Senior Meta engineer, Slack founder, millions in ARR

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

✨ 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.

One of the main reasons we started Next Play is because we ourselves struggled to navigate the messy journey that is figuring out what’s next. Startups themselves can be quite messy (e.g. little information, changing often)—so we wanted a solution that’d be particularly helpful in dealing with the early stages (areas like finding a small team or co-founders to work with).

We hope this email helps at least a bit with your experience, and if there’s more that we could/should be doing, feel free to send us a message: hi@nextplay.so (we respond to every email!).

---

Co-founders and people to jam with:

• Sid is a staff software engineer at Meta who previously sold a company and also writes a newsletter with 2k+ readers. He’s exploring new ideas, especially fin-tech ones, and is looking for a sales-focused cofounder. Reach out here: sidnextplay@gmail.com. (Bay Area)

• Jack Altman, previously the founder of Lattice ($3b valuation) and now investor, is looking for “a software engineer open to incubating a project/company with him.” Learn more here. (Remote)

• Jagtej previously spent 10+ years as a director at Walmart working on data science and product. He’s working on an “preventative health and advanced diagnostics platform” and is looking for a cofounder. Reach out here: jagtej.singh@gmail.com. (SF, Remote)

• An anonymous team (including one former founder with a $100m exit and a CTO who previously sold an AI startup) is looking for a third co-founder (potential CEO). They are building “meaningful products” in healthcare. Reach out to hi@nextplay.so and we’ll try to connect you.

• Looking for a cofounder or someone to brainstorm with? Email us: hi@nextplay.so. You’d also like friends of next play, where we recently added a “co-founder search” Slack channel that should be useful.

Early teams:

• Tushar from Harper is hiring growth people, account executives, and AI engineers. They are building a tech/ai-enabled commercial insurance brokerage. Since finishing YC in 2024, they’ve grown to $1.2M ARR and 600+ customers. Learn more here and reach out: founders@harperinsure.com. (SF)

• Nikhil from Craniometrix is hiring a chief of staff. They are building an all-in-one solution helping medical practices and families navigate dementia treatment. Learn more and apply here. (NYC)

• The former Chief Sales Officer of Brex, Chief Product Officer of Apollo, and CTO of Clari are building a new stealth company and are hiring founding engineers. Learn more here. (SF)

• David from Falconer is building ai-powered knowledge tools for engineers. They are hiring a founding product designer. Learn more and apply here. (Remote, SF Bay)

• Ana at Addition Wealth is building a tech-enabled financial planning platform that is accessible to everyday Americans. They are hiring a marketing associate and engineers. Reach out: joe@additionwealth.com. (NYC, Remote)

• Tom from AMT just raised $3m and reached hundreds of thousands of ARR. They have a waitlist of 200+ customers for their influencer marketing product. They are hiring founding engineers. Learn more and apply here. (SF)

• Rasheed from Aftershoot is hiring a head of content, a video marketer, and an SEO manager. They automated administrative tasks (culling and editing) for photographers. Learn more here and apply here. (Remote)

• Chris from Crustdata is hiring a founding account executive. They are building a realtime people data API. Learn more and apply here. (NYC)

• Justin from Confido is hiring a founding growth lead and salespeople. They are building financial automation tools for CPG brands. Learn more and apply here. (NYC)

• Michael from Saturn is building an automation platform for wealth managers. They are hiring a founding VP operations. Learn more and apply here. (London)

• Tom from Agave is hiring a founding account executive and an implementation project manager. They are building a construction finance platform. You’ll work directly with the CEO to grow from $xm ARR to $XXm ARR+. Learn more and apply here. (SF)

• Here’s a list we recently made of 38 fast-growing startups under 25 people.

Scaling startups:

• Ethan from Motion is building an “AI superapp for productivity (projects, task management, calendar, and more). They are hiring for sales, customer support, recruiting, and software engineering. Learn more and apply here. (Remote)

• Justin (VP Engineering) and Blair (GM) are building a new team within AI-lending platform Upstart that is focused on building a new credit product to help everyday Americans gain control over their financial lives. They are hiring backend, react-native engineers, product managers, and product marketers. Reach out here: justin.silverman@upstart.com. (Remote)

• Minna from EliseAI is hiring a chief of staff (and for dozens of other roles). They are building an ai automation platform for housing and healthcare. Learn more and apply here. (NYC)

• Runik from Vise is building an ai-powered investment manager. They have raised $125 million and are hiring for sales, operations, design, and engineering. Learn more here and reach out: talent@vise.com. (NYC)

• Ema has raised $60m+ to build an agentic AI platform. They have 38 open positions across every department: engineering, marketing, product management, and sales. Learn more and apply here. (London, Remote)

• Christopher from Granola is hiring a founding designer. They are building an AI notepad for meetings. Learn more and apply here. (London)

• Pavel from Silna is building a “care readiness platform” that automates administrative tasks like prior authorizations, benefit checks, and insurance monitoring. They just announced a $27m raise and are hiring in operations, product marketing, and customer success. Learn more and apply here. (NYC)

• Arjun from Doola is hiring for sales, tax, operations, and influencer marketing. They are building a business formation and administrative automation platform. Learn more and apply here. (Remote)

• Niko from Asimov is hiring a contract researcher to work/write for Asimov Press. Their mission is to tell “compelling stories about the science and technologies that enable a flourishing future.” Asimov is also hiring account managers, software engineers, and scientists. Learn more and apply here. (Remote, Boston)

• Natasha from Snapmagic is building an ai-copilot for electronics design. They are hiring a business operations manager, an account executive, and a customer success manager. Learn more and apply here. (SF Bay)

• Glean is hiring for every role: sales, engineering, data, customer success, as they’ve raised hundreds of millions of dollars at a $2.2 billion valuation. They are building an AI platform for “getting work done.” Learn more and apply here. (SF Bay, India)

If you are hiring, send us an email: hi@nextplay.so - we would love to connect you to candidates and promote what you’re doing.

Investing and other:

• Entrepreneur First is hiring an investment associate and a head of community. Learn more and apply here. (SF, London)

• Softbank is hiring an investment associate to focus on life sciences. Learn more and apply here. (SF Bay)

• Samsung Ventures is hiring an investment manager. Learn more and apply here. (SF Bay)

Featured resources:

• We asked people in the community (investors, founders, etc.) for their best startup ideas. Here’s the result: Request for Startups—23 ideas for what to work on.

• It’s easy to impress others: A practical guide to impressing others at work.

• We don’t sell saddles here: The founder of Slack shares his thoughts on product positioning.

• The importance of saying oops: Lessons from the collapse of Enron and why acknowledging your own mistakes can be a powerful advantage.

Note:

• If you are looking for more — more connections (like-minded peers, co-founders) and more opportunities (jobs at hot companies), you should check out Friends of Next Play. For $10/month, you get access to our private Slack group and invitations to weekly gatherings (virtual, in-person) covering topics like job-application power hours, how to negotiate, AI tool tips, and resume feedback. You can join here.

• We crowdsourced a list of 100+ companies specifically looking to hire former founders. If interested, check out the notes column to see who the best point of contact at the company is to reach out to. Let us know if we're missing a company hiring. Check out the list here.

• Thank you for reading and being a part of the community. As always, if you have any ideas or feedback or really anything at all - feel free to send us an email: hi@nextplay.so. (And if you like what we’re doing, please consider upvoting and sharing this post!)