first sales hire, Sequoia Series C, Firebase founder
opportunities at breakout startups, co-founder searches, and early teams hiring
✨ 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.
Here is our weekly reminder that you may just be one email away from finding your next opportunity—we heard from several people that, in just the last week, sent a cold email and landed job interviews and co-founder brainstorming sessions. You can do it! (And if there’s anything we can do, please send us an email: hi@nextplay.so).
Building something truly amazing is easier said (and written about) than done. While there’s no one recipe that guarantees success, it can be helpful to analyze examples. That’s why we wrote a 2,000+ word analysis/deep-dive on the culture behind Attio (major thanks to their team for sharing behind-the-scenes information and supporting next play).
Attio is a CRM that’s used now by thousands of teams. When you talk to customers, they say things like this: “Attio is the first CRM that feels truly modern. It’s powerful, flexible, and fast to build with. There’s nothing like it on the market.” We wanted to understand: what type of people and culture and practices lead you to building something that amazing?
Here are some of the things that stood out:
Founders who care about the short and long-term: “I have been working in startups my whole life and Nick is the first founder I have met that is both technical and creative. It's quite incredible what that unlocks for a leader.”
Teammates who confront the status quo: “You need to have a passion to make a product as good as it can possibly be. If you're satisfied with "good enough", Attio is not for you.”
Culture that is results-oriented: "We work without much process. You'll be expected to take complete areas of ownership and execute on them independently.”
Lots of direct feedback from customers: “Despite being an engineer, I remain very well connected to customers. We work on a very technical product and so there's often collaboration between engineering and sales/support on specific product details.”
You can learn a lot more here as we dove deeper into understanding more about Attio’s team and culture.
Attio is hiring in nearly every department: engineering, marketing, design, operations, sales, and support. They have an office in London and also many remote roles. You can see all of their open positions here.
Co-founders and people to jam with:
Ted was an early staff engineer/engineering lead at Google and Square. He's looking for people to jam with and potentially co-found a company around using AI to help people organize and do more with their photos and videos. You can reach out here: tedmao@gmail.com. (SF)
Anonymous person was a technical lead for Github Copilot and before that was a founding engineer at two startups. Looking to build new ideas. Reach out directly to them here: nextplay@veverka.net.
An anonymous person was previously a product leader at a top startup. They are now building a new platform focused on helping therapists run/scale their practices. They are looking for a cofounder based in NYC who is passionate about using AI to help tackle the mental health crisis. Reach out to hi@nextplay.so and we’ll try to connect you.
Ashwin was one of the first employees at Gorillas (which hyperscaled to a $3b+ valuation). Now he’s building a startup at the intersection of travel and AI and is looking for a co-founder, ideally someone technical to oversee the product. He’s already raised some funding. Reach out here: ashwin.wadekar@gmail.com. (NYC, Remote)
A senior software engineer from MyFitnessPal is looking to work on new ideas, particularly search-related products. Reach out to hi@nextplay.so and we’ll try to connect you.
Kaelyn previously worked at Instacart (as an early employee) and Doordash, primarily on product operations. She’s now working on Gathyr, a new social app that helps people make plans with their friends. She is looking for a co-founder. Reach out here: kaelyn@gathyr.co. (NYC, Remote)
Early teams:
Andrew from Shortwave previously founded Firebase (sold to Google). He’s now building the “Cursor of business communications” and is hiring for customer success, engineering, and design. The product has a hockey stick revenue graph. Apply here and reach out here: andrew@shortwave.com. (SF)
TributeLabs is building DAO infrastructure. They are hiring in operations and UI engineering. Apply here and reach out here: jobs@tributelabs.xyz. (Remote, NYC)
Allison and Liz (ex Uber and Bain Capital) from Babs AI are building an ai powered operating system for families, and recently raised a pre-seed round. They are hiring a founding product designer and engineer. Reach out here: allison@hellobabs.ai.
