next play opportunities 8/6

ex-Stripe, Substack chat, former Palantir team

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.

Based on feedback, we’ve just updated “friends of next play” to include many new benefits.

• Chat: Private forum where you can meet and learn from like-minded people.

• Explore: Airtable database that lets you easily sift through 100s of curated job and co-founder opportunities by filters like location and role.

• Virtual gatherings: Upcoming live Zooms with experts on topics like secrets to negotiating startup offers and growing your LinkedIn presence.

• And many more resources to help you figure out what’s next.

You can can subscribe here ($10/month). We really appreciate your support.

Exciting opportunities:

• We have a TON of demand from really high quality startups hiring customer-facing people right now (think account executives and customer success across all seniorities/locations). One company, for example, went from $0 to $5m+ in ARR in just 18 months. Fill out this quick form to explore getting connected (we’ll contact you for your opt in with any good fits).

• Sachin is a software engineer/designer who previously founded a YC company and started a creative studio that worked with A$AP Rocky. He’s open to collaborating with people who have interesting project ideas, particularly around consumer apps. You can reach out here: me@sachinkesiraju.com.

• Nourish is looking for a chief of staff to report directly to their CEO. Their mission is to help millions of people live healthier lives. Nourish is now the largest food as medicine platform in the US, and are growing quickly (having raised $44m). They are also hiring all kinds of software engineers. You can see all of their open roles here.

• Ethan from Motion is hiring senior software engineers and data scientists. Motion is aiming to build the world’s most intelligent project management system - one that can automatically coordinate 100s of tasks across many projects. Remote okay (in North American time zones). You can email ethan@usemotion.com.

Co-founder searches / people to jam with:

• Mahmoud is an ex-Stripe, ex-PayPal, ex-YC staff engineer based in the Bay, working on something new, and looking for people who are intrigued by the intersection of fintech, low-code, and LLMs. Ideally someone local. Reach out at heyfinfam@gmail.com.

• Matteo is a 3x founder whose previously bootstrapped and exited several businesses, and has previously raised money from funds like Sequoia. He’s now building an “AI voice diagnostic companion” aimed at transforming mental health care. Looking to connect with people interested in the category. You can reach out here: matteo@matteowastaken.com.

• Anthony is looking for a technical co-founder (ideally in Europe, NYC, SF) to partner on building a new AI-native platform and interface for sales and marketing teams. Think ‘Figma for GTM’. He was Previously early and founding sales hire at GitLab and Retool. Reach out: here: aogunbowale@icloud.com.

• Martyn is building Dots, a personalized approach for young professionals to reach their health goals. He’s looking to bring on an engineering-focused co-founder. The team has built a testflight and has 100 or so users. You can reach out here: martyn@getdots.io.

• Engineering team leader in a leading Fintech in it's fields, based in TLV, is looking for someone(potential co-founder) to bounce around ideas with they can be anywhere. If interested, reach out to hi@nextplay.so and we’ll try to connect.

• Daniel is looking for a technical cofounder based in London as he’s thinking about building technology to streamline the supply chain industry (using AI agents). He’s a former VC turned operator who spent the last four years growing Sedna from 30 employees all the way to Series C where he became COO and helped raised over $90m. You can reach out here: dan@dljbailey.com.

• Alexander is an ex-Grammarly designer, who has designed and developed multiple consumer apps and concepts for work interfaces and social networks. He’s looking for hands-on marketing co-founder, who can help create a vibrant launches, choose angles for promotion, get first 100-1000 customers. Reach out avilinskyy+nextplay@gmail.com.

Early teams:

• Levi from CRABI is hiring a mechanical engineer to help design a marine robot to clean and inspect ships, even while in transit. They’ve recently spun out of a lab at MIT and raised some funding. They are seeing lots of demand from the market and are now looking for someone to help accelerate development speed. Reach out: lgershon@crabi-robotics.com.

• Shaun from Archetype is looking for a front-end engineer and/or a designer who codes. Archetype is a team from Palantir who are now building AI-driven no-code tools, specifically aimed at helping small businesses run more efficiently. You can reach out here: build@archetype.do.

• Manmit from Turing Labs (YC-backed) is hiring a Chief of Staff. They build software to help CPG companies create products much faster. You can learn more here.

