Apple product manager, technical cofounders, viral consumer products

opportunities at breakout startups, early teams hiring, and co-founder searches

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

Quick reminder that when you join friends of next play, you get access to:

• Discounts to our favorite products like [New!] Superhuman (save $150), Lovable (save $60), Notion Plus (save $60), and much more (literally thousands of dollars of discounts to tools we use).

• Private Slack community where you can meet like-minded peers and potential co-founders. The community organizes weekly virtual and in-person gatherings - all oriented around helping you find your next play (starting a company, finding a job, making friends, etc.).

• Additional content from experienced VCs, recruiters, and compensation negotiators.

You get all of this and more for just $10/month. You can join here. Hope to see you in Slack soon 😇

Co-founders and people to jam with:

• Veer is a software/ML engineer who previously solo-built a consumer app to 150k+ users and studied EECS at Berkeley. He’s looking for a co-founder who wants to build something exciting. You can reach out here: veerdoshi@berkeley.edu.

• An anonymous product manager at Apple (who worked on Airpods and hearing accessibility) is exploring starting something new in consumer, health, and education. Looking for people to jam with - you can reach out to hi@nextplay.so and we’ll try to connect you.

• Subhan is a Stanford PhD who spent the last 6 years at Nvidia leading an AI integration. He’s looking for cofounders as he thinks about data+ai projects. You can reach out here: subhanali+nextplay@gmail.com.

• Ray previously started and sold a b2b saas company. He’s looking for a cofounder to help develop an ai-powered interview coach. You can reach out here: rayyang25@gmail.com.

• Jess has been a founding designer and has a background in behavioral science. She’s exploring automating documentation for non-technical users in b2b SaaS. Looking for a cofounder to brainstorm with. You can reach out here: jess@jessmahendra.com.

• An anonymous experienced marketplace founder is looking for a co-founder to help build “next generation financial infrastructure,” particularly thinking about how talent and capital intersect. You can reach out here: hi@nextplay.so and we’ll try to connect you.

Early teams:

• We’re trying this again - we know of a number of companies hiring salespeople (account executives, business development representatives, etc.). Fill out this short form and we’ll try our best to connect you.

• We're thinking about bringing on someone to join the small (but mighty!) next play team (paid, remote, part-time to start) to focus on answering the question: "How do we grow next play to help as many people as possible?" If you have a good answer to that question - send us an email: hi@nextplay.so.

• Arjun from Kipo is building a software platform that automates selecting and sourcing parts. They are hiring backend and machine learning engineers. You can reach out here: arjun@kipo.ai. (SF, Hybrid)

• Melisa from Netic is building an ai revenue engine for essential services businesses. They are hiring founding team members: product, engineering, infra, and research. You can learn more and apply here. (SF)

• Dan from Every is hiring a growth-marketing lead, a full-stack AI engineer, an operations lead, and a designer. Every is a media company that publishes a daily newsletter about upcoming tech trends. They also build software products, offer courses, and provide AI consulting and training services. You can learn more here and apply here: brandon@every.to. (Remote)

• Quinten from Portola is building an AI companion that passed 500,000 downloads, $1m in ARR, and a #1 app store ranking - all with no press or marketing. They are hiring writers, engineers, animators, and designers. You can reach out here (with the most impressive thing you have made with AI): quinten@portola.ai. (SF, Seattle)

• Steve from tldraw is building a free digital whiteboard (that has gone viral all over the internet). They are hiring an account executive, a business operations leads, and a developer relations person. You can learn more and apply here. (London)

• Stephen from Paper just announced a $4.2m seed round. Paper is a new design tool with AI and collaboration front and center. They are hiring an engineer ($200k cash). You can learn more here and apply here: join@paper.design. (Remote)

• Reuben from Briefcase is hiring a founding sales and growth hire. Briefcase is an ai-native bookkeeping and automation platform. You can learn more here and apply here: reuben@briefcase.so. (London)

• John previously was the head of engineering at Riot Games and Chainlink Labs. He’s building a web2.5 online marketplace for graded collectibles - and looking for all skillsets to join the founding team. You can reach out here: john@card-mint.com. (Remote)

• Ron is the President of the Nix Foundation, which supports one of the largest projects on Github (10k+ contributors). His company Flox is extending Nix, and they recently closed some large enterprise customers. They are hiring a head of product and engineers. You can learn more and apply here. (Remote)

• Here are recommendations from Pear VC on interesting companies they’ve recently invested in that you could think about joining.

