next play 5/21

in-person gatherings, ex-Grammarly, dedicated desks

Hey,

This is next play’s newsletter, where we share under-the-radar opportunities to help you figure out what’s next in your journey.

We have a bunch of in-person next play gatherings coming up: London (late June), Paris (mid June), Bangalore (mid June), Boston (mid June), New York (late June), Denver (late June), San Francisco (early July) stay tuned! If you haven’t yet applied for in-person gatherings, make sure to fill this out.

Opportunities:

Note: many of the companies below are actually open to hiring for any role if you can find a way to add value. Jordan Gonen, co-creator of next play, wrote a practical guide to getting hired at a startup that you can use to land a job. Please let us know what you think and share if it’s useful.

Founding team:

• Jacob from Superpower.com is working on the world’s most advanced personal health & longevity platform. They are based in SF and hiring a founding engineer. Founders are ex YC and Goldman. Email jacob@superpower.com to explore.

• Reave is hiring a head of engineering to build tools for the e-sports ecosystem. They have a a really unique insight into the future of gaming and are looking for people who want to shape the industry. You can learn more and apply here.

• Bryant Hawthorne is starting a new AI company and looking for people to work with. He previously worked on Microsoft’s Hololens and at Recroom. You can contact Bryant at contact@bryhaw.com.

• Dhruv (first PM from Youtube TV) from Create is an AI tool for turning words into fully coded sites and apps is hiring founding engineers. Create is growing quickly — adding 1k+ new projects per day. Reach out to dhruv@create.x.

• Pigeon (YC) is hiring 1-2 founding engineers to build the ultimate information collection workflow for businesses in every industry. They are hiring 1-2 founding engineers. Send an email to asharf@pigeondocuments.com.

• Valerie is hiring a founding engineer for Duckie (YCW24). Duckie is an AI support engineer that reduces unnecessary ticket escalations by troubleshooting tricky technical issues and suggesting resolutions. You can message the founder on Linkedin here.

• A very early stage AI startup, run by two serial founders (former Yahoo, Google), is looking to bring on a CTO or Head of AI position (must be based in Israel). You can reach out here by email: hey@aigencyai.com.

Co-founder searches:

• A friend is looking for a technical co-founder to join him for the upcoming YC batch. He’s had two prior exits and has built/run design teams at several unicorn companies. He’s working on leveraging AI to expand human creativity and taste—starting with software. Garry Tan recently tweeted about the opportunity. You can get in touch with him here.

• Looking for a CEO co-founder: we are a CTO and an engineering founding team of several rockstar engineers, looking to partner with a chief executive. We have worked together on an AI side project for two years and are now looking to go all-in on a new direction. With our own experience and technical skills, we are looking for a co-founder with strong executive or entrepreneurial experience and industry expertise. We are based in Tel Aviv. If you are interested or know of anyone, please contact Jonathan: jonathan@tensor-estates.com.

• Alexander is a founder and ex-Grammarly designer, who is looking for thinkers to jam about Future of Work. How LinkedIn, Slack, Notion will look like in 2034 and who is going to dominate the market of skills, information transfer, communication, and productivity, that would shape the world of next generation of knowledge workers. Alex has been researching this topic for years and looking for feedback/chat/interest/enthusiasm. Email avilinskyy+nextplay@gmail.com.

Early hires:

• Slope recently signed a number of big public logos without even a sales team — they are hiring an account executive to help them scale their B2B payments platform. Email them founders@slope.so if you are interested.

• Jacqueline from Artie is hiring a Chief of Staff. Artie helps you sync data in real-time and more reliably than traditional ETLs. You can DM her on X here.

• Magic School is hiring a head of marketing. MagicSchool is the one of the premier generative AI platforms for teachers. They are only 11 months old, and more than 2 million teachers from all over the world have joined their platform. You can learn more and apply here.

• David Litwak is hiring a head of startups & venture partnerships to plan out dinners for his NY-based social club: Maxwell social. You can message him on Linkedin here.

• Ian from Railway is looking for an infrastructure engineer, a fullstack product engineer, and a product designer who are interested in taking the product from 1M deploys a month to 100M. Railway is a platform-as-a-service tackling some seriously cool challenges at the intersection of distributed systems engineering and interface design. Reach out ian@railway.app or apply at railway.app/careers.

• Jeff from Exa is hiring a Chief of Staff. Exa’s goal is to organize the world’s knowledge using AI. You can message Jeff on X here.

• Alex Cohen’s stealth health-tech company is hiring a head of operations. Looking for someone based in Austin with experience in clinical operations and call centers. You can learn more and message him on X here.

• Marty from Pylon is hiring their first account executive to help build the future of B2B customer support. You can apply here.

• Mo from Shepherd insurance is hiring a product manager. Their mission is to create the first comprehensive platform that combines top-tier insurance offerings with world-class software so commercial businesses can manage risk and prevent losses. You can learn more and apply here.

Breakout startups:

• Limitless is a personalized AI powered by what you’ve seen, said, or heard. Their mission is to help humans go beyond our biological limitations. They are hiring for several engineering roles, including a head of engineering, you can apply here.

• Gynger just raised their Series A for their AI-powered payments platform with embedded financing, built for buyers and sellers of technology. They are hiring a business development representative (and for some other roles). You can apply here.

• Yitong from Agora is hiring a head of customer success. They are working towards a new paradigm for group collaboration by creating the tools for communities to work together onchain. Agora is working tirelessly on the best end-to-end governance platform for crypto protocols – the first instance of at scale onchain collaboration. You can apply here.

Venture:

• Jay from MXV is hiring an investment analyst. [m]xv Capital is a New York-based emerging early-stage venture firm funding and founding the future of B2B SaaS.

• Jordan from Pace Capital is offering a Summer Residency: Dedicated desks June-August for interesting people early in building, hacking, in transition, whatever. Apply to work (for free) out of Pace HQ, absorb our network & culture, make some friends, do some great work, endure. You can learn more here on X.

• First Round is an early-stage venture capital firm on a mission to build and serve the world's strongest community of entrepreneurs. They are hiring an events coordinator to service their community. Great opportunity to break into tech. You can apply here.

next play note:

• A couple weeks ago, we shared a bit about a new initiative we’ve been exploring to help you meet like-minded people and explore common challenges through virtual, small-group discussions. We received a lot of interest and plan to launch a first iteration of this experience in June. If this sounds like something you might be interested in, and you filled out the form last time, great! If not, please fill out this short form no later than Sun, May 26.

• Looking for something to work on? Here are 123 free ideas for you to explore. Laugh a little, though you may find something serious to work on, too.

• The latest next play podcast episode is live. Twitter legend, Alex Cohen, joined our podcast to go behind-the-scenes of his career, Twitter strategy, selling his first company, joining a fast-growing healthcare startup in a product role, starting his most recent startup, and more. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

• Shout to Adam Stevens, Florian Bachelot, Pavithran Chidambaram, Dan Allon, Dan Schreter, Bremner Morris for hosting upcoming next play gatherings around the world 🙌🏻

• As always, we’d really appreciate if you could like this post on Substack and share next play (nextplay.so) with your most talented friends.

Ben