next play opportunities 10/22

figma founder, disaster recovery startup, latest podcast

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.

In just the last few weeks, we have heard four stories of people who found (and accepted) jobs through next play. We love seeing this—if you are looking for a particular role, searching for a co-founder/collaborator, or even hiring, send us an email: hi@nextplay.so and we’ll do our best to be valuable.

Co-founder opportunities/people to jam with:

• An anonymous software engineer has solo-built a tool that has reached product-market fit with e-commerce businesses (of all sizes). He’s looking to partner with people “on the business side,” who can help scale go to market. Particularly interested in people with existing relationships with e-commerce companies. You can reach out: hi@nextplay.so with a bit of information about yourself (including your Linkedin) and we’ll try to connect you.

• Martin was the first employee at Parker, a fintech company that he helped scale from $0 to $20 million in ARR in under 2 years. He’s now working on a project in travel (an ai-powered concierge) and looking for people interested in cofounding with him (his background is in sales, partnerships, finance, and growth). He has existing partners and a clear hypothesis for what needs to get built. You can reach out: mrozowskimartin@gmail.com.

• Dylan (founder of Figma) and Matt (Paradigm) are looking for 1-2 people to help build a neopets-inspired crypto game. You can learn more and apply here.

• Saloni previously built a consumer platform that scaled from 0 to 7-figures of annualized revenue within 4 months. She was also a growth equity investor at Norwest ($13b+ fund) where she closed over $100m in deals. She’s looking at building multi-modal agents in “boring” industries. You (especially technical people) can reach out here: saloni07@stanford.edu.

• Ilya has developed an app that incentivizes people to make healthier/cleaner grocery shopping choices. He was previously a product manager at Shopify and Deliverr. He’s looking for a co-founder to work on sales/go-to-market. You can reach out here: ilya@aresystems.com.

Early teams:

• Brendan is the founder and chair of the Cosmos Institute. He thinks a lot about how tech can enhance human life. He was previously an AI leader at the DOD (and also spent 610 days underwater on a submarine). He’s hiring a chief of staff to work on a variety of projects. You can learn more and apply here.

• Dylan from Profound is making their first sales hire. Profound is a tool that helps businesses understand and improve their presence in AI answers (in tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity). You can learn more and apply here.

• Joel from Bright Harbor is hiring engineers to join their founding team. Bright Harbor is building a digital support system for disaster recovery. They are open to paying to relocate you to Austin if you join full-time. You can learn more here.

• Spiros from Resolve AI is building a an ai-developer that amplifies your on-call developer productivity by 75%. They just raised a $35m seed round from Greylock and are hiring for roles across their organization (everything from SDR to engineering). You can learn more and apply here.

• Danny from Linero is hiring a founding software engineer. Linero is building an AI-native enterprise management system, starting with a performance review platform. You can reach out here: hey@linero.ai.

• Nabil from Presti wants to make it easy to create engaging product visuals in a click. They recently raised their seed round and are hiring across AI research, sales, and customer success. You can reach out to their founder here.

• Brooke from Coval is hiring a founding engineer. Coval is a simulation & evaluation platform for AI agents, starting with voice and chat assistants. They are growing revenue 10% week over week. You can reach out to the founder here.

• Eric from Parakeet Health is building an ai-contact center agent that automatically answers your phones, makes calls, and replies to text messages. They think this will help businesses like doctor offices provide a better patient experience. They are hiring for several roles including a software engineer. You can learn more and apply here.

• Sahitya from Endeavor is hiring for a founding backend engineer (and other roles like account executives). Endeavor is a workflow automation platform for manufacturing. They just raised a seed round and already have large contracts with enterprises in traditional manufacturing areas like steel and construction. You can learn more and apply here.

• Sam from Claim is trying to build a new way to shop. They recently announced their Series A and are now hiring for several GTM roles. You can learn more and apply here.

• Lasse from LiveFlow is building a finance and accounting automation platform. They are hiring sales and customer success people. You can learn more and apply here.

• Sruti from Valdera is creating a platform that helps companies source raw materials and chemicals. They’re hiring a chief of staff and several other roles. You can learn more and apply here.