• The team from Blank wants to make AI simple, social, and fun. They’ve been building a lot of experiments and bootstrapped to 10,000+ MAUs. The team previously worked at Pinterest. Looking for people who like early stage consumer to join as founding designer and founding engineer. You can reach out here: blas@theblankapp.com.

• Shiv (ex-Meta, Two Sigma) is looking for a senior software engineer (someone who wants to move fast but not break things). They are building Ultralight Labs - a platform to help streamline product development/compliance for medical devices. You can learn more and apply here.

• Yakov is building a platform to help patients get access to breakthrough mental health treatments. They are doing this by building software to a) figure out what insurance covers and b) automate a lot of the back-office credentialing and billing for the clinics. They are hiring a Chief of Staff. You can reach out here.

• Rishi over at Hotplate wants to help more food businesses be successful. About 2/3 of brick and mortar restaurants and bakeries fail within their first year, putting these types of businesses in the same risk category as startups. They are the backbone of over 1,600 food businesses who’ve sold over $25M of food through their sites. They’re hiring for engineering roles in San Francisco.

• Julie over at Rentana is hiring their founding Customer Success Lead, ideally someone from the industry with real estate operating experience. Learn more and apply here.

• Neil, founder of Casper, is hiring a Chief of Staff for his new Series A company in the mental health space, Slingshot. Learn more here.

Breakout startups:

• Helen from Quanta is automating accounting for businesses. They’ve assembled a team from companies like Stripe and Notion, raised a seed round from top tier VCs, and have 20+ customers. They are hiring founding engineers. Reach out: helen@usequanta.com.

• Fay is building the tech that enables tens of thousands of people to improve their lives through nutrition. They have a ton of traction with revenue in the 8-figures and are growing extremely quickly. They're looking for full stack engineers and you can see all of their open roles here. You can reach out directly to Simone at simone@faynutrition.com

• Forage is a mission-driven payments company that helps merchants accept government benefits through a single, unified API. They are hiring a partner marketing lead. You can reach out here.

• Atomic Semi is building a small, fast semiconductor fab. They are primarily hiring engineers but also have a general application for people interested. You can learn more here.

• Jeff from AnswersNow recently raised $20 million to create a platform that empowers families with access to quality autism care. They are hiring a VP of Clinical Operations. You can reach out to Jeff here.

• Mark from Gynger is hiring a senior b2b marketer. Gynger just closed a $20 million Series A (alongside a $100 million debt financing round) to build an embedded financing platform for technology purchases. They help businesses and vendors access flexible payment terms. You can learn more and apply here.

• Nitricity is trying to address climate change by scaling their new technology that produces fertilizer using air, water, and renewable electricity (and reduces emmisions). They are hiring a procurement specialist. You can reach out here.

Venture:

• Tribeca Venture Partners is hiring a full-time investor to join their multi-stage venture firm in NYC. You can read more about what they are looking for here.

• Sarona Partners is hiring a US-based partner. They spun out of Alex Bouaziz’s family office (Deel founder) and are soon going to be deploying out of their second fund. They’ve invested primarily in b2b software companies like Notion, Clickhouse, and more. You can reach out here: toot@sarona-partners.com.

• Applications are open and due August 9th for the $1M South Park Commons Founder Fellowship. Founders can apply with or without an idea.

• Village Global just launched Velocity. Founders get up to $1M of investment along with access to their network, peer accountability groups, and AI resources from MSFT and OpenAI. Founders can be based anywhere.

Note:

• We’re putting together a list of discounts/perks for next play subscribers. We have Clay (CRM), Lenny’s newsletter, Notion, and more on board. Any particular tools/services/subscriptions you’d like us to add? Let us know.

• If you are working on a startup (or even just thinking about it) and would like to meet investors, check out our new experiment: “next play pitch.” Fill out this form (should take less than 5 minutes) and we'll try to share your information with a curated pool of investors who may be interested in connecting. We cannot promise they will reach out but we're hoping these sorts of connections may help you on your startup journey. Just an experiment for now so let’s see how it goes (we do already have a bunch of high quality investors contacting us looking to meet people like you!).

• As always, if you are hiring (or know great people who are), feel free to reach out: hi@nextplay.so and we’ll try to be as useful as possible.

• We are thinking about hosting an in-person co-founder matching meetup in New York City in September. It’d be the type of thing you come and get to meet lots of people very quickly. Apply here and we’ll reach out if it ends up making sense.

• You may find this essay we wrote about getting hired helpful.

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