next play opportunities 7/23

former early employee from Morning Brew, chief of staff roles, AI platform for institutional investors

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.

We’ve been running next play for nearly 6 months now. The thing that gives us the most energy is hearing when people find jobs they love (or start companies because of someone they met through the network). Our ask for today—what can we do to make next play even better? What would you like to see more of? Reply to this email with any ideas (we try to respond to every single one!). Also, if you know of any opportunities (jobs, co-founder searches), feel free to let us know and we can try to feature them.

Co-founder searches / people to jam with:

• Ignacio is a software engineer based in London who is looking to start something new. He has a couple of ongoing projects and is looking for a new friend to bounce ideas off. Was previously at Meta and Microsoft where he worked on ads and consumer apps. You can reach out nachodeh@gmail.com.

• Lisa is a former early employee from Morning Brew - looking to jam with people (especially technical people) on some ideas to create a “generational trend AI product.” You can email her here: lisagoldsman15@gmail.com.

• Drake has experience working in data science/AI (at startups like Esty). He’s also grown/sold a bike-sharing startup. He's looking for people in the AI/LLM space with ideas or technical skills to hack around on AI projects with. Also interested generally in connecting with others in AI. Reach out at drakeweissman@gmail.com.

• Current Head of Data (Series A Fintech) is looking to start something new. Has previous experience in going from 0->1 with prior startup (also Fintech), and is looking for potential cofounder to bounce ideas off and maybe start something new in the fintech space. Reach out to hi@nextplay.so to connect.

• Alex Dees is looking for a technical co-founder to help build an AI-native platform in the manufacturing space (starting with the aviation, space, and defense industries). He previously was a founding team member at a now series B company. You can reach out alex0dees@gmail.com.

• Have a friend that worked at Goldman Sachs and big tech firms. Recently launched a VC fund but now also wants to start something new. He’s looking for a CTO / product co-founder based in France or Israel. He has funds who want to invest in him - but he’s still exploring ideas across spaces. Email hi@nextplay.so if interested and we can try to connect.

• Former growth leader at a YC startup is interested in joining as a co-founder to brainstorm and validate ideas or go to market. He has 8 years of hands-on experience growing early-stage startups. In his previous role, he scaled a Gen AI developer tool to hundreds of thousands of users. Reach out to mishraabhishek.mishra1994@gmail.com if interested.

• Chaimaa is looking for co-founders (ideally based in Paris) to help build an AI product that works as the “voice of the customer.” She already has traction, and has previously started a company. You can reach out here: ch.harrak@gmail.com.

• Yuri is a former benefits tech exec and 3x Chief Human Resources Officer that is building a HR tech and services marketplace, looking for potential co-founder or new friend to jam HR tech with. You can reach out here: yuri.kruman@gmail.com.

• Nick has started and sold several companies (consumer, edtech, b2b hr saas) and is now looking for a technical co-founder (ideally in NYC Metro Area) to help build an AI assistant for parents. Currently building a MVP for launch before school year and intend to iterate & build alongside early users to find PMF. Reach out to nick@gidwani.com if you share a passion for this area.

• Ex-Meta PM is looking for a technical co-founder (NY, but open to remote US) to start something new. Previously built ML products at Meta and currently helping a product studio build & scale products for content creation. Reach out to devnabi40@gmail.com if interested.

• Alex previously sold his last company (consumer telecom). He’s now working on a company in the manufacturing/supply chain space. He has a small team from places like Palantir and Rolls Royce, and is about to go raise a round. He is hiring for all sorts of roles in the UK and will eventually open an El Segundo office. Reach out to hi@nextplay.so and we'll connect.

Early team:

• Mesa is a stealth company led by repeat founders who sold their previous startups. They are on a mission to make homeownership more affordable and rewarding. They just raised $5m from tier 1 VCs and are hiring across the board (engineering, partnerships, and more). You can learn more and apply here.

• Will, who sold his previous company to Airtable, is looking to hire an ops/CoS to help across a wide variety of work for his new startup: Gestalt. They’ll be involved in all sorts of things rnaging from recruiting to operations. Email careers@gestalt.com if you are interested.

• Audrey is the founder of Curious Cardinals, a mission-oriented edtech startup that matches middle/high school students with college mentors. They are hiring two fullstack engineers. You can contact daniel@audacious.co for more information.

• Vinay from MadMen AI is hiring a Founding AI research scientist to build an AI-powered ad agency. We recently closed a $4.9 million seed round and have a waitlist of over 100+ advertisers struggling with ad agencies. You can learn more about the role here.

• Nikhil from Vapi (YC, KP funded) is disrupting the legacy $500b call center industry. They are growing very quickly — currently looking for a founding engineer to help scale their infrastructure to support millions of current calls. You can text Nikhil at 415-906-5055.

• Sahir from Tandem is hiring an operations associate (NYC based). Their mission is to use AI to cut through the red tape between patients and medicine. The operations team works both directly with users and with engineering to inform automation. You can read some patient testimonials here. You can learn more here and email careers@withtandem.com.

