Contrary Research Rundown #66
Looking back at our top hits from 2023, plus new memos on eToro and Drata
Research Rundown
Since launching Contrary Research in September 2022, we’ve covered hundreds of companies. In 2023 alone, we covered over 200 companies and almost a dozen category deep dives across cloud security, crypto, decarbonization, the openness of AI, and more. We launched our Living Landscape series to unpack the companies playing in climate tech and fintech infrastructure. We launched Contrary Research Radio to dig deeper into the world’s most important conversations in tech. And we’re just getting started!
To reflect back on the year, we wanted to look back at some of our most popular deep dives and memos. It’s interesting to see how the things our readers are most interested in reflect the pulse of what’s going on in tech. From the debate between open and closed in AI, to
First off, our most popular deep dive: The New Frontier in Finance
Everyone is tackling the ramifications of AI in every field. But few industries are more clearly at the crossroads of data-driven and actionable than finance. Our deep dive into the industry unpacked both the practical workings of different functions in finance. And then mapped the implications of AI into each of those functions.
Finally, our most popular memos. Each of these companies was clearly a big part of the zeitgeist this year as technology played out like a series of dramatic turns.
OpenAI: No surprise here. With everything from GPT-4 to Sam Altman’s ouster and return, no company has shaped the conversation in tech this year more than OpenAI.
Hugging Face: Where OpenAI dominates the conversation around centralized AI players tied to massive corporations, Hugging Face represents the index of open-source models and collaborative building in AI.
Ramp: Ramp has stayed in the news as a continuously developing compound startup, launching products across price intelligence and procurement. With $1.5 trillion in corporate spend, companies like Rippling and Vendr continue to line up in competition for each new category with Ramp.
Stripe: The tech world had hoped the IPO markets might show signs of life this year, with offerings like Klaviyo and Instacart. With both offerings down below their IPO price, more people are looking to Stripe which is likely gearing up. In August 2023, Stripe hired Steffan Tomlinson as CFO, who previously helped take Confluent public.
WHOOP: Finally, a small sign of life in an otherwise difficult consumer market. WHOOP is one of the most popular wearables out there as people continue to look for the best tech stack for personal fitness in a post-COVID world and the downfall of Peloton.
eToro is a social trading platform offering multiple asset types including stocks, cryptocurrencies, ETFs, indices, commodities, currencies, and options.To learn more, read our full memo here and check out some open roles below:
Full-Stack Developer - Copenhagen, Denmark
Operations Specialist - Valletta, Malta
Drata provides a solution for startups to automate evidence collection and tests, manage multiple frameworks simultaneously without added effort, and achieve continuous compliance. To learn more, read our full memo here and check out some open roles below:
Senior Software Engineer - Remote
Sales Operations Analyst - Remote
ServiceTitan offers a full-suite, vertical-specific application that consolidates many software tools needed for running a home services business, including accounting, scheduling, marketing tools, payroll management, payments, and more. To learn more, read our full memo here and check out some open roles below:
Manager, Software Engineering - Remote
Principal Platform Engineer - Remote
Bird, an electric scooter startup that provides on-demand last-mile transport, has officially filed for bankruptcy. At its peak, the company was valued at $2.5 billion and has raised a total of $916 million, having been backed by investors including Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners.
After pushback from European regulators, Adobe has called off its $20 billion acquisition of Figma, forcing the company to pay Figma a $1 billion breakup fee. To unpack more about the market Figma will carry on in, check out our deep dive on The Designer Class.
Salesforce announced an acquisition of Spiff, a sales commission planning software, that had previously raised over $100 million from Salesforce Ventures, Lightspeed, and others.
The de-horning of ZIRP unicorns continues. Sales engagement platform Outreach, which raised a $200 million round at a valuation of $4.4 billion in June 2021, had an implied valuation of just $912.2 million in secondary markets as of December 2023.
Apple is hitting pause on the sale of both the Apple Watch Series 9 and the Apple Watch Ultra 2 in the US, in what has been called “an unprecedented development”, because of a patent dispute. Apple may have attempted to steal the tech in question while engaged in patent talks with Masimo Corp., which said it invented the blood oxygen sensor at the heart of the dispute.
Samooha, a startup that raised a $12.5 million Series A in February 2023 and provides a “cross-cloud” data collaboration platform, is being acquired by Snowflake. The deal was announced on December 18 and is expected to close by the end of the month, continuing an uptick of acquisitions in December.
Register here for our next Tech Talk on Jan 30th, 2024, in SF - featuring founders & senior engineering leaders from Stytch, Figma, Linear, and Hex!
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.