Head of growth, Amazon Veteran, forward deployed engineering

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 reminder - when you join Friends of Next Play, you get:

• $1000s of dollars worth of discounts to our favorite products we actually use: Superhuman (6 months free), Lovable (3 months free), Perplexity (4 months free), Replit (3 months free), and many many more.

• Access to our private Slack community, where you can meet like-minded peers (potential co-founders, mentors, and friends). There are dozens of gatherings (in-person and virtual) happening every month, where people discuss new ideas, share feedback, and hangout.

You can join here. Hope to talk to you in Slack soon!

Co-founders and people to jam with:

• Andrew is a multiple time-founder now working on an AI-powered longevity platform that already has funding from a top US/European fund. He’s looking for a cofounder to take on ops and growth (to do things like own setting up locations quickly). Reach out: amccarthy00@gmail.com.

• Alannah previously built a 7-figure hormone health brand and is now launching Celluverse—a wellness company focused on mitochondrial health. She’s looking for a cofounder COO to help build 0 to 1. Reach out: alannah@celluverse.com. (NYC/Remote)

• Stephan is former technical founder who also has a background in consulting at BCG and policy at Coinbase. He most recently built a high-frequency trading bot on Kalshi (27% ROI over 3 months), worked with YC startups, and led $8b covid stimulus efforts for the austrian government. He’s open to co-founder brainstorming conversations. Reach out: stephan@rihs-ventures.com.

Early teams:

• Alex from Supergood is hiring a forward deployed engineer to help support new and existing customers. They are also hiring a growth person. They are building a platform that helps generate and maintain APIs for products that don’t have an official API. Apply here. (SF)

• Anna from Falkin is building a scam prevention platform. They are hiring a founding fullstack engineer and a junior product designer. Apply here. (London)

• George from Uppership is hiring a head of operations as they are growing 35% month over month and are looking to scale from $65k to $200k in MRR. They are building a fulfillment/logistics platform for brands. Apply here. (Delaware)

• William from Chai Research has an open application for a “generalist” where their compensation range is $300k to $800k per year. They are building “Youtube but for LLMs” and have over 1 million users. Apply here. (SF)

• Untitled is building an operating system for the music industry, and recently raised $22m from a16z and others. They are hiring a software engineer. Apply here. (Remote)

• Shai from Mixus is hiring growth marketing people and software engineers. They are building an easy to use, trustworthy agent platform. Reach out shai@mixus.ai. (Remote, NYC, SF, Israel)

• Ryan from Crosby just announced a seed investment from Sequoia. They are hiring for operations, founding salespeople, and engineers. Apply here. (NYC)

• Harleen from Ground News is building a media platform designed to help people see every angle of the news as opposed to a bias perspective. They are hiring a director of growth marketing. Apply here. (Remote)

• Devon from Thrivory is hiring a head of growth. They are building an alternative financing platform for medical practices. Apply here. (Remote)

• Yunha from Tatta Bio is building a scientific non-profit dedicated to advancing artificial intelligence models and tools to accelerate biology research. They are hiring a founding software engineer as well as a “choose your own adventure” role. Apply here. (Boston)

• Andrew from Kick is hiring a founding account executive. They are building an ai-powered bookkeeping platform. Apply here. (Toronto, Remote)

• May from Helio is building a web3 checkout platform that now has over 6000 customers. They are hiring a vp of product/engineering and a devops/operations engineer. Apply here. (London)

• Marcel from GrowthX is hiring for product operations and a founding account executive. They are building an AI-growth platform that’s reached $7.2m+ in annual revenue. Apply here. (NYC, Remote)

• Lauren from Zinc is hiring a customer support executive and a marketing operations analyst. They are building an all-in-one, global background and reference-checking platform. Apply here. (London)

Scaling startups:

• Trying something out - we know a bunch of companies specifically looking to hire “generalists” - people to take on a variety of projects across operations and growth. Fill out this form and we’ll try to connect you if there’s a mutual fit.