• Gilad from Sequence is hiring a head of growth. Sequence is building a financial router that allows you to view all your accounts, cards, savings, and investments in one place and automate everything to do with your money. You can learn more here.

• Brandon from Biogenesis is hiring founding engineers. Biogenesis builds critical internal tooling for clinical trial operations, reducing what would be a $2B+ and 13+ year effort to a fraction of that time. This means more helpful therapies to patients, more dollars invested into research, and ultimately more lives saved. Contact brandon@mybiogenesis.com if you are interested in learning more.

• Ying from Lumosity (Seed) is building an AI platform for institutional investors. The team is searching for their a Founding Engineer (Fullstack) and their first Founding ML Engineer to join their hybrid team based in San Francisco. Contact daniel@audacious.co for more information.

Breakout startups:

• Spotlight: there's an under the radar breakout startup that's scaling quickly and are hiring for a few key roles (customer success, technical product marketing, and engineering!). They are based in SF and work everyday in the office. Email hi@nextplay.so with a blurb and we’ll connect you with the team if there’s a fit.

• Pranav from Paramark is hiring their first GTM role focused on helping customers throughout onboarding, implementation, and ongoing customer success motions. CMOs and CFOs use Paramark to understand marketing’s incremental impact, set budgets, run experiments, and forecast results accurately. Reach out here: pranav@paramark.com (based in SF).

• Yi from Axiom is hiring their first operations manager. Axiom, backed by Paradigm and Standard Crypto, wants to leverage the power of zero-knowledge proofs (ZK) to revolutionize blockchain applications. Before Axiom, Yi researched probability and machine learning as a professor at UChicago Statistics and did a math PhD at MIT. The rest of their small but strong engineering team includes alums from Coinbase, Snap, Neon, Kernel, and Google. You can learn more here.

• Siqi from Runway is hiring a technical customer experience manager. Runway is a collaborative business planning platform designed to make business intuitively understandable for everyone. You can learn more here.

• Jared from Foundry’s mission is to help orchestrate the world’s compute capacity, rendering it universally accessible and useful. They spun out of a PhD lab at Stanford about a year ago. They raised $80M to date, have customers, and revenue—and are hiring for most roles. You can apply on their website here.

• The Rounds is hiring a chief of staff for an 18-24 month tour of duty, where they’ll be a force multiplier for the CEO and help prepare for the Series C. They are building building the portal for managing everything that comes in/out of your home, i.e. your AI-powered Psychic Home Manager. You can learn more here.

• Haus is hiring a customer success manager. They are building a first of its kind decision science platform for a new digital privacy paradigm where data sharing and PII is restricted. You can learn more here.

• Function Health just raised $50+ million to help people gain better awareness of their health. They are hiring for lots of roles - you can apply here.

Other:

• Shreyas, who has built an online course taken by thousands of top product managers, is hiring for two roles:

  • A research fellow: To work as a 3-6 month fellowship, where you’ll be working 20 or so hours a week and be paid $12,000 a month. You’ll shadow Shreyas in a number of settings (public talks, corporate events/workshops, course lectures, advising/coaching sessions, etc.) to better understand his perspective on product sense, product strategy, product leadership, and making successful products. You can apply here.

  • A Head of Business Operations: To work on PM Career Management and Improving your Product Sense (and potentially on new courses in the future). Learn more here if you're interested in the art & craft of great operations and if you'd be excited to work closely with him.

• A confidential brand is hiring a social media associate. Candidates must have experience managing high-volume social media accounts with 100K+ followers. You can learn more here.

• Transform Capital is a venture fund based in Austin. They are hiring an executive business partner/personal assistant to their CEO. You can learn more and apply here.

• Erik Torenberg is hiring a chief of staff. They will help work on a range of things including Turpentine, startup investing, and a new private social network product. Email erik@turpentine.co with why you may be a great fit.

• Rajiv from Product Hunt is hiring a staff designer. You can learn more and apply here.

next play note:

• We have a next play virtual gathering tomorrow (July 24th), where we jam on building side projects and then we introduce you to people to get feedback from and generate ideas. You will have to be a “friend of next play” ($10/month) to get access (which also includes more useful things). You can join here.

• The latest next play podcast episode with Logan Kilpatrick is now live. Logan applied for a role at OpenAI, on LinkedIn, before they had even launched ChatGPT, and got the job as the first developer relations leader. He’s worked at NASA, Apple, and the Julia Language. Most recently, he left his role at OpenAI to lead product at Google AI Studio. We dive into his journey breaking into tech, becoming a thought leader in AI, and his advice for anyone getting into tech.

• Here is 5,000 words about personal finance that may be really helpful if you work in tech (for example, if you are thinking about exercising your stock options or diversifying your portfolio).

• We made 100s of 1:1 introductions in the past week or so between people in the community. People say they have really been enjoying them. We hope to increase this in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!

• Are you looking to invest in companies (either as a venture capitalist or angel investor)? Respond to this email. We have another new experiment that’s helped people find under-the-radar deals.

• Please give this post a like on Substack when you have a chance. We really appreciate it.