next play opportunities 10/29

BRM spotlight, chris bakke episode, Khosla associate

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.

Spotlight:

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

BRM is a tool that helps companies buy software and manage their vendors. “There is this weird, very inefficient song and dance that buyers and sellers engage in. Everyone just says: “well it’s always been done this way.” But we at BRM think there’s an alternative that’ll make all sides better off—and that’s what we’ve been building.”

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

• An engineer on their team says they spend at least ~80% of their time actually coding. “There are very few unnecessary distractions. We do not have some complicated project management framework. We just talk briefly in the morning, plan what we want to do, and then everyone just focuses on getting things done.”

• “We want BRM to be a place where you can be the best version of yourself—when you first start out at the company, you sit down with Cuddy, our CEO, and he works with you to figure out a personal career plan. It’s not a permanent thing, but it’s the sort of thing we try to help you think about: what would progress look like over the next 5 years? 10? And how can BRM help you with that?” BRM will also let you expense any book that helps you perform well at your job.

• Multiple people commented on appreciating how uniquely direct teammates are with feedback. “People can just say what they think and that makes it a lot easier to get things done. People are respectful, yes, but we don’t have to worry so much about protecting our egos. We can just be real, which is easier because we are all in person.” This realness often leads to serendipitous ideas which are near impossible to find over structured Zoom meetings.

• “We take our work seriously, but don’t take ourselves too seriously!” They have a weekly board game night and they also host an annual Oktoberfest Party complete with brats, beer, and schnitzel. They invite customers, investors, candidates, friends, and family. “To ensure the festive spirit all teammates are provided with a Lederhosen or Dirndl budget.”

• “I have been a part of many amazing teams,” Cuddy says. “From a championship winning Stanford football team to really fast growing companies like RelateIQ, Sourcegraph, and Carta -- in building BRM we’ve really had the opportunity to thoughtfully choose how we construct our culture. We want to take the best attributes, and traditions from the greatest organizations, and make them uniquely BRM––a culture we’ve always wished to work at.

• We collected dozens of other unique details. You can read more about them here.

BRM is now growing quickly and hiring for many roles across the organization (everything from sales to engineering to operations). “Things are changing rather quickly -- every month it feels like we have to play Tetris in the office with our desks as we are running out of space and adding new people.” You can reach out here: join@brm.ai.

Co-founder opportunities/people to jam with:

• Lenny was the head of analytics of a publicly traded b2b SaaS company. He’s exploring building a new thing (mainly around data/ai) and looking for people to co-found/brainstorm with. You can reach out here: lfishler@gmail.com.

• Assaf previously co-founded Flow Retail (raised $10m). He’s now looking to meet co-founders/collaborators as he brainstorms new ideas. You can reach out here: assafgedalia@hotmail.com.

• Salomon is searching for a CEO to help build and then run a consumer app. The idea is at the intersection of consumer and sports. Salomon helps run Origins, a venture fund that’ll seed the company. You can reach out here: salomon@origins.fund.

• Yasi previously scaled Rocket Money (formerly TrueBill) from $1m ARR to a unicorn exit within four years. She has been working on a consumer e-commerce company that’s gaining traction and is now looking for a cofounder (especially someone technical). You can reach out here: yasi@cur8ed.app.

• Jonathan worked as a product leader at companies like Gong. Now he’s working on his third startup and wanting to build something in AI and looking for a technical partner. You can reach out here: jonathan.yaari@gmail.com.

• Tapasya was previously a staff product manager at Tesla. She was also a founder in residence exploring building a marketplace for electric vehicles. She’s now building in the real estate / architecture / construction space and looking for a co-founder (ideally with relevant experience). You can reach out here: tapasyaw@gmail.com.

Looking to meet more people? Consider joining friends of next play, where you’ll get instant access to a directory of 100s of talented people open to collaboration, as well as additional content, virtual events, and more. All for $10/month.

Early teams:

• Cecchi is an engineer and a third time founder. He most recently co-founded Curated ($170m raised from Forerunner/Greylock/Google), which was acquired earlier this year. He’s exploring building a startup in consumer healthcare, creating a community and tools for patients with chronic disease. He’s looking for exceptional, hungry people to form the founding team (especially engineers or generalist operators with backgrounds in healthcare). You can reach out: cecchi.macnaughton@gmail.com.

• Vishal from Kay.ai is looking for their first go to market hire in NYC. Kay.ai is building AI Coworkers to eliminate uninspiring work in the insurance industry, starting with repetitive data entry. The team is made up of engineers from Microsoft and Twitter. They're growing fast and are looking for someone who thrives in early-stage B2B sales. You can reach out here: vishal@kay.ai.

• Wesley from Kino AI is building tools and training models to organize video. They work with top movie studios to make editing more productive. They are hiring a chief of staff. You can learn more and apply here.

