early Notion designer, YC startups, Foursquare founder

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.

We hope you are having a great holiday season. This time of year can be a great time to rethink priorities, meet collaborators, and start something new. Please do reach out if there’s anything we can do: hi@nextplay.so. We are connecting people daily.

Co-founders / people to jam with:

• Cory is a designer who joined Notion as an early employee back in 2019 (and before that did design at the Wall Street Journal). He’s looking for a co-founder to work on a new AI project. You can learn more here.

• Shashank is a Director of Engineering at a Series D company. He’s looking to start something new in the industrial AI world. You can reach out here: sha.iyer16@gmail.com.

• Christian previously founded Wanderlust and Pitch. He’s looking for a technical co-founder for a new project working on autonomous mining operations. You can learn more here.

• Ben previously founded Monkey, which was the #1 app on the app store. He wants to do it again and is looking for a founding iOS engineer. You can get in touch here.

• Beth is working on a “Superhuman for messaging.” She previously worked at companies like Datadog. She’s open to meeting people interested in this idea. You can reach out here: bmg@stowaway.io.

• Rohan is a software engineer who has experience in AI research labs, startups, and big banks. He’s filed multiple ML patents. He’s looking to collaborate on exciting new projects. You can reach out here: rohansaphal@gmail.com.

• Roey has previously started and sold several companies. After a recent acquisition, he was a business development leader at Walmart. He’s looking for collaborators on some new projects. You can reach out here: roy.tertman@gmail.com.

• Sebastian is both an electrical engineer and financial executive (ex-CFO and investment banker). He recently founded Brick, a smart energy management company. He’s looking for co-founders (both technical and non-technical). You can reach out here: seb@brick-data.com.

Looking for people to collaborate with? Check out friends of next play—it’s $10/month, and you get access to: a directory of like-minded peers, a filterable opportunities database, and additional content (like these recommendations of companies to join from First Round Capital). You can join here (hope to talk soon!).

Early teams:

• PJ and Kat are building FilmPort, an operating system for commercial-grade AI filmmaking. They started three months ago and have already reached 25M+ viral views, signed >$30M in LOIs from Fortune 500 brands, and secured a film studio partnership. They are looking for founding team members - especially engineers and creative people. You can reach out here: kat@filmport.ai.

• Ravin from Credal is hiring founding team members (across every role: engineering, chief of staff, operations). They did YCombinator last year and raised a seed round as they build an AI assistant for enterprise workflows. You can learn more here and email here: founders@credal.ai.

• Simone from Fay is hiring for every role (operations, partnerships, engineering, etc.). Fay is a platform tens of thousands of people use to access licensed dietitians (covered by insurance). They have grown revenue 500% YoY after raising their Series A, bringing it well into the eight figures. You can learn more here and email simone@faynutrition.com.

• JB was an early product / engineer at Airtable (one of the first 15 hires). He’s now building Chief, an intelligent email assistant. Howie, founder/CEO of Airtable, is a founding investor/advisor. They are hiring founding team members, especially technically great engineers and designers. You can reach out here: jbbakst@gmail.com.

• Dennis, former founder of Foursquare, is hiring founding team members for his new consumer platform Hopscotch. You can think of it as “a mashup of OG Twitter ("what's happening"), OG Foursquare ("who's where doing what"), and Waze (but for walking thru cities).” You can learn more and get in touch here.

• Marcel from GrowthX is hiring a chief of staff. They are building an ai-native GTM platform. They just hit $3m in revenue within 3 months of launching (and its been completely bootstrapped so far). You can apply here.

• Justin from Truemed is building a platform that lets people use their HSA/FSA in more places. They are hiring a staff product designer. You can learn more and apply here.

• Steph from PIN is building a platform to help founders raise money. They are hiring a biz ops lead. You can learn more and apply here.

• Anna from Paradigm is reimagining spreadsheets (with AI its core). They are hiring founding team members (including engineers and generalists). You can learn more here and email: careers@paradigmai.com.

• Tanooj was previously the head of engineering at Brex. Now he’s building Nerve, an AI knowledge worker copilot. They are hiring a founding engineer. You can learn more and apply here.

Scaling startups:

• We hear from companies all the time that they would like to hire a “former founder” (i.e. someone who has at least tried building a company before). If this is you, fill out this form and we’ll try to connect you.

• Ryan from Primer is hiring a General Manager to own an 8-figure P&L (as well as other roles). Primer is building a network of microschools to fix k-8 education. You can learn more here and email r@primer.com.

• Max from Superpower is building an all-in-one health membership. They are hiring a founding growth lead to scale their 100,000+ person waitlist. You can learn more here and apply by emailing max@superpower.com.

• Endeavor just raised $7m to build AI to automate American factories. They are hiring an account executive, a forward deployed engineer, and a designer. You can learn more and apply here.

• Yoav from Heavys is hiring a VP operations. Heavys creates audio products for music superfans. They launched a year ago and have already reached $12m in annual revenue. You can reach out here: yoav@heavys.com.

• Thomas from Engine.com is hiring for a bunch of go-to-market roles (account managers, partnerships, SDRs, etc.). Engine is a business travel platform. You can email here: thomas@engine.com.

• Odyssey just raised an $18m series A to train generative world models for films and gaming. They are hiring for engineers and operations. You can learn more and apply here.

• David (previously head of messenger at Meta) from Lightspark is building an open payment platform. They are hiring marketers, engineers, and salespeople. You can learn more and apply here.

• Shaun from Tabs is hiring account executives. Tabs is a revenue automation platform. You can learn more and apply here.

Are you hiring? Do you know any companies that are hiring? Send us context: hi@nextplay.so. We would love to be helpful.

Investing and other:

• Primary Ventures Partners is hiring an “operator in residence” to join its incubation program with a vertical AI focus. You can learn more and apply here.

• Jeff from Chapter One is hiring an investor to focus on crypto. You can learn more and apply here.

• Afore Capital is hiring an investment principal. You can learn more and apply here.

• Microsoft’s corporate venture fund is hiring an investment partner. You can learn more and apply here.

Note:

• In addition to helping people find new opportunities, we also hear that people want help leveling up within their current organization. We worked with Ethan Evans (a former VP at Amazon, where he led teams of 800+ people) to get you a $100 discount to his course that has helped hundreds of people get promotions. You can check it out here.

• We really appreciate your presence in the next play network. If there’s anything we can do (answer questions, make helpful introductions, etc.), just email us: hi@nextplay.so. We’ll try our best to make an impact.

• Check out a new essay we wrote: Preparing for interviews (with best practices from Deedy Das, David Apple, Charley Ma, and more).

• If you invest in startups (full-time, part-time, just interested), send us an email: hi@nextplay.so. We would love your thoughts on an experiment we’ve been running.

• We would really appreciate it if you could like/comment on this newsletter through Substack, and share it with your friends. Thanks again for your support!