Know anyone hiring? Tell them to send us an email: hi@nextplay.so - we would love to share their role with the next play community.

Scaling startups:

• Lindsey from Base is hiring for 35 roles: business operations, deployments, growth, engineering, and more. Base is building a modern, reliable power company. They’ve raised $68 million. You can learn more and apply here. (Austin)

• Maria from EliseAI is hiring for nearly every role, especially software engineers. They are building an automation platform for housing and healthcare. You can learn more and apply here. (NYC, SF)

• Notion is hiring for 125 roles: data science, customer experience, engineering, finance, etc. They are especially looking for: a community manager in Germany and an AI product marketing manager. You can read about all the roles here. (Global)

• Mitch from Basis is hiring a product-first chief of staff (as well as for many other business and engineering roles). Basis is building ai agents specifically for accountants. They just raised $34m. You can learn more here and apply here. (NYC)

• Ryo from Cursor is building an AI code editor. Cursor recently raised $100m at a $2.6b valuation, and are hiring for community, brand design, code craftspeople, talented young folks (no degree needed), and more. You can learn more and apply here. (SF, NYC)

• Omar from Eudia is building an ai platform for legal teams. They are hiring for dozens of roles: revenue operations, customer success, software engineering, and more. You can learn more and apply here. (Palo Alto)

• Scott from Metronome just announced their $50m Series C. They are building a usage-based billing platform. They are hiring in nearly every department: product, sales, engineering, operations. You can learn more and apply here. (Remote, SF, NYC)

• Simon from Plain is building a collaborative b2b customer support platform. They just raised a $15m Series A. They are hiring GTM people (content marketers, growth marketers, and account executives) as well as engineers. You can learn more and apply here. (SF, Remote)

• Gurjeet from Observo is building an AI data pipeline for security and devops. They just announced a $15m seed round, and are hiring: account managers, engineers, marketing managers, technical writers, and more. You can learn more and apply here. (Remote)

• Together just announced a new fundraise that grows their valuation to $3.3 billion. They are building an end-to-end platform for the full generative AI lifecycle. They have 39 open roles across engineering, GTM, and research. You can learn more and apply here. (SF)

• Albert is trying to digitize the world of chemistry. They are hiring operations people, engineers, designers, and more. You can learn more and apply here. (Oakland, India)

• Here’s a list of companies hiring that recently raised $10m-$50m rounds.

Investing and other:

• Parth from Renaissance Philanthropy has a mission to “increase the ambition of philanthropists, scientists, and innovators” by advising/incubating/funding exciting initiatives. They are hiring several fellows to work on the Philanthropic Fund Ecosystem and Lead Detection. They are also looking for a communications lead. (Remote, SF, NYC, London)

• First Round Capital is hiring a chief of staff. You can learn more and apply here. (SF)

• HOF Capital is hiring a venture capital analyst. You can learn more and apply here. (Remote, SF, NYC)

Featured resources:

• Who Did The Work?: A lens for making better decisions when it comes to choosing who to work with (either as a co-founder, new hire, or employer).

• Everything you need to know about becoming a chief of staff: Tactical advice for anyone interested in exploring the (sometimes mysterious) chief of staff role.

• Spotlights on companies like Graphite, Numeric, and Clay - where you can see a behind the scenes look into how those scaling startups work. (Also, if you would like us to write a Spotlight about your company, send us an email: hi@nextplay.so)

Note:

• Perhaps the most fun and exciting part about working on next play is hearing when people find their…next play 🙂 Last week, we shared two motivating stories: the first is about Alec who found his new role as a partnerships manager via the community, and the other is about Murali who found his cofounder via the community. If there’s anything we can be doing better to make more of this magic ✨ happen - we are all ears for ideas and feedback: hi@nextplay.so.

• If you could take a moment to like this post (and perhaps even share it around or with friends), we would really appreciate that!