Coinbase founder, founding designer at Ramp, fashion model agent

breakout startups, early teams hiring, and co-founder searches

✨ 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.

For the holiday season, we want to make joining friends of next play ($10/month) a complete no-brainer. So we worked with companies/products we love to get you hundreds of dollars worth of discounts.

• Granola: AI meeting notetaker (3 months free).

• Legacy: Personalized documentary for you and your loved ones (15% off).

• Clay: Beautiful CRM (3 months free).

• And many others (like Perplexity, Suno, Ramp).

You can access all of this and more — including a private forum, a filterable opportunities database, virtual events, a directory of like-minded peers, etc. — by joining here.

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Co-founders / people to jam with:

• Krish was the founding designer at Ramp ($7 billion+ valuation) and an interaction designer at IDEO. Now he’s looking for a co-founder to explore building a library of agents for prosumer / collaborative use cases. You can reach out here: krishangswami@gmail.com.

• Jingwei was a staff software engineer and tech lead at Lyft, Cash App, Twitter, and Google. She’s working on a new workplace observability platform and is looking for a co-founder. You can reach out here: jingwei@withpanorama.com.

• Olga spent the last 10+ years as a senior agent for high-fashion models in Paris. She’s exploring co-founding a project in the creator/fashion/hospitality industry. You can learn more here and reach out here: hello@olgabrnv.com.

• Derrick previously was the technical co-founder of the The League. He then led product at Branch Metrics ($4b valuation). He’s looking to collaborate with people who are interested in b2b SaaS, have thought about distribution/GTM, and are ideally based in NYC. You can reach out here: statenderrick@gmail.com.

• Sisun has been a CPO, founder (More Labs (Series B, profitable, 8-fig ARR, CPG brand), and Ramper (acquired)), and PM at FB, Uber, and Tesla. He’s looking for co-founders to jam on ideas/build projects with. You can reach out here: i@sisun.co.

Early teams:

• Jordan previously started and sold a company to Figma. Now he’s building Mainframe, where their mission is to revolutionize the way people interact with their computers. They just announced a $6.75m fundraise from leaders at Notion, Vercel, Stripe, and OpenAI. They are hiring go-to-market people and engineers. You can learn more and apply here.

• Customuse is an ai-powered 3d design platform that millions of creators and businesses use to create content for Roblox, TikTok, Minecraft, and more. They just raised a seed round and are hiring a head of growth (amongst other roles). You can reach out here: hugo@origins.fund.

• Jacob previously started and sold a company to Robinhood. Now he’s building a new “consumer agentic AI company” and hiring for the founding team (especially engineers). He’s bringing the early team to the Swiss Alps in January and looking for people to join. You can learn more and reach out here.

• Ethan from Govsignals is building an ai platform to automate the end-to-end process of finding and bidding on government funding. They are doubling their customer base each quarter, and are hiring a founding engineer and a founding customer success lead. You can learn more here and reach out here: ethan@govsignals.ai.

• Merrill from Graphite is building an ai-powered developer productivity platform that companies like Anthropic use. They are hiring for nearly every role (marketing, product design, engineering). You can learn more and apply here.

• Jorge and two other executives from Duolingo recently announced “Outsmart” - a platform that hopes to make college-level education more affordable and accessible. They are hiring founding team members who are passionate about the mission. You can reach out here: careers@outsmartcollege.com.

• Gal from Stack is building a new way for digital-native businesses to monetize and grow. He is looking for a writer to join the team. You can learn more and apply here.

• Chad from Susa Ventures is looking for founding team members (especially engineers) for a new stealth consumer company at the intersection of gaming, social, streaming, and betting. You can learn more and reach out here.

• Juna builds AI agents to help factories run more autonomously. They recently raised a seed round and are hiring founding team members, especially engineers. You can learn more and apply here.

Scaling startups:

• Will from Exa is trying to build Google2.0. You can see the product here. They just raised a $17M Series A, and are now hiring across the board (design, tech lead, recruiting, sales engineering, etc.). You can reach out here: will@exa.ai.

• Andrew from Ascend is building financial automation for the insurance industry. They’ve raised nearly $40m. They are hiring for nearly every role (account exec, product operations, and especially software engineering). You can learn more and apply here.

• Ethan from Motion is hiring engineering managers who want to lead product teams. Motion is building an AI project manager that helps eliminate busy work. You can learn more here and reach out here: ethan@usemotion.com.

• Jorn from Framer is building a website creator for professionals. They are looking for a creative generalist to help run their London Studio, an initiative that connects the best Framer designers with brands to build websites. You can learn more here and reach out here: hr+recruitment@framer.com.

• Fred previously founded Coinbase. Now he’s working on Nudge, where they are trying to build non-invasive ultrasound technology that can treat neurological and psychiatric disorders (like addiction) and eventually a mainstream consumer device. They are hiring for for nearly every role (software, operations, finance, hr, mechanical). You can learn more and apply here.

• Austin from Unify is building a “warm outbound platform.” Their co-founder was their only customer success manager until they reached $1m ARR. They are now looking for their second CSM. You can learn more and apply here.

• Chris from Hadrian is trying to build autonomous factories that help aerospace and defense companies manufacture things 10x cheaper and faster. They are hiring an account executive, as well as an engineer to work on the special projects division. You can learn more and reach out here.

• Blake from Newlimit is trying to extend human health span by inventing new medicines. They are hiring an operations specialist, an ML group leader, and more. You can reach out here.

• George from CloudTrucks is hiring a senior frontend engineer to work closely with him (the founder) on the growth engineering team. CloudTrucks is building tools to help truck driver's manage their business and earn more money. You can learn more here and reach out here: george@cloudtrucks.com.

Investing and other:

• Sanford helps run 25 Madison, a fund and incubator. They are hiring people to co-found ai-native businesses in three overlooked software markets: energy, home tech services, and niche construction businesses. You can apply to be an entrepreneur in residence by reaching out here: sanford@25madison.com.

• Scott from GTMFund is hiring an associate. Their fund is comprised of 300+ go-to-market executives from companies like OpenAI, Shopify, Rippling, etc. You can learn more and apply here.

• Khushi from A-Star shared that there is a $100m early-stage venture fund that is hiring an associate. You can learn more and reach out here.

• Iterative is an accelerator that exclusively invests in Southeast Asia. They are hiring a Senior Associate / VP. You can learn more apply here.

• The University of Michigan’s investment office is hiring an associate. You can learn more and apply here.

• AI Fund is hiring a principal investor. You can learn more and apply here.

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Note:

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