next play opportunities 1/14
Angellist spotlight, first software eng at Warp, Kaggle founder's new company
Hey there,
In 2025, we want to help as many people as possible figure out their next play. We heard from 3 people last week who recently found jobs via the newsletter. Let’s keep it up!! Email us (hi@nextplay.so) if there’s anything we can do (or if you have ideas or feedback).
Spotlight: AngelList
Today’s spotlight is on AngelList. Thanks to the AngelList team for sharing behind-the-scenes details and supporting next play.
If you work in tech, you probably have heard of AngelList. AngelList first launched in 2010 as an angel investor matchmaking email list that helped the likes of Uber raise their seed round. Since then, they’ve evolved into a leading fintech startup that builds infrastructure that powers the startup economy. They offer software focused on Funds (fund formation & scaling), Equity (cap table management, Roll Up Vehicles), and Capital (Limited).
So how does an organization like AngelList do it? How do they keep innovating, or as one of their founders calls it: “innovating on innovation.”? And perhaps the question of this essay — what type of culture have they created internally such that they are able to sustainably launch new industry-leading products? What is it really like to work at AngelList?
AngelList has done a uniquely great job attracting entrepreneurial talent: “AngelList is a meta-startup of sorts and tends to attract really entrepreneurial people. About one quarter of the engineering team has founded companies in the past, with many others on the team with aspirations to bring their ideas to life in the future. We have a high trust and high ownership culture where you're expected to operate as a CEO of your own domain in the company, which works really well with the entrepreneurial view.”
Hiring former founders — and generally people who: can operate without needing micro-instruction, take accountability for their work, tackle ambiguous problems, and build solutions quickly — is perhaps AngelList’s secret ingredient that enables their ability to scale the business from an angel investor / job board to a fintech leader.
“Remove your title from your identity. You are not a software engineer/designer/ops person – you are someone who will help the company (& our customers) win. Everything boils down to agency. You have a lot of agency at AngelList and you can make an impact on anything. If you think the help center isn't doing a good job - build a better one and push it live.”
A great example of this is with AngelList’s Roll Up Vehicles, a first (and only)-of-its-kind innovation that allows startups to raise big and small checks from up to 250 investors in a single line on their cap table. The team that built this product was composed of a single engineer.
You can read more details here.
AngelList is hiring for nearly every department: customer success, operations, business, engineering, marketing, and product design. If you think you may be a fit, you can apply here and mention next play in the “Additional Information” section.
And if you are working on a new company, consider building it on AngelList. You can sign up for AngelList here.
Co-founders and people to jam with:
Michelle was the first software engineer and Growth Lead at Warp, a Sequoia-backed Series B company reimagining the terminal. She built the product, scaled users to hundreds of thousands, and led sales. Now, she’s working on an ai x growth related product and is looking for a co-founder (ideally in the bay/technical). You can reach out here: limxlmichelle@gmail.com.
Barry previously led growth at Workvivo before they were acquired by Zoom and also did sales at Hubspot. He’s now looking to build a new b2b SaaS company and is looking for a co-founder. You can reach out here: barry@barrynyhan.com.
An engineering leader with over a decade of experience in startups (several of which have exited) is looking for a co-founder. They are building an AI-native financial planning platform to help tech companies forecast better. Email hi@nextplay.so with a blurb about yourself and we’ll connect if it’s a fit.
Bailey spent the past several years building experimental products at Headliner, a podcasting startup. Now she’s building a studio to launch products to make the digital feel more analog. Looking for people who like building. You can reach out here: Bailey@shinyobject.co.
Early teams:
Manuel from Silverstream recently raised from Google’s AI fund. They are building cloud infrastructure to make it easy to build, scale, and monitor web browsing agents (like a Heroku for agents). They are hiring a founding infrastructure engineer. You can learn more here and reach out here: hello@silverstream.ai.
Aurelius from Aurora is building an ai-powered lifestyle manager. They are backed/incubated by Alex Macdonald, who was the founder of Velocity Black (which was a digital concierge acquired by Capital One for $297 million). They are hiring founding team members, especially engineers (backend, frontend, mobile). You can reach out here: aurelius@joinaurora.co.
Eric from Consus is building a platform to help companies find and understand complex government documents/specifics quickly, allowing them to launch faster. They are well funded (via YC and others) and are hiring a founding engineer. You can learn more here and reach out here: careers@consusindustries.co.
