next play opportunities 10/1

meter spotlight, calm founder, on campus

Oct 01, 2024

Hey, this is next play’s newsletter, where we share under-the-radar opportunities to help you figure out what’s next in your journey.

(New Section) Spotlight:

What is it really like to work at the fastest-growing companies? We try to answer that question in our new Spotlight section. This month’s Spotlight is on Meter. Thanks to the Meter team for sharing behind-the-scenes details and supporting next play.

Everyone has a power meter and a water meter. You move into a new space, turn them on, and they just work. Meter thinks, with the right approach, the same can and should be true for the internet.

Here’s what we learned from talking to people at Meter:

“Everyone at Meter documents their work. New people. Leadership. Everyone. All the time. There is a lot of focus on writing, not just as a means for alignment but also for thinking about what to do. And it’s all shared very transparently. There’s a large internal repo of strategy documents, product specs, and decision logs.”
“Because we have a vertically integrated product offering, the entire team has to be in pretty constant communication (sales talking to hardware engineers talking to warehouse and deployment operations etc.).”
“Most of the team eats a delicious/ healthy lunch together cooked by our on-staff-chef every weekday.”
“Beyond just output, we care deeply about hiring kind and ambitious people. When we do references on candidates, we try to find out what reputation they leave behind, as this says a lot about how they work.”
“It feels great to be able to work in a culture where people are being honest with one another. People say what they think, even if they disagree with you, and do it in a way that really resonates and feels productive.”
We collected dozens of other unique details. You can read about them here.

Meter is backed by investors like Sequoia and is hiring for engineering, operations, and talent. You can reach out to Meter here: jobs@meter.com.

If you are interested, would always encourage reaching out even if there is not currently the perfect open role listed.

Co-founder opportunities:

Toby is building Beem. Beem building a “new way to use your computer.” He’s open to collaborators who want to help him scale. Also, he’s 15. You can learn more here and reach out: hi@tobyb.dev.
Alex is the founder of Calm, the #1 most downloaded meditation app. He’s looking for an engineer to work directly with him on a new project. You can reach out here.
Andrew was previously the head of creative at Hat Club, where he helped scale their brand to 100,000s of followers. He’s exploring a new consumer social product and looking for collaborators (engineers and other people interested in building a recommendation engine for you and your friends). You can reach out here: stachel.andrew@gmail.com.
Irfan was previously an EIR for Jeff Bezos and was a growth lead at a startup that grew to 100,000s of users. He’s now building a mobile and looking for an engineer to join the team. You can learn more and reach out here: team@bondoo.ai.
Saleh was previously a senior software engineer at Lyft and Bloomberg. He also previously sold some of his side projects. He’s looking to partner with other people (ideally technical) to build software in overlooked regulated industries. You can reach out here: saleh.hindi.one@gmail.com.

Breakout teams:

Speak is hiring for dozens of open roles across the organization (everything from business to engineering). Speak is an AI-powered platform to help you learn new languages quickly, and it’s been growing virally. You can learn more and apply here.
Alexa from ResortPass is hiring a finance, product, and engineering leader (VP-level). ResortPass is a platform that lets you take a “daycation” — you can book access to pools/spaces at resorts around the world. You can learn more and reach out here: alexa.perettine@resortpass.com.
Alex previously co-created much of Stripe’s now pretty iconic API design. Now he’s building a new company: Stainless, which exists to help other companies build best-in-class SDKs. He’s hiring “founder-types” to work on growth and engineering. Stainless has raised from some tier 1 funds. You can learn more and apply here.
Andrew from Numeric is hiring software engineers. Numeric is trying to build the next generation of accounting software. They have raised $10M. You can send your resume to talent@numeric.io.
Matthew from Coverflow is hiring an engineer and a marketer to join their founding team. Coverflow is a platform that streamlines the work of insurance agents. They recently raised a round from Afore Capital. You can learn more and apply here: matthew@coverflow.tech.
Grow helps people find high-quality therapy by making it easier for therapists to grow their practice (via a three-sided marketplace). They’ve raised ~$178 million. They are hiring a senior product manager. You can learn more and apply here.
Orb is building a developer-first platform that makes it really easy for companies to set up billing. They recently raised a Series B and are hiring a product manager. You can learn more and apply here.
Hooman from Collective is hiring across the board (engineering, people, operations). Collective is building an all-in-one financial solution for self-employed entrepreneurs. You can learn more and apply here.
Mintlify's platform reaches 20m+ developers and powers the documentation of 3500+ companies including 20% of the last YC batch. They just raised a Series A and are hiring software engineers. You can learn more and apply here.
Waymark is building a platform to bring the best healthcare to people with Medicaid benefits. They are hiring an analyst to work on business intelligence. You can learn more and apply here.
Thatch is hiring a recruiter. Thatch is a health benefits platform for employers that’s supposed to be easy to use. They recently raised a Series A. You can learn more and apply here.

Early teams:

Andy from Mellomanic is hiring a Chief of Staff. Mellomanic is a superfan platform for that is hoping to transform the relationship between artists and fans. They have 400,000+ monthly active users and just announced a new $6m funding round. You can learn more and apply here.
Gal from Stack is hiring a Program Manager to join the founding team. Stack has adapted the franchising model to online businesses, and growing quickly. You can learn more here and apply by sending a short video on why you would be an amazing program manager at Stack: gal@stack.expert.
Refuel is hiring a solutions engineer. Refuel is building a platform that lets businesses efficiently clean, enrich, and label lots of unstructured data with high accuracy. You can learn more and apply here.
Joshua from Hero is hiring an engineer and a growth lead. Hero is a platform going viral because it helps people sell their stuff faster (using their phone camera + AI). You can email him projects you’ve worked on before: joshua@hero.st.
Timeless Biotech has prototyped a “time-to-menopause prediction algorithm” that gives women more certainty around their reproductive lifespan. They are hiring founding team members in finance, engineering, and digital marketing. You can learn more and apply here: hello@timelessbiotech.com.
Alex from Innvo is hiring an engineer and a product marketer. They are building an ai-platform for in-house legal work. They are recently funded and working with multiple customers. You can reach out here: alexz@innvo.ai.

Investing and other:

Bill from First Round Capital is hiring an early-career investor to work on pre-product-market-fit deals. No previous investing experience required. You can learn more and apply here.
Susa Ventures is an early-stage venture fund that’s invested in companies like Robinhood and Flexport. They are hiring for several roles on their operations team (head of marketing, head of GTM, head of talent). You can learn more and apply here.
Village Global is a ~$500 million AUM venture fund chaired by Reid Hoffman and backed by people like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg. They are hiring a Chief of Staff. You can learn more and apply here.

Note:

Want to meet people? Looking for some momentum? Consider joining friends of next play. For $10/month, you’ll be supporting next play + get access to a directory of 100+ potential collaborators, virtual events, additional content, and more. You also get an Airtable which lets you more easily filter/navigate 100s of open roles. You can subscribe here.
Are you a student? Next play on campus is our new initiative to try and help students discover interesting jobs, internships, fellowships, event, and content. You can subscribe here (and if you’d like to get involved, send us an email: hi@nextplay.so).
We are making curated introductions for 615 people that go out in a few days (October 3rd). Hoping that good things come from this :).
We worked with more companies (like Carrd, SimpleClosure, Vouch) to get you $1000s worth of deals for free. Check out the next play perks page here: nextplay.so/perks (password: yournextplay).
As always, if you are hiring or looking for co-founders (or know great people who are), feel free to reach out: hi@nextplay.so and we’ll try to be as useful as possible.
Please give this post a like on Substack when you have a chance. Appreciate it!