Research Radio

Bo Jiang, Lithic co-founder and CEO, discusses the process of card issuing and transaction processing for startups and fintechs. Topics include payment stack, fintech companies in customer service, challenges and rebuilding infrastructure, unique perspective, and evolving pricing model.

Lucid makes visual productivity and collaboration tools like Lucidchart and Lucidspark, helping teams brainstorm, and build diagrams and data visualizations. It has become a titan of visual collaboration, serving 60 million users and generating over $100 million of annual revenue. Lucid was last valued at $3 billion. Lucid CEO Dave Grow joined Research Radio to talk about Lucid, keeping growth strong after the COVID remote work boom, and owning the "idea to reality" workflow. ⁠⁠Subscribe⁠⁠ to the Contrary Research newsletter. Legal: ⁠⁠https://contrary.com/legal

Rick Song, co-founder and CEO of Persona, discusses the evolution of identity verification, consolidation and innovation in the identity space, limitations of a pure digital approach to physical identity, and the importance of self-discovery in the business world.

Bhavin Shah, Co-founder and CEO of Moveworks, discusses how Moveworks makes employees more productive, overcomes corporate 'knowledge silos', and the future of work automation. They explore the transition from classical models to transformer models, building functions and models using best-in-class tools and open-source solutions, and the impact of conversational AI on collaboration and competition.

Stack Overflow has been one of the key parts of the software development universe since it was founded in 2008, and it has developed from a question-and-answer platform to a crucial resource. Whether they're debugging an error, trying to understand a new concept, or optimizing a piece of code, Stack Overflow has long been the first place programmers go to find answers. But the rise of AI and LLMs poses an interesting challenge. After all, why go to Stack Overflow for a coding question when you can ask ChatGPT or GitHub Copilot? To help us understand how Stack Overflow and its community works, its AI play with OverflowAI, and what it is doing to remain essential for both new and experienced software developers, we're joined by CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar. ⁠Subscribe⁠ to the Contrary Research newsletter. Legal: ⁠https://contrary.com/legal⁠

The chemicals industry is one of the world's largest, touching virtually every manufactured good from the phone in your pocket to the car you drive and the food you eat. But despite its size, the industry remains largely offline, and runs on old school sales. Knowde is a chemicals marketplace which connects buyers and sellers of chemicals, polymers and ingredients. Founder and CEO Ali Amin-Javaheri joined Contrary Research Radio to talk about Knowde and where it fits in the chemical industry. Read our full memo on Knowde. Subscribe to the Contrary Research newsletter. Legal: https://contrary.com/legal

Common Room provides unified intelligence across a company's various online communities – from public squares like X/Twitter, to private spaces like Discord and Slack. It helps software companies get actionable insights into their user and developer communities, and assists them in sending those users the right message at the right time. Co-founder and CEO Linda Lian joined Kyle Harrison on Contrary Research Radio to talk about the modern brand journey, how communities help with customer acquisition, and how Common Room works. Read our research memo on Common Room. Subscribe to the Contrary Research newsletter. Legal: https://contrary.com/legal

Barry McCardel, Co-founder and CEO of Hex, discusses the shift in data analytics from a basic task to a crucial business asset. He shares insights from his time at Palantir, highlighting how innovative solutions are empowering both technical and non-technical users. The conversation delves into evolving data sharing practices, the role of AI, and the importance of trust in customer relationships. McCardel also navigates the complexities of pricing models for collaborative tools, emphasizing creativity and broader exploration in data management.

As anyone who has tried finding a spot on a busy weekend will tell you: parking can be a nightmare. It's also big business – and it might be an even bigger business than you imagined. AirGarage, founded in 2017, is a full-stack parking management platform. It handles everything from payments and enforcement to maintenance and marketing for owners of parking real estate. That means everything from a small parking lot at a church up to a huge multi-storey parking complex in the middle of a major city. Co-founder and CEO Jonathon Barkl joined Contrary Research Radio to discuss AirGarage, how it works, and the world of 'sneaky big problems' that exist in the economy for founders to solve. ⁠Read⁠ our full research memo on AirGarage. ⁠Subscribe⁠ to the Contrary Research newsletter. Legal: https://contrary.com/legal

It's no secret that the biggest hype in tech is around AI and large language models (LLMs). Cohere⁠, founded in 2019, builds general purpose language models and provides access to them through an API. Its goal is to help enterprise leverage the power of LLMs to complete a range of useful tasks. With Cohere, companies can bring natural language processing to their applications without spending big on training models or hiring. Aidan Gomez, co-founder and CEO of Cohere, was credited as a co-author on the influential paper ⁠‘Attention is All You Need’⁠, which established the transformer architecture that drives the world’s most powerful LLMs. For our first episode, Aidan joined Contrary Research Radio to talk about Cohere, its place in the AI landscape, and his predictions for the future of LLM development. ⁠Read⁠ our full research memo on Cohere. ⁠Subscribe⁠ to the Contrary Research newsletter. Legal: https://contrary.com/legal