next play opportunities 11/19

startup compensation benchmark, Anduril product manager, Glean founder

✨ 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.

🌟 Want to know how much money you should be making? Introducing the 2024 Startup Compensation Benchmark - our new initiative to survey the network so you can answer questions like: How much are most people making at this type of role at this type of company? How much do most founders pay themselves at this stage? And more. Fill out this form in order to see the data — the more people who participate (it is free!), the more useful the data will be.

Co-founders / people to jam with:

• Ron previously started/sold two startups, did YCombinator, and was a 2x FRC world champion. He’s technical and looking to work on hard problems for the real world (energy, climate, robotics) or people building for underserved industries (industrials, insurance, retail). You can reach out here if you’re interested in collaborating or brainstorming: ronbhattacharyay@gmail.com.

• An anonymous engineer turned product manager from Anduril is exploring new ideas in consumer/b2b hardware. They are looking for people to brainstorm with across those areas. You can reach out: hi@nextplay.so and we’ll try to connect you.

• Jessica is building a new e-commerce/fashion tech product. She already has paying customers and is looking for people to help build the product (and join as a co-founder). She previously got her JD/MBA at Harvard and was a vc-backed founder and a consultant at BCG. You can reach out here: jessica@seenshopping.com.

• Yaakov previously worked on a flying car startup and before that sold his e-commerce company. He’s exploring new AI ideas including a marketplace for high-consideration purchases. He’s looking for people to brainstorm with. You can reach out here: yaakovmv@gmail.com.

• Mila was most recently a growth lead at AWS. She’s looking for a co-founder to help her launch an ai-enabled fertility services clinic. You can reach out here: rudmila@beejahealth.com.

• Cheryl from Play Money previously started 3 venture-backed companies. She’s been working on a new project - an angel-list meets Instagram for angel investing - and hitting some new milestones ($750k AUA). Looking for people interested in collaborating, especially a founding mobile app engineer. You can reach out here: C2K@letsplaymoney.com.

• Cole is an ML researcher building Opal to bridge the engagement gap in mental healthcare between sessions with AI agents. He’s looking for someone with product or sales experience to help bring it to market in practices and universities. You can reach out here: cole@heyopal.com.

Early teams:

• Samantha from Zingage is building an engagement platform for home-based care. They are hiring a founding ops generalist (to start by working on all things customer experience). You can reach out here: sammy@zingage.com.

• Diego from Family Office is building a design studio. They are hiring an iOS engineer as they incubate new businesses. You can learn more and apply here.

• Piyush previously founded Glean (which recently raised a $260 million Series E). He’s now working on a new company to improve the performance of sales teams. They are less than 10 people - and looking for amazing people to join them. You can reach out here: piyush@getaida.com.

• Vlada is building Superagent, an ai-assistant for insurance agents. They already have customers lined up (and their co-founder previously helped scale an insurtech company from $0 to $3 billion valuation). They are hiring a founding engineer/CTO. You can reach out here: vlotkina1@gmail.com.

• Aravind was previously a manager at OpenAI and Facebook. He’s building Sylogic, a platform to search your code and implement security and compliance policies using proprietary code generation techniques. He’s looking for great engineers to join the early team. You can reach out here: aravind@sylogic.ai.

• Ian from Homebase is hiring operations and growth people. They recently raised money for their platform that helps you earn rewards for making mortgage payments. You can reach out here: ian@yourhomebase.co.

• Caspian is building a platform to help exporters reclaim taxes and fees from US customs. They are hiring a software engineer. You can learn more here and apply here: hello@meetcaspian.com.

• Sherjil is building General Agents. He was the inventor of GANs and has been an AI researcher since 2012, working at companies like Deepmind and Tesla. They are hiring, primarily machine learning engineers. You can reach out here: sherjilozair@gmail.com.

• Madeline from Castle is hiring a chief of staff. Castle is building a platform to help homeowners save time and money. You can learn more and apply here.

• Georgia from Wordbrew is building an end-to-end platform to help people write expert-sourced content. They are hiring a chief of staff/COO to join as the founding hire. You can apply here.

• Joshua from Hero is building an app that lets you easily sell your things using AI and your camera. They are hiring a software engineer (who can do everything from iOS to web). You can reach out here: hiring@hero.st.

Scaling startups:

• We know a bunch of startups hiring community roles. Interested in exploring? Fill out this form and we’ll try to connect you if it’s a fit.

• Lumen from Fathom is building an AI notetaker. They are growing 10-20% every month and recently raised a $17m Series A. They are just a team of 8 people. They are hiring, especially engineers and sales. You can reach out here: lumen.sivitz@fathom.video.

• Jose from Method is hiring for a bunch of roles (including a product marketing lead, a go to market associate, and an account executive). They are building a financial API that lets consumers connect to 30+ million liability accounts, and have already served 2 million users. You can learn more and apply here.

• Arch from Span is hiring for all types of roles (across go to market and engineering). Span is trying to reinvent the electric panel to give people more control. You can learn more and apply here.

• May from Writer just announced a $200m Series C at a $1.9 billion valuation. They are hiring for nearly every role. You can learn more and apply here.

• Devin from Grafana is hiring a growth product manager. Grafana is the leading open source software for visualizing operational data (and is used by millions of people). You can learn more and apply here.

• Alyssa from Viam is hiring a director of product marketing. Viam helps companies unlock data in the physical world. Their co-founder previously founded MongoDB. They recently raised $87 million. You can learn more and apply here.

• Mike from Anthropic (who also previously co-founded Instagram) is hiring a head of product engineering. You can learn more and apply here.

• Jonathan from Archy is hiring AEs to join the team. They recently raised their Series A from Bessemer to build better software for dental practices. You can learn more and apply here.

• Rebecca at Regal is hiring for customer success and bizop roles. They’re trying to build AI agents that sound human for customer support. You can learn more and apply here.

Investing and other:

• 137ventures is hiring an associate. You can learn more here: work@137ventures.com.

• a16z is hiring an associate to join their consumer and games vertical. You can learn more and apply on their website.

• Terrarium is a digital health venture studio. They are hiring an investment associate. You can learn more and apply on their website.

• Angel List is hiring a senior people operations associate to work on their fund administrator. You can learn more and apply on their website.

• Capital One Ventures is hiring someone to work as a manager in their venture studio. You can learn more and apply on their website.

• Founder Collective is hiring an MBA associate. You can learn more and apply on their website.

• The venture capital arm of Atlassian, Atlassian Ventures, is hiring a portfolio management lead. You can learn more and apply here.

Note:

• Want more? Consider joining friends of next play.

  • More opportunities: Recommendations from Damir at Index Ventures.

  • More resources: Tactics to choose where to work (featuring Lenny Rachitsky, Claire Butler, and others).

  • More: A private database with 100s more under-the-radar startups and job opportunities — filterable by location and industry, invites to virtual events, and more.

• We would love to hear from you → hi@nextplay.so. Let us know if you have any feedback…know of any companies hiring…know of any people looking to invest in new startups…or just want to introduce yourself :). We want to be as helpful as possible.

• Thank you to all of our incredible hosts putting together next play events around the world (in cities like Amsterdam, Chicago, and many more). It’s been incredible meeting so many people in San Francisco and NYC this past week. More to come!

Talk soon!

Ben + next play team