New Grad Engineers / Summer SWE Interns. If interested, reach out to adam@clay.com with Clay New Grad or Clay Internship in the subject line.

• Speaking of hacks, 23andMe announced that a small portion of its customer base had seen an exposure of user data.

• In the world of AI, Intel has entered the chat! Earlier this week, Intel dropped a 7B parameter model on Hugging Face using Mistral as a base model.

• Elon Musk’s Neuralink has quietly raised an addition $43 million in funding from thirty-two different investors. The funding was supposedly an extension at the previously announced valuation of $5 billion.

• Speaking of Elon Musk companies, Fortune published a piece outlining the trouble that Musk’s Boring Company has been having. Despite having raised nearly $800 million in funding, the company has struggled to expand. To learn more about The Boring Company, check out our memo.

• Dataminr has announced a layoff of 20% of its employees as the company dedicates its efforts to focusing on AI.

• OpenSea, previously valued at over $13 billion, reportedly generated revenues of $1.9 million in November 2023, down from $387 million in January 2022.

• Dell has reportedly made a $150 million computing deal with Imbue, an AI startup. The deal compute hardware upfront, rather than having to rely on cloud providers.

• After what has already been a stressful week or so for OpenAI, Wired reported the company has had leaks from its custom chatbot service.

• Anduril announced the launch of its newest product, a Roadrunner drone. Ashlee Vance, the author of an Elon Musk biography, covered the launch of the product as well.

• Jonas Templestein, one of the founders of Monzo, announced he would be stepping down after 9 years with the company.

Register here for our next Tech Talk on Jan 30th, 2024, in SF - featuring founders & senior engineering leaders from Stytch, Figma, Hex, and more!

Hosted by Contrary’s tech team, it’s an evening built by engineers for engineers — each company will live demo their latest features for leading builders in the Bay.