• Hunter from Ordo has built America’s fastest growing school lunch program. They are hiring a GM to help manage operations and scale (beyond the 18 states they are already in). Apply here. (SF, LA)

• Jorn from Framer is hiring an influencer marketing manager, as well as other roles like design, engineering, and operations. Framer is a website builder used by thousands of professionals. Apply here. (Remote)

• Filip and Robert from Wordware raised a $30m seed round to build background agents that automate repetitive work. They are hiring a product designer, branding designer, full stack engineers and a Head of Story to join their growing team of mainly ex-founders. Apply here. (SF)

• Mahmoud from PlayAI is hiring a head of growth marketing, a customer success lead, and an SEO lead. They are building a conversational AI platform that has 1.4 million monthly active users and are scaling revenue at 35% quarter over quarter. Apply here. (SF)

• Mallory from Maven is hiring a product marketing manager. Maven is a live-course platform. Apply here. (Remote)

• PlayOn is hiring an “AI Customer Experience Manager.” They are building an ecosystem for high school sports (and they’re backed by KKR). Apply here. (Atlanta)

• Billy from Service Trade is building a SaaS platform for the fire protection and life safety industries. They are hiring for account executives, customer success, and devops. Apply here. (North Carolina)

• Dave from Auger previously spent 23 years at Amazon. They are now building a supply chain management platform. They recently raised $100m and are hiring product manager to focus on customer experience. Apply here. (Seattle)

• Trey from Tennr is hiring a business development manager, a product manager, a customer success manager, and for 20+ other roles. They are building an AI platform to improve efficiency in the healthcare industry, and just raised $101m. Apply here. (NYC)

• Pocket Worlds is the creator of Highrise, featured in the iOS App Store with 50 million users and rapidly growing. They’re hiring a Lead Backend Engineer to own the backend architecture and lead a team of 3 backend engineers. Apply here. (Remote)

• Sarah from Cargado has raised over $10m and grown to 60+ customers. They are a cross-border freight logistics platform, and are hiring a customer success manager. Apply here. (Chicago)

• Karan from Cartesia is hiring for every role: head of sales, account executives, biz ops, product engineering, and more. They are building a voice AI platform, and recently announced a $64m Series A. Apply here. (SF)

• Spandana from Pump is hiring a head of marketing, a GTM engineer, and a finance associate. They are building a cloud service cost optimization platform and have surpassed $35 million in revenue. Apply here. (SF)

• Jordan from Senra Systems recently announced a $25m Series A to build a software-powered wire harness manufacturing company. They are hiring a strategic finance lead as well as people to work on manufacturing. Apply here. (LA)

• Phoebe from Pareto AI is hiring a product manager. They are building an AI data labeling platform. Apply here. (SF, Remote)

• Dylan from Profound just announced a $20m series A and are hiring for 19 open roles including GTM, sales, product management, and data science. They are building an SEO platform that helps brands rank better on AI search engines/platforms. Apply here. (NYC)

• Here’s a list we made of 30 companies hiring that recently announced rounds over $50 million.

Are you hiring? Send us an email: hi@nextplay.so. We would love to connect you to candidates and invite you to the Next Play hiring platform.

Investing and other:

• Ali and Mia previously ran YCombinator’s growth investing program. They are now building a new fund: First Harmonic, and are looking for a part-time writer to work on research essays that early-stage founders care about. Reach out: mia@firstharmonic.com. (Remote)

• Aneel from Soma Capital has seeded 30+ unicorn investments. They are hiring a principal investor. Apply here.

• HOF Capital is a $1b+ AUM venture capital fund that is hiring an investment analyst. Apply here.

Featured resources and products:

• We are hearing more and more people in the community ask about GTM Engineering. That’s why we helped create “The GTM Engineer” - a new newsletter/community specifically for people interested in “GTM Engineering.” Check it out here.

• Open the Door: An essay that details an approach to help you generate more ideas.

• Taylor, a Next Play community member, is working on “Creator Diaries” where she interviews interesting builders from the creator community. Check it out here.

• We have written 10+ in-depth spotlights covering the cultures of companies like Miter, Angel List, Thatch, and others. What interesting startup should we cover next?

Note

• We heard some pretty motivating messages from Friends of Next Play community members last week:

  • Sandra said that: “Friends of Next Play helped me find a collaborator, provided me access to an awesome educational session on pricing, and drove 30% of the traffic to my product last week. Best $15 I’ve ever spent.”

  • Darshil, who said that: “got tons of good leads that otherwise would have taken weeks to land.”

  We are hoping to grow the community and create more and more valuable resources that enable experiences like that. Reach out hi@nextplay.so if you have any ideas for us.

• Thanks again for being a part of the network. If you enjoyed this essay, please do consider sharing with friends and upvoting. We appreciate your support of Next Play.