Howard from FrontierX is hiring a head of operations. They are building an ai platform that helps salespeople run perfect calls. You can reach out here: stephanie@frontierx.ai.
David from Aircover is building immersive, conversation intelligence and live call assistance to empower customer-facing teams to have more effective conversations. They are hiring an LLM engineer and a full-stack engineer. You can learn more here and reach out here: jobs@aircover.ai.
Uğur previously founded Collective (which has reached a 9-figure-valuation). Now he’s building a new AI product, has raised money, and is hiring founding team members: growth hacker, market researcher, full stack engineer, and more. You can learn more and apply here.
Oren from Telos is building an ai-powered positive psychology trained life coach (to help people achieve their goals and build healthy habits). He’s hiring for their NYC-based founding team, especially an engineer and a designer. You can reach out here: oren@heytelos.com.
Anthony previously founded Kaggle, which sold to Google. He’s now working on Sumble. Sumble’s vision is to become the primary destination for companies to access high-quality external data. They are hiring a founding account executive. You can learn more and apply here.
Jan from Meadow Memorials is building a modern funeral service. They are hiring their first sales manager. You can learn more and apply here.
David wants to build a new “Penguin Publishing House.” He’s hiring founding people - like an engineer and a designer. You can learn more and reach out here: capital.vckr@gmail.com.
Pierpaolo previously was a director and principal engineer at companies like Airtable and Dropbox. He’s hiring founding team members for his new company. You can reach out here.
Conor from Keye is building an ai-platform to speed up due diligence during m&a. They are making their first non-technical hire - looking for a generalist businessperson. You can learn more and apply here.
Ben, Isaac, and Evan from Daysheets are hiring founding team members, especially engineers. Daysheets builds logistics software for some of the world’s largest music artists like Billie Eilish, John Legend, and Shakira. They just raised their seed round. You can reach out here: evan@daysheets.com.
Jon previously founded Marketo, a b2b marketing company acquired by Adobe for $4.75 billion. He’s now working on a new stealth AI company. They are mainly focused on building but you can get in touch with him here.
Ali from Amigo’s mission is to empower the world’s experts to create AI versions of themselves that think, reason, and guide exactly as they do—making their expertise accessible to millions. They just raised a $6m+ seed round and are hiring for engineering and go-to-market teams. You can learn more and apply here.
Telli is building AI voice agents to automate lead qualification. They grew to 6-figure ARR in just the past few months and are hiring founding team members (operations, engineering). You can learn more and apply here.
Scaling startups:
We know many companies looking for software engineers. You can fill out this form and we’ll reach out with a personalized introduction if any companies are a fit.
Alex from Stainless recently announced a $35m Series A from Sequoia and a16z. They are building a platform to make it easy to build APIs (and have customers like OpenAI and Anthropic). They are looking for their first business operations hire - someone to be their head of operations and strategy. You can learn more here and reach out here: ellis@stainlessapi.com.
Heidi from Meter is hiring for every department: engineering, revenue operations, finance, operations, and more. Meter builds internet infrastructure for business. Even if you don’t see a role, they encourage you to get in touch as they plan to scale dramatically in 2025. You can learn more and apply here.
Wayne from Heygen is hiring all types of top engineers: researchers, infrastructure, product. They raised $60m last summer to help businesses scale visual storytelling. You can reach out here jake.lu@heygen.com.
Lovable has grown from $0 to $6m ARR in 5 weeks after launching. Their goal is to be the first company to make ai-powered code generation work reliably. They are hiring for many roles: a community lead, a product engineer, an operations lead, and more. You can learn more and apply here.
Ryan from Primer is hiring for 14 roles: operations, engineering, design, and marketing. They are building a new take on a homeschooling platform and growing quickly in states across the US. You can learn more and apply here.
Max from Leya is building an ai platform for lawyers. They are hiring for nearly every role: marketing, operations, product, engineering. You can learn more and apply here.
Hiring? Send us an email: hi@nextplay.so.
Featured resource:
Ways to Stand Out When You Apply for a Startup: Increase your odds of getting hired.
Want to write content for next play’s community? Email hi@nextplay.so.
Note:
The new Slack group for friends of next play has been very active since launching it. We have channels for people exploring starting their next thing, joining their next thing, a place to ask for advice, and more. Would love to talk to you there!
Ben + team