30 breakout startups under 30 people

the purpose of this list is to help you discover high-potential companies before they’ve reached scale

Next play’s goal is to help people figure out what’s next. As part of this, we are excited to present next play’s “30 breakout startups under 30 people” list. The purpose of this list is to help you discover high-potential companies before they’ve reached scale.

This list is only available to friends of next play subscribers. Thanks for being part of the network!

Perhaps the cleanest path to financial freedom is to join an established company, perform well, invest wisely, and coast to retirement. Breakout startups propose a hack—an alternative career accelerated through learning, wealth, and reputation. That’s the appeal of finding the right early stage (<30 person) company, as it can make for a once-in-a-lifetime career opportunity.

Most startups fail, though, and provide no financial return. (Even if a startup fails, it can be great fun and provide a tremendous opportunity for rapid growth.) So picking the right company is hugely important; you will want to scrutinize every aspect of this decision to the best of your ability.

We hope that this list will help you in your decision making process. Consider this to be one source of inspiration you can use to help you explore what’s next (you can find more resources here). (And of course you should think for yourself!)

Also a reminder that some companies may not be actively hiring for your particular role - you can still reach out to them following something similar to what this guide says.

To create this list, we talked to dozens of operators, founders, and investors. We only looked at companies with less than 30 employees. We were looking for companies that were both high-potential and relatively under-the-radar.

• We defined high-potential as companies that could, perhaps one day, be worth billions of dollars and become category-leaders. Assessment in this case was more art than science, simply asking people about companies that matched the criteria that they would recommend people explore joining. There are tradeoffs to this approach but for this list we preferred to just go with people’s gut reactions.

• We defined under-the-radar as startups that we think that you probably have not heard about yet. It’s one thing to just list the top companies on Crunchbase or TechCrunch. You can go look on those sites yourself. The purpose of this list was to hopefully show you at least a few new opportunities.

If you have any ideas or feedback please do feel free to reach out: hi@nextplay.so.

This list is a benefit for friends of next play. Consider joining to get access to this list (as well as many other perks like a startup discovery platform, introductions to hundreds of potential collaborators, invites to virtual events, and much more). You can join here ($10/month).