Stealth Founders Fund startup, Special Stripe role, founding account executives

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.

Friendly reminder: You may be just one email away from changing your life 🙂 Last week, we heard about cold emails (and Slack messages) that led to unexpected conversations with hiring managers and brainstorming sessions with potential cofounders. Great emails are still somehow underrated - you got this!

Co-founders and people to jam with:

• Darshil previously was a founding engineer at two startups and interned at Shopify. He’s exploring food robotics amongst other ideas. Reach out: darshil4133@gmail.com.

• Peter previously was the founder of Prezi, which had over 100 million users. He’s working on a new company now focused on helping people build healthier relationships. He is looking for a founding-level CTO, ideally in SF. Reach out: peter.a.arvai@gmail.com.

• Ben previously spent 13 years in HNW private banking. He’s now building a new consumer-focused fintech and is looking for a co-founder, ideally someone with experience architecting AI systems. Reach out: benjamin.roble@hey.com.

• Raveesh was previously a product lead at Netflix and Linkedin. He’s exploring building an internal tooling platform designed for ML product teams. He’s looking for a collaborator, ideally someone technical. Reach out: raveeshbhalla@gmail.com.

If you want to meet someone like-minded (a cofounder, a friend, a mentor), you should check out Friends of Next Play. The Slack has grown to become something really special - a vibrant community of people sharing ideas, hosting events, and much more. You can join here.

Early teams:

• Adam from Clipbook is growing 10% month-over-month and already has 200+ customers. They are building an ai research and analysis tool for communications. After becoming profitable, they recently raised from Mark Cuban, and are hiring a founding software engineer, as well as other roles like a marketing lead and a customer success manager. Apply here. (SF, Chicago, Remote)

• Ben from Mesa is building “the world’s first living codebase - an ai powered repository that enables teams to ship faster by automating things like code reviews.” Their team has multiple former founders and they are hiring a founding design engineer and a founding product engineer. Apply here. (SF)

• Avni from Dolly Card is building an expense management platform for film & tv production. They are growing 40% MoM and are already working with production companies like Netflix, Hulu, and Sundance - and are hiring a founding software engineer. Reach out: avni@dollycard.com. (NYC, Remote)

• Thomas from Concourse is building an ai-powered marketplace to help governments find and buy technology. They are hiring a founding software engineer, as well as an operations associate. Apply here. (NYC)

• Richard from Fyxer surpassed $10m in ARR with a team smaller than 25 people. They are building an AI executive assistant and are hiring a lead GTM engineer, an office manager, and a head of talent. Apply here. (London)

• A stealth AI powered relationship management platform is hiring two founding account executives. The team is backed by Founders Fund and is looking to scale. Apply here. (NYC, Remote)

• An anonymous well-funded startup is looking for a GM/PM to own the development of an internal product that empowers their team of HNW concierges to work efficiently. Reach out to hi@nextplay.so and we’ll try to connect.

• George previously was a professional poker player and sold his startup for $118m. He’s now building a platform that helps eliminate friction in b2b payments, and is hiring founding engineers. Apply here. (NYC)

• Juliette from Muse Bio is building around stem cells derived from menstrual blood, creating an ethical alternative to traditional invasive stem cell collection methods. They've raised pre-seed and are hiring a founding stem cell scientist to lead sample processing, method development, and quality control as they scale. Reach out: muse@mycells.bio (SF)

• Maor from Base44 has reached $2m+ in ARR as just a one-person team. They are building an ai-powered software builder. They are looking for a GTM intern as well as a software engineer. Apply here. (Remote)

• Sam from Numeral is building a sales tax automation platform. They are hiring an implementation manager. Apply here. (Remote)

• Ted from Durin is building a mining company that recently raised a $3m pre-seed. They are hiring for data science, engineering, mining, and have a general application. Apply here. (LA)

• Duffel is hiring a product manager and a head of customer success. They are building an API that helps platforms sell travel (like flights and cars). Apply here. (London)

If you are hiring, send us an email: hi@nextplay.so. We would love to connect you to candidates! We are also looking to Spotlight more companies so if you are hiring and have an interesting culture, please do get in touch!

Scaling startups:

• Edley from DROOL grew to an 8-figure revenue run rate last year. They are building a VC-backed DTC platform that sells curated art and frames. They are looking for someone with a management consulting background to drive their omni-channel growth strategy. Apply here. (London)

• Anil from Meter just announced a $175 million fundraise led by General Catalyst and are hiring across the board (engineering, GTM, product operations). They are building internet infrastructure. Apply here. (SF)

• Stripe is hiring a program lead/product marketer to own “Startups.” Apply here. (SF, NYC, Toronto)

• Cameron from Nominal just raised $75 million from Sequoia and are hiring across the board: revops, product marketing, accounting, and more. They are building an automation and testing platform for industrial engineering. Apply here. (LA, Austin, NYC)

• Benji from Ashby is building an all-in-one recruiting platform. They are hiring for every department: customer success, design, marketing, and more. Apply here. (Remote)

• Joseph from Infinite Machine is building “non-cars” like modern 2-wheeled personal electric vehicles. They are hiring a sales director, an events lead, and a content creator. Apply here. (NYC)

• Adeel from Magic School is building an AI education platform that is now used by 5.5 million teachers (in just 2 years!). They are hiring a GTM and marketing analytics lead as well as many other roles. Apply here. (Remote)

• Varun from Clay is hiring for every role: GTM engineering, software engineering, product support, analytics, finance, and more. They are building a GTM data research platform that’s now used by 300,000+ teams. Apply here. (NYC)

• Matt from Pave is hiring a product marketing manager. They are building a compensation platform that’s used by 8500+ companies. Apply here. (SF, NYC)

• Linda from Common Room has raised $50m+ and is hiring a growth account manager, salespeople, and engineers. They are building a customer intelligence platform. Apply here. (Remote)

• Yin from Pulley is building a cap table management platform. They have 4500+ customers. They are hiring a VP of operations. Apply here. (Remote)

• Nik from Sydecar is building a fund admin platform. They are hiring a senior product manager and a head of people operations. Apply here. (NYC, SF, Seattle)

• Mikey from Suno has 26 open roles: partnerships, strategic finance, data science, and more. They are building an AI music platform that has raised over $125 million. Apply here. (NYC, Boston, LA)

• Meta is rumored to be building a new team focused on “building superintelligence” that’s personally led by Mark Zuckerberg and Alexandr Wang. There were also rumors that they were paying very very high salaries. You can view all of Meta’s open “AI jobs” here.

• Here’s a list we made of 41 of the fastest growing startups.

Investing and other:

• a16z is hiring a chief of staff to support a General Partner on early stage investing. Apply here. (SF)

• A stealth tier 1 vc incubation team is looking for an operator in residence to lead early incubation efforts for a new venture in the professional women’s community space. Apply here and reach out: rsachs22@gmail.com.

• Hubspot Ventures is hiring a senior associate. Apply here. (SF)

Featured resources and products:

• We recently helped launch “The GTM Engineer” - a newsletter/community of people interested in “Go to Market Engineering,” which is what we are seeing as one of the most popular emerging roles. Check it out here.

• We’re starting to feature more people from the Slack community, here are a few featured community members of the week building new products:

  • Brian (ex-Meta, ex-Personio) and Cuau (YC S17) are building Veloz. An AI-native website builder and CMS for SMBs. Think Lovable’s frontend simplicity meets WordPress-level backend power. Here’s a Loom overview they made, and you can join their waitlist here.

  • Palle is looking for early adopters in the US for his new preventive health x AI startup. If you have a family history of