Scaling companies:

• A stealth healthcare company is hiring a general manager. Their mission is to help redefine care for the most vulnerable/underserved people in society. They are well-funded by firms like Sequoia and Khosla. They also went from $0 to 8 figures in annual revenue in <12 months since launching. You can learn more and apply here.

• Alex from Scale AI is looking to hire strategic project leads to work on their new generative AI business unit. They are looking for people who are “high-octane” and excited to get things done to keep up with the “virtually unlimited demand” they are currently seeing. You can learn more and apply here.

• David from Ohalo Genetics (also one of the hosts on the all-in-podcast) is hiring a Director of Business Development to help drive business partnerships with Ohalo. Ohalo is building a boosted breeding program that hopes to transform global agriculture. You can learn more and apply here.

• Varun from Clay is hiring a data scientist (and for several other roles across the organization). Clay helps businesses grow (without needing to invest hugely in tooling or manual labor). They have grown 10x year over year for the last two years and recently announced a large funding round. You can learn more and apply here.

• Tytus from Tidio is building an ai-powered customer service platform. They are growing quickly with 350 million+ end users every month. They are hiring for several roles including a b2b account executive/team lead. You can learn more and apply here.

• Ben from Omnea hopes to triple their team size in the coming year. They just raised their Series A for their platform that automates procurement tasks. You can learn more and apply here.

• Hamzah from Lightdash is trying to build a better way to self-serve your business intelligence. They just announced a round from Accel and are hiring across the organization for engienering, data, and go to market roles. You can learn more and apply here.

• Galileo is building Gen AI evaluation platform. They just raised a large Series B and are looking for people to join their engineering and developer advocacy team. You can learn more and apply here.

• Zohar from Port is building an internal development portal platform. They just announced a large Series B and are hiring across the organization. You can learn more and apply here.

• Gabriel from Rogo is building AI products for financial firms. working on Gen AI solutions for financial firms. Khosla just led their Series A and they have a bunch of sales, ops and product roles open. You can learn more and apply here.

Investing and other:

• Damir and Martin from Index Ventures are looking to hire an “applied AI investor” to work closely alongside them (Index follows an apprenticeship model). You can learn more and apply here.

• Rachel from Red Sea Ventures is hiring for two consumer-focused investment roles (one is a senior growth principal and the other is a seed-stage principal). You can email her: rachel@redseaventures.com with your Linkedin profile (and include which role you are interested in in the subject line).

• Brett from First Round is hiring a program director. This program director role is focused on founder success, helping plan a wide range of activities including things like best practices workshops for founders. You can learn more and apply here.

• Florian, general partner at 468 Capital, is looking for a chief of staff who will “work closely with him on a number of exciting projects.” You can message him directly here.

• Helen from a16z crypto is hiring an events manager to help lead large-scale events, special programming, and high-touch brand activations both domestically and internationally. You can learn more and apply here.

Note:

• We have a bunch of exciting virtual events coming up—everything from co-working to co-founder matching to office hours. To get access, consider joining friends of next play. It’s $10/month and you’ll also get access to a bunch more content and other perks. You’ll also helping us invest more into next play to be as valuable as possible. We appreciate your support.

• We are playing with a few new experiments that you may find interesting:

  • Free ideas—we’ll send you free ideas every week. You can read the first edition and subscribe here.

  • Next play projects—we’ll send you first access to new projects and products that are looking for beta testers and feedback (mainly sourced from the next play community). We hope it’ll become a great place for you to discover new helpful things. You can subscribe here.

• Looking for a co-founder? If you’re in NYC, check out our upcoming gathering that we’re co-hosting with SPC and Brex. It’s on November 20th and will be a great opportunity to meet collaborators who share ambitions to build amazing companies. Unfortunately space is limited but you can apply to attend here.

• Our latest podcast episode with Devin Lewtan (first growth hire at Browser Company and former founder) is now live. You can listen here.

• We’re talking to lots of companies trying to get you more perks (free to you!). You can find $1000s worth of discounts here: (password: yournextplay). You’ll find everything from better deals on Framer to Notion to Clay Earth.

• Please give this post a like/comment on Substack when you have a chance. Appreciate it!

As always, please do respond to this email if you have any questions, feedback, or ideas.

Ben + team