founding teams, VC chief of staff, AI discounts
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.
Quick note: We just upgraded Friends of Next Play so that when you sign up, you’ll get instant access to new discounts to our favorite AI products:
Superhuman (AI email): 6 months free (save $150)
Zapier (AI automation): $500 credit
Replit (AI development): 3 months free (save $90)
Wispr Flow (AI dictation): 3 months free (save $36)
Granola (AI note-taking): 3 months free (save $54)
Lovable (AI development): 3 months free (save $60)
Gamma (AI presentations): 3 months free (save $24)
Bolt (AI development): 3 months free (save $60)
Perplexity (AI search): 4 months free (save $80)
Thousands of dollars of additional savings on other software tools like Suno, Clay, Superpower, Linear, and more.
That is $1000+ worth of savings for just $15/month. You’ll also get added to the Friends of Next Play private Slack, where you can meet co-founders, get invited to events with like-minded peers, get additional content, and much more. You can join here.
Note that to redeem a discount, you’ll have to be a new customer of the product.
Co-founders and people to jam with:
Mark previously founded a company that scaled to $75m in annual revenue. He’s looking to start a new vertical SaaS / applied AI company and is looking for a like-minded co-founder. Reach out: mark@markshore.net.
A senior software engineer from Google wants to start an AI, defense, or Fintech company and is looking for a “business co-founder.” Message hi@nextplay.so and we’ll try to connect you. (EU)
Alex was early at Deel and Revolut. He’s exploring ideas in contract management and wants to apply to YC soon. Looking for a co-founder. Reach out: alexavnit@gmail.com.
Philip was previously the CEO of Spin, the popular electric scooter sharing service that had hundreds of employees, and also spent 10+ years in automotive advising companies like VW. He wants to build an AI platform that streamlines automotive retail workflows like phone-based lead qualification. He’s looking for a co-founder, ideally someone technical. Reach out: philipnextplay@gmail.com. (SF)
Tanveer is an operator-investor; he’s funded companies like Anduril and several roll-ups and wants to find a co-founder excited by “acquiring and scaling industrial tech/national security companies.” Reach out: tanveer@pioneer1890.com
Early teams:
Anis from Attention is building an AI agent that listens and learns from your sales calls. They have reached $6m in ARR with less than 20 people. They are hiring a founding customer success manager and a head of content. Apply here. (NYC)
Alex from Hello Patient is hiring a director of growth. They are building a healthcare AI assistant that helps with communication, coordination, and scheduling. They have dozens of customers and a 12 person team. Apply here. (NYC, Austin)
Seth from Skysight is building large-scale inference infrastructure. They are hiring infrastructure and research engineers. Apply here. (SF, Hybrid)
Sandra from Retrofit just finished YC as they are building an ai-powered secondhand marketplace. They are hiring a founding engineer. Apply here and reach out: info@retrofit.shop. (NYC)
Dawn is building a decentralized platform for deploying AI agents that perform complex crypto tasks. The founders previously built two $1b+ protocols. They are hiring a backend engineer. Reach out here: stella@topology.vc. (Remote, NYC)
Chaitanya from AiPrise is hiring a head of sales. They are building an ai compliance platform. Apply here. (Remote)
Danny from Fern is at $2m in ARR with a team of 11 people. They are building a platform that instantly generates docs for your app. They are hiring an account executive, a sales engineer, and software engineers. Apply here. (NYC)
Hassan from hotglue is hiring a founding SDR. They are building a user-facing saas integration platform. Apply here. (DC, Remote)
Thenuka from Daydream is hiring a chief of staff. They are building a programmatic SEO platform. Apply here. (SF)
Adrian from PointOne is building an automated billing/time-tracking platform for law firms. They just raised a $3.5m seed round and are hiring a founding GTM person. Apply here. (NYC)
Bruce and Daniel are building a skin cancer prevention platform that combines AI with multimodal imaging to screen more effectively. They are hiring founding engineers. Reach out: bruce@jointyle.com. (SF, LA, Remote)
Here’s a list of recommendations on companies to join from Ashton Kutcher’s Sound Ventures.
Are you hiring? Email us hi@nextplay.so and we’ll send you some great candidates.
