We’re excited to introduce Contrary Research!. Our vision is to be the best destination for finding high-quality research and in-depth analysis of private companies. 1/11

[𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗘𝘀𝘀𝗮𝘆] AI Makes Opinionated Software More Important Than Ever. - The history of opinionated software, from DHH’s Basecamp to - Why opinionated software has struggled. - How AI will put pressure on companies to be more opinionated

DoorDash and Uber Eats have dominated the food delivery market, accounting for 87% of $100B US market. But restaurants are starting to push back. @owner has reached a $1B valuation by helping restaurants cut the cost of delivery. Some highlights from our memo:

Have you been wondering. - How Waymo went from “Project Chauffeur” in 2010 to 100M AV miles by 2025?.- How Waymo's Foundation Model actually works?.- What are the biggest opportunities and risks to its business?. Check out our 11K-word memo on Waymo in the comments!.

In a country where 51% of households have a dog and see them as a member of the family, one company was able to ride that trend to over $1 billion in revenue selling “human-grade dog food”. Here are highlights from our memo about @thefarmersdog

[New Essay] 𝐂𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐎𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐦 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐀𝐈 𝐢𝐧 𝐄𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧. - Why the push for “educational purity” is misguided.- What the research shows so far about how AI helps students.- How startups like @khanacademy, @magicschoolai and @AlphaSchoolATX are using AI

Every company has the same goal: how do we acquire customers at a lower cost? @clay_gtm has become one of the fastest-growing startups in the GTM space by solving this problem. But what’s the full story of the company? Some highlights from our latest memo about Clay.

Full report here:

The balance of power at sea is changing fast. The US Navy is being outbuilt 200 to 1 by China, and autonomy may be the only way to catch up. One of the US's best hopes to do so is @Saronic . A summary of our recent 11K+ word report by @KrishnaRam4592:

Uber might not have an AV group, but it’s signing partnerships with almost every AV company around. Since publishing this AV partners chart in January, it has also signed deals with Baidu (today), May Mobility, and Momenta. Baidu is #2 in AV globally (1.4m rides in Q1!)

One of the reasons Windsurf and Cognition are a good match? Focus on enterprise. Cognition announced a deal with Citi to roll out Devin to its 40K developers yesterday. Windsurf has had a strong focus on enterprise since its inception.

Full deep dive here:

“The Bitter Lesson” And Self-Driving?. But Tesla’s bet is a long-term one: that scaling camera data and compute power alone will eventually surpass the effectiveness of Waymo’s multi-sensor approach. If “The Bitter Lesson” meant LLMs got better with enough data and compute, will

Safety Records: Waymo Wins For Now. So far, the safety data is on Waymo’s side. Studies show a ~90% reduction across a variety of safety incident metrics for Waymo compared to human drivers, and the only fatality involving a Waymo is (ironically) from a Tesla striking an

Waymo’s Bet: Cameras Alone Can Never Succeed. Waymo thinks truly safe autonomous vehicles require additional sensors like lidar and radar, as well as more detailed mapping of an area prior to beginning commercial service. At Google I/O this year, Waymo took several shots at

Tesla’s Bet: Cameras Are All You Need. Tesla is unique in the self-driving world because it only relies on cameras, not lidar and radar. Elon’s view is that lidar is unnecessary. If humans can drive safely using only eyes and brains, why can’t autonomous vehicles do the same with