next play opportunities 11/5
early Ramp engineer, office hours, new perks
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.
Co-founder opportunities / people to jam with:
Kwuang is a staff level software engineer. He was the 15th employee at Ramp and previously spent time at Datadog and MongoDB. Now he is spending time ideating around software applications for physical industries (restaurants, manufacturing, etc.). You can reach out here: kwuangtang@gmail.com.
Alex previously started a company that went from 0 to 7-figures ARR and was profitable. Before that, he was a product leader at Facebook, Splunk, and Zuora. He’s now looking at building a new thing in b2b/vertical AI and looking for people to brainstorm with. You can reach out here: olexandr@prokhorenko.us.
Nate has a PhD in computational biology and wants to build a company that develops virtual cell models. He’s looking for technical people with experience in LLMs or graphical neural networks. You can reach out here: ndtippens@gmail.com.
Dave was previously the director of software engineering at companies like Major League Baseball and Samsung. Now he’s looking to build something new (and has ideas in mobile, media streaming, sports-tech, and e-commerce). You can reach out here: david.b.lewanda@gmail.com.
Ben was the Chief Revenue Officer at Flexport. Now he’s been investing via Saga and has been incubating a new company. He’s looking for a founding CTO. You can learn more here.
Nisha was the Head of AI for customer support at Atlassian. She’s looking for a co-founder on a new project building a platform connecting patients with effective healthcare solutions. You can reach out here: nriyer25@gmail.com.
Early teams:
We know a bunch of startups looking to hire a chief of staff. Interested in exploring? Fill out this form and we’ll try to connect you if it’s a fit.
Muthu from Counsel Health just raised $11m from a16z to build a new healthcare platform. The product allows patients to get instant guidance. They are hiring a head of growth and software engineers. You can see all of their open roles here and reach out here: careers@counselhealth.com.
Hima from Forge is trying to automate “all of the manual human processes big companies waste time on using AI.” They are hiring a deployment lead, a cross-functional role managing implementation at enterprise customers. They are backed by Founders Fund and OpenAI. You can reach out here: hima@withforge.com.
Eliana from Joyful Health is building an ai-powered financial operating system for healthcare practices. They just raised money and are hiring founding team members across the organization (engineering, bizops, and design). You can learn more here reach out here: eliana@joyfulhealth.io.
Chad from Teleport is building an AI matchmaker. They crossed a $1m run rate in < 30 days out of beta. You can reach out here.
Daniel from Synch is building a unified GTM platform that helps automate everything related to sales operations. They recently raised from Jack Altman’s fund and are hiring engineers as they come off their best month ever. You can learn more and apply here.
Christopher from Granola is building an AI notepad that helps you record notes across platforms (Zoom, Meet, etc.). They are hiring a founding product marketer. You can learn more and apply here.
Jonathon from AirGarage is building a parking management platform. They are hiring a general manager and a content marketer. You can learn more and apply here.
Brian from Reforge is hiring a part time community lead to help nurture their private executive community of marketing and product leaders. You can learn more and apply here.
Scaling companies:
Dan from Nooks is building a digital sales assistant that helps sales teams boost pipeline. They just raised their Series B are hiring for 20+ roles across the company. You can learn more and apply here.
Ryan from Primer is looking for a recruiter to help them as they try to rebuild the US K-12 education system. You can learn more here and reach out to r@primer.com.
Sonia from Pano is building an intelligence platform for wildfire management. They are hiring an operations program manager. You can learn more and apply here.
Arjun from Doola is building an easy way for entrepreneurs to set up LLCs, C Corps, etc. They are looking for someone to be the “visual voice of the company.” This means creating engaging videos about their product verticals. You can learn more and apply here.
Abbey from Equals is hiring a business development representative. Equals helps companies automate their reporting “with the comfort of a spreadsheet.” You can reach out here: abbey@equals.com.
Eric from Rutter is building what they call a “Unified API” that allows product teams to easily build and maintain integrations across multiple platforms. They are hiring software engineers. You can learn more and apply here.
Ben from Setpoint is building an operating system for capital markets. They are hiring on their business development and marketing teams. You can learn more and apply here.
Kent from Paradigm is hiring a senior product marketing manager. Paradigm is building a better clinical research platform. You can learn more and apply here.
Humphrey from Ideogram are building a text-to-image foundation model that is growing quickly. They raised $80m+ from a16z. They are hiring across the organization. You can learn more here and reach out here: humphrey@ideogram.ai.
Sasha from Vendelux is building an event intelligence platform. They are hiring a data scientist. You can learn more and apply here.
Oren from Rally UXR is hiring a senior customer success manager and a head of marketing. They are building a platform to help redefine research operations. You can learn more and apply here.
Vivian from Landed is building a platform that helps restaurants and hospitality employers hire the best talent for their locations very quickly. They’re hiring a chief of staff and a bunch of other GTM roles. You can learn more and apply here.
Investing and other:
Cory from Z Fellows is building a community of ambitious technical founders. He’s hiring someone to work on a variety of projects - everything from organizing IRL campus visits to building software experiments to planning retreats. You can learn more and reach out here.
Venrock is hiring an investment associate to focus on developer tools and AI. You can learn more and apply here.
Susannah from AlleyCorp is looking for an “operator in residence to work on a late stage strategic investment opportunity.” You can learn more and reach out here.
Paul from Bullpen Capital is hiring a venture analyst. You can learn more and apply here.
Andy from the AI Fund is hiring a principal to invest in AI startups. You can learn more and apply here.
Note:
We are adding more perks to friends of next play, including additional content (like this new list: “30 breakout startups under 30 people”). You can join friends of next play here ($10/month) and you’ll also get invites to virtual events, a directory of 100s of collaborators, and additional content sent to you weekly. We appreciate your support and hope to talk soon.
We are also launching “next play office hours” - we have dozens of people from the next play network—everyone from startups executives to staff operators to serial founders—volunteering their time to possibly try and help you on your career journey. You can apply to get access to office hours here (space is limited as this is an entirely free/volunteer-led initiative). (If you’d like to become a volunteer, you can also apply 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). We just added deals for Ramp (corporate credit cards), Suno (AI music), and Clay (enrichment tool).
Hiring or know of any opportunities we should feature in the newsletter? Email us hi@nextplay.so.
As always, please do respond to this email if you have any questions, feedback or ideas.
Ben + team