Ben from Variant just raised a $6m seed round. They spent the past 3 months teaching AI models to design well, and now say they have “by far, the best creative code generation in the world.” They are hiring a founding frontend engineer. Apply here. (SF)
Sophie from Krida is building ai-powered workflow automation software for financial institutions. They just raised their first round, signed early design partners, and are hiring a founding engineer. Reach out here: sophie@krida.ai. (NYC)
A stealth founding team from Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Bain are building AI agents to reduce the cost of healthcare. They have raised funding and have many early customers already signed. They are hiring their first engineer outside of the founders. Apply here. (Boston)
Raunaq from Roam is building an assumable mortgage marketplace that helps buyers get much lower rates. They are hiring in operations, customer success, product, engineering, and more (and just raised $11m to scale). Apply here. (NYC)
Corgi is building an ai insurance company. Their investor called it the “fastest growing startup they have ever been associated with.” They work 7-days a week and are hiring engineers and ex-founders. Apply here. (SF)
Bardia from GC AI is hiring founding AEs, engineers, and marketers (content, product). They are building legal AI to support in-house GCs and already have 300+ customers. Apply here. (Remote)
We’ve been updating our project: TinyTeams. It’s a collection of <50 person teams achieving millions in ARR.
Scaling startups:
Immad from Mercury just raised $300m from Sequoia as they have been profitable for 10 consecutive quarters and have $500m in annual revenue. They are hiring for every role: engineering, people, product, sales, partnerships, etc.. They are building a business banking platform. Apply here. (SF, NY, Remote)
Ethan from VoiceOps is building an ai-powered sales coach. They just raised $5m and are hiring a founding team: marketing, sales, and engineering. Apply here. (NYC, Remote)
Daniele from NetBox Labs. They are hiring a director of platform engineering, as well as other engineers and account executives. They are building a network infrastructure platform. Apply here and reach out here: dgaunce@netboxlabs.com. (Remote)
Mariam from Arcade recently raised a $25 million Series A. They are building a generative AI product marketplace. They are hiring in marketing, product, and engineering. Apply here. (SF)
Henry from Privy just raised a $15m round from Ribbit, Sequoia, and Coinbase. They are building blockchain infrastructure. They are hiring in GTM, operations, product, and engineering. Apply here. (Remote, NYC)
Jake from Beehiiv is making their first sales hire on the ad solutions team. They are building a newsletter platform that raised a $33m series b last year. Apply here. (Remote)
Arman from Brisk is hiring for every department: product, sales, customer success, engineering (as they just raised $15m). They are building AI tools for teachers. Apply here. (SF, NYC)
Audrey from Warp is building a re-imagination of the developer terminal. They are hiring a customer support lead, an analytics engineer, and software engineers. Apply here and reach out here: audrey@warp.dev. (Remote)
Logan from Alembic has customers including NVIDIA and Delta. They are building an AI marketing intelligence platform, and are hiring customer success, applied ai, data, and engineering people. Apply here and reach out here: logan@getalembic.com. (SF)
Notion is hiring a corporate development lead to help with acquisitions and strategic projects. Apply here. (SF)
Riley from Traba is hiring GTM associates. They are building an industrial staffing platform. Apply here. (NYC)
Mihir from Actively is hiring for 18 roles (everything from engagement managers to technical recruiters to sales managers) as they just raised $22.5m. Their goal is to build “go to market super intelligence.” Apply here. (NYC)
Here are recommendations on startups to join from Alex at Forerunner Ventures.
Hiring? Send us an email: hi@nextplay.so - we’d love to be helpful and connect you to candidates.
Investing and other:
Brent from M13 is hiring an investment analyst. Apply here. (NYC)
Ashlee Vance wrote the popular 2015 biography of Elon Musk. Now he’s working on Core Memory, a publication documenting new exciting things in technology. He’s hiring a social editor. Apply here. (Remote)
Featured resources:
How to get the attention of a CEO: A guide to cold-emailing during the job application process (written by a Next Play community member!).
23 startup ideas: We asked people in the community (investors, founders) for their best startup ideas they want to see get built.
Note:
Looking to meet people? Reminder that when you join friends of next play, you get access to our private Slack group where you’ll meet like-minded peers and potential collaborators (co-founders, mentors, friends, etc.). You’ll also get invites to weekly events and discounts to some of our favorite products (like Superhuman and Granola).
Thank you for reading and being a part of the community. As always, if you have any ideas or feedback, feel free to send us an email: hi@nextplay.so.
Best NL. 👏