Scaling startups:
Ben from Blackbird previously founded Resy. They are now building a new payments and customer loyalty platform for restaurants, and are hiring account executives and a director of strategy and operations. Apply here. (NYC, Remote)
Thinking Machines is an AI research lab founded by the former founder/CTO of OpenAI and many early team members. They are looking for rigorous/creative people to help shape the creative future of AI. Apply here. (NYC, SF)
Tejas from Hightouch recently raised $80m at a $1.2 billion valuation. They are hiring AI strategy consultants, customer success engineers, enterprise salespeople, and more. They are building a data platform for marketing and personalization. Apply here. (Remote)
Avlok from AngelList is hiring a demand generation lead and a business recruiter. Their mission is to increase the number of startups in the world - and they do that in many ways by building products for funds, capital movement, and startups. Apply here. (SF, NYC)
Eric from Stackblitz is hiring GTM people (product/growth marketing, revops) to help scale Bolt, their AI-powered app builder. They have reached $40m in ARR in just a few months with a 15 person team. Apply here. (Remote)
Albe from Superpower just raised a $30m Series A and is hiring for nearly every role (growth, engineering, product, etc.). Superpower is an all-in-one personal health platform. You can learn more here and reach out here: albe@superpower.com. (SF, Remote)
Campus is hiring for 34 roles: a director of curriculum, marketers, and operations associates. They are building a platform that powers digital experiences for two-year degree programs with professors from top universities like Princeton. Apply here. (NYC, Atlanta)
Tailscale just announced a $140m fundraise for their VPN service. They are hiring for nearly every role: marketing, operations, engineering. Apply here. (Remote)
Barry from Hex is hiring salespeople. They are building a platform thousands of people use to answer questions about their company data and analytics. Apply here. (SF, NYC)
Artisan just raised a $25m Series A. They are building “AI employees” to work on things like outbound. They are hiring humans for customer success, design, and operations. Apply here. (London, Remote).
Matt from Pave is building a platform for companies to make fairer compensation decisions. They are hiring a product marketing manager, SDRs, and account managers. Apply here. (SF, Remote)
Alex from Airops is hiring for 10 roles across every department, including a brand designer, a “content engineer”, and GTM people. They are hiring building an ai-powered an SEO/content automation platform that’s now used by brands like Ramp. Apply here. (SF, NYC)
Crux just announced a $50m Series B for their energy capital markets platform. They are hiring a chief of staff, product marketer, product manager, and more. Apply here. (Remote)
Here’s a list of Sequoia-backed companies open to hiring remote.
Investing and other:
Ben from Vital Interests is hiring a business strategy and operations associate to support their portfolio of “purpose-driven” companies. They have been incubating companies in hospitality, aviation, and CPG spaces right now. Apply here and reach out here. (Remote, DC, Austin)
Pioneer Square Labs is a venture studio and venture capital fund that is hiring a principal. They are also hiring “Future CEOs” to work on their companies. Apply here. (Seattle)
Hayley from First Round Capital is hiring a chief of staff to work on venture investments. Apply here. (NY)
TCV is a $24 billion venture fund that is hiring an investment associate. Apply here. (NYC, SF)
Featured resources:
Emails for Humans: An approach for sending out emails (to help you get jobs, meet people, etc.) that could result in more responses.
Vibe Coding Commentary: A roundtable discussion about vibe coding and the future of software development.
What type of content would be most interesting or useful? We are working with experts across domains to help find you the most useful and interesting information. Reply to this email letting us know!
Note:
We’re getting close now - if you would like early access to the new Next Play Platform, send us an email (hi@nextplay.so) with the subject line: “I want to see!” Our hope for the new platform is to create the ultimate tool for finding what’s next, starting by helping you search for opportunities (by skill, geography, etc.) and connect you directly to the best startups. Much more to come. Excited to hear what you think!
Want to meet particular types of people or get featured in the newsletter? Send us an email hi@nextplay.so with some context and we’ll try to be as helpful as possible.
Thanks again for being part of the community. If there’s anything at all we can do - send us a direct message (hi@nextplay.so or on Slack). Hope to talk soon!!
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