next play opportunities 9/17

chief of staff for studio, under-the-radar engineering roles, ex-early operator at Rippling/Postmates

Sep 17, 2024

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.

Exciting opportunities:

If you’re a software engineer open to interesting opportunities, consider completing this quick form. We’ll look at your profile and reach out with interesting connections to fast-growing, under-the-radar startups that we know are hiring.
Boulton & Watt is self-described as “perhaps the world's slowest startup incubator. They build one company at a time with focused execution and high success rates.” Their founding partners, Dan and Sam, are looking for a Chief of Staff (to work at both the “studio level” and also on existing companies). You can learn more here.
Hemant was previously 4th employee at Rippling and 7th engineer at Postmates. He’s based in SF and looking to help other people build AI tools faster. You can reach out here: fameoflight@gmail.com.
Anand, the founder of CB Insights, is hiring a research analyst to work directly with him on projects in “education, entrepreneurship, & data/info services.” You can learn more and apply here.

Co-founder searches:

Probably the fastest path to finding someone to work with (on a company or side project etc.) is to sign up for “friends of next play.” It’s next play’s $10/month subscription that gives you immediate access to a directory of 100+ potential collaborators, as well as virtual events and additional content. You can subscribe here.

Faizan is a second-time founder who sold his last ad-tech company (Halo) to Lyft while he was a student at Wharton and then built Lyft Media post-acquisition (fastest growing & most profitable team at Lyft). He's now launching his next ad-tech venture in the corporate perks & rewards space and is looking for a founding CTO (preferably in Chicago). His pre-seed round ($1M) is almost filled. Reach out here to learn more faizanbhatty@gmail.com.
Daniel is a two-time founder (1 exit to Turnitin, 1 YC backed startup) who recently moved to TLV and is looking to meet co-founders. He’s currently exploring the revenue operations industry. You can reach out here: danielhaven123@gmail.com.
Yolanda is looking for a technical co-founder for RealtyReach (ideally SF-based). They want to automate property marketing for the real estate industry. They’ve already onboarded four clients covering 42 properties. She previously worked at Netflix, Twitter, and Doordash. You can reach out here: yolanda@realtyreach.ai.
Jake is building an AI agent for fashion retailers (and already has several signed design partners). He’s looking for collaborators (ideally a technical co-founder) to help build for the existing demand. You can reach out here.
Julian, the CEO of On Deck, is “looking for an intern to speedrun a newsletter concept with him around unusual opportunities in tech.” You can learn more and reach out here.
Dev is looking for a technical co-founder for Sugar Wallet. He’s previously grown a project to 200,000 users, had a viral “x factor” youtube audition, and also sold bespoke suits to professional athletes in New Zealand. He’s based in London and you can reach out here.
Jack is the former head of product at Anthems (2m+ users), where he experimented with a bunch of product-led growth hacks. He’s now exploring new ideas in the consumer space and would love to jam on ideas with people. You can reach out jack@anthems.fm.

Early teams:

Molly from Marble is hiring a founding growth lead. Marble, founded by the founders of Headway, provides personalized therapy to students. You’ll be the second hire on the growth team and work on a variety of projects to build a GTM motion. You can learn more here.
Usman (former CTO of Pipe and Staff Engineer at Stripe) and Maksim (5th engineer at Coinbase, CTO of Primer) are hiring engineers and a designer for their new company “Dot Product” (they just raised a $6m seed round). They are building “ai coworkers for operations teams.” You can reach out here: maksim@dotproduct.xyz.
Dana from Eldera.ai is hiring a community manager and a fullstack engineer. Their mission is to increase human lifespan by connecting older adults with young people (to reduce loneliness and increase connection for both sides). You can reach out here: dana@eldera.ai.
Mark previously founded Braze (a $3b+ company). He’s now hiring a founding business development representative for his new company Tildei to work directly alongside him in NYC. Tildei is trying to change how companies and customers communicate with their AI-powered conversation platform. You can learn more and apply here.
Rishabh from Refuel is hiring a backend engineer. They are a seed stage startup, based in SF, looking to automate unsexy enterprise tasks using AI. You can learn more and apply here.
Leon, the founder/CEO of BetterBasket (YCW24) is hiring a founding engineer. BetterBasket is building a fully integrated solution for grocers to automate and optimize their pricing strategies. They’ve just raised $1m+. You can learn more and apply here.
Perplexity is trying to build the future of search (and they’ve raised tens of millions of dollars to scale quickly). They are hiring their first product marketer. You can learn more and apply here.
Ethan from Motion is trying to build the world’s most “intelligent project management system that can automatically coordinate thousands of tasks simultaneously across an entire organization.” They are hiring a Typescript backend engineer (remote across North America). You can learn more and apply here.
Rahul from Julius is hiring for most roles (engineering, design, operations). They are building an AI data analyst that’s been used by over 1 million people. They will pay for your relocation to SF. You can reach out here.
Rotem from Tavily is hiring software engineers, data scientists, and customer success managers. Tavily is building a search engine for LLMs — an API that allows LLMs and RAG to find results quickly. You can reach out to him here.
Roee from Hud is hiring a product manager. Hud is in stealth, but they are broadly building a platform that enables software engineers to be more productive. You can reach out here: jobs@hud.io.
UserClouds is building an infrastructure platform to make security, privacy, and compliance easy to implement. They are hiring for many roles - you can learn more about what is currently open here and apply here.

Investing:

Soona from Volt Capital NYC is hiring a Chief of Staff. Volt is a crypto-native venture fund. You can learn more here and reach out here: lea@volt.capital.
Michael and Nikita from Lightspeed are hiring an “early-career VC” to join them as they invest in AI companies building in consumer, gaming, and media. You can reach out here.
Shardul from Index Ventures NYC is hiring an investor. You’ll be partnering closely with him in an “apprentice-like manner with domain concentration.” This role will be focused on infrastructure, security & AI. You can learn more here.
Sam from Slow Ventures is hiring an associate. They are a generalist early stage investment fund. They are looking for people who’ve excelled in their careers but “are done with the career track and want to do something more interesting.” You can apply here.
The Packard Foundation is hiring an investment analyst to join their 11-person investment team that manages an $8 billion endowment. They invest across asset classes (public/private equities like venture capital, real estate, hedge funds, and more). You can learn more and apply here.

Hiring? Or know anyone hiring? Looking for a cofounder? Email us hi@nextplay.so with some context and we will try to be useful.

Note:

Next play hosts are actively setting up in person gatherings in 17 cities now (from Los Angeles to Bangalore, you can see the full list here). We're looking to add more cities — fill out this form if you would like to explore being a host (for example we’re looking for another host in Paris right now and are open to more cities around the world).
For students: if you are looking for an internship or job after you graduate, fill out our new form “next play on campus.” We’re starting to collect interesting opportunities for students and will be sharing it there. Also, if you think you’d be an interesting fit to help write a “next play for students” newsletter, email us hi@nextplay.so.
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