Highnote: Molding a Modern Card Platform

Drone swarms in warfare are becoming more common. Epirus is building high power energy weapons as a response. In a word? What they've created is force fields. In this episode, we sat down with Epirus CEO Andy Lowery.⁠Read our full memo on Epirus' business.⁠Subscribe to the Contrary Research Newsletter⁠Legal: https://www.contrary.com/legal

Base Power aims to become the “modern power company of the electric era” by offering its customers a home energy service powered by a network of batteries. In this episode, we sat down with Base Power co-founders Zach Dell (CEO) and Justin Lopas (COO). ⁠Read our full memo on Base Power's business. ⁠Subscribe to the Contrary Research Newsletter⁠ Legal: https://www.contrary.com/legal

Lumafield provides low-cost industrial scanners. Its goal is to build the world's best database of manufactured objects to help "take humans out of the loop" and enable fully autonomous manufacturing. In this episode, we sat down with Eduardo Torrealba, the CEO and co-founder of Lumafield. Read our full memo on Lumafield's business. Subscribe to the Contrary Research Newsletter Legal: https://www.contrary.com/legal

America's industrial base could be on the verge of collapse. Hadrian is setting out to build an automated solution to unlocking the manufacturing capacity in the US. We sat down with CEO and Founder of Hadrian, Chris Power. Read our full memo on Hadrian's business. Subscribe to the Contrary Research Newsletter Legal: https://www.contrary.com/legal

JumpCloud is offering companies a cloud-native solution to manage their identity directory without having to “sell their soul”, so to speak, by becoming a wall-to-wall Microsoft stack. We sat down with CTO and Co-founder of JumpCloud, Greg Keller. Read our deep dive on the identity security world. Subscribe to the Contrary Research Newsletter Legal: https://www.contrary.com/legal

Stytch* is building a developer platform for companies to implement frictionless authentication methods. The company’s APIs and SDKs streamline user onboarding and bolster retention by eliminating passwords and replacing them with secure, lower-friction authentication options. We sat down with CEO and Co-founder of Stytch, Reed McGinley-Stempel. *Contrary is an investor in Stytch through one or more affiliates. Read our memo on the Stytch's business Subscribe to the Contrary Research Newsletter Legal: https://www.contrary.com/legal

Highnote is a full-stack card issuance platform with the intention of owning the entire stack, rather than sitting on top of another gateway or middle layer. So how are companies thinking about using a tool like Highnote today? We sat down with CEO and Co-founder of Highnote, John Macllwaine, to unpack that process. Read our deep dive on the evolution of fintech infrastructure. Subscribe to the Contrary Research Newsletter Legal: https://www.contrary.com/legal

Zip provides a platform for the end-to-end procurement lifecycle, covering new purchase order management, accounts payable (AP) automation, and global B2B payments. Zip makes it easy for employees to request purchases and provides visual workflows for approvals across finance, legal, procurement, IT, and security teams. Zip Co-Founder and CEO, Rujul Zaparde, joined Research Radio to talk about the reason for focusing specifically on intake as they tackle trillions of dollars in business spend. Read our full memo on Zip. Subscribe to the Contrary Research Newsletter Legal: https://www.contrary.com/legal

Sardine is a company that helps companies prevent fraud. Sardine has focused their product around a fraud prevention system. This is made up of a few key parts: (1) a fraud detection algorithm, (2) a no-code rule builder, and (3) an all-in-one dashboard and case manager for risk operations teams Sardine Co-Founder and CEO, Soups Ranjan, joined Research Radio to talk about the rising risk of fraud in most online transactions, and what the cutting edge looks like for tackling those types of risks. Read our full memo on Sardine. Subscribe to the Contrary Research newsletter. Legal: https://contrary.com/legal

MongoDB develops and provides a popular NoSQL database program which is designed for managing and storing large sets of varied data. MongoDB Ventures is the investment arm of MongoDB, focusing on supporting early-stage companies that are innovating in the developer productivity, data management, and SaaS markets. Its position gives MongoDB Ventures a really fascinating perspective on the tech industry and what's coming next. Today we're joined by Suraj Patel, who heads up MongoDB Ventures. He talks about the firm and what it invests in, and where it fits in the future of databases and generative AI. ⁠Subscribe⁠⁠ to the Contrary Research newsletter. Legal: ⁠⁠https://contrary.com/legal⁠