• Andrew from Taxwire is building a global sales tax platform to automate tax compliance and minimize risk. They have happy paying customers and a clear roadmap. They are hiring a founding software engineer. You can learn more here and reach out here: andrew@taxwire.com.

• A group of early engineers/product people from Instagram/FB have launched four different apps which hit the of the app store (including one that’s been used by 8+ million teens). They are building a new consumer AI product. They are looking for a strong product engineer (NYC preferred). Email hi@nextplay.so and we’ll try to connect you.

• Jared from Offsite is building a platform to help People Leaders more easily plan and manage team retreats. They are hiring an account executive. Offsite helps You can learn more here and reach out here: jobs@offsite.com.

• Godel is building a web-based financial terminal that makes it easier to get investment/market data. They recently raised a pre-seed round. They are hiring software engineers. You can apply here.

Scaling companies:

• Joseph from Roboflow is building a platform to make it easier to build and use computer vision models. Today, over 800,000 developers (including 50% of the fortune 100) use Roboflow. They are hiring someone to work on demand generation/marketing. You can learn more and apply here.

• Sumukh from AngelList is hiring product engineers & operations generalists. AngelList builds software for funds & startups. Their startup specific offering (Roll Up Vehicles & Equity Management) has been gaining adoption rapidly and the company is profitable. You can learn more and apply here.

• Justine from Origin is building a platform to help make wealth management accessible to everyone. They are hiring a director of growth marketing to help scale their direct to consumer channel. You can learn more and apply here.

• Substack is hiring a General Manager to lead their new enterprise division. Substack’s hope is to build the next generation of media institutions. You can learn more and apply here.

• Hasan from 11x is hiring for roles across their organization. They are building an ai-agent platform that helps companies spin up digital agents to do things like sales and customer service. They just raised a $24m Series A from Benchmark. You can learn more and apply here.

• Mark from Gynger is building an embedded financing platform. They recently announced a $20m series A. They are hiring a VP of credit and several software engineers. You can learn more and apply here.

• Brex is hiring a strategic partnerships lead to work on the accounting channel. You can learn more and apply here.

• Michael from WorkOS is hiring for business operations and product marketing. WorkOS is a developer platform that helps make apps Enterprise Ready (they raised $80m in their latest round). You can learn more and apply here.

• Tejas from Hightouch is hiring a head of product marketing (alongside many other roles). They are building a platform to help companies take action on their data. You can learn more and apply here.

• Kyle from Middesk is building a suite of identity products to help US companies verify their commercial customers and register with their state agencies. They are hiring a head of partnerships (and for many other roles). You can learn more and apply here.

Investing and other:

• Jon from Khosla Ventures is looking for an associate to join their enterprise group. You can reach out to him here.

• Brent from Hamilton Lane is looking for people who are hungry to invest in opportunities (funds, direct investments, and secondaries) across the venture landscape. You can learn more about their associate role and apply here.

• Bryce from Indie VC is looking to hire an investor to focus mainly on crypto. You can reach out to him here.

• Aneel from Soma Capital is hiring an office manager to help run their 8,000+ square feet NYC office. You’ll be doing everything from planning events to making sure the office is running smoothly. You can email them here: team@somacap.com.

• Hsu from Iterative is hiring a chief of staff. Iterative is an accelerator focused exclusively on Southeast Asia. You can learn more and apply here.

• The All-In-Podcast is a leading podcast across business, tech, and investing. They are hiring someone to work on business development and also a community manager. You can learn more and apply here.

Hiring? Or know anyone hiring? Looking for a cofounder? Email us hi@nextplay.so with some context and we will try to be useful.

Note:

• We made a free tool/template to help you organize your job search. Here it is. Let us know what you think.

• To help people accelerate their learnings, we are experimenting with “next play office hours.” We are creating a directory of people—everyone from startups executives to staff operators to serial founders—volunteering their time to possibly try and help you on your career journey. We’ll have more information in the coming weeks - but for now, we’re looking for people who would like to be volunteers (<2 hour commitment + an opportunity to meet young ambitious people + help others). You can read more here if you’d like to get involved.

• Our latest next play podcast with Chris Bakke is now live. Chris is a repeat founder, he was the CEO of Laskie (acquired by X), Co-founder of Interviewed (acquired by Indeed in 2017), COO of 42Floors (acquired by Knotel.) We talk about his journey working with Elon, selling his companies, and becoming a prolific shit-poster on X with hundreds of thousands of followers. Listen here.

• As previously mentioned, there are upcoming in-person next play gatherings in 20+ cities around the world (from NYC to Paris to Australia). Make sure you’ve filled out the main next play application - we (and our amazing hosts) are trying to include as many people as possible but space is limited. Also you can apply to become a host here.

• If you are having any trouble receiving next play emails, Substack told us to tell you that you should “check your connectivity” using this link. Hope that fixes any issues.

As always, please do respond to this email if you have any questions, feedback, or ideas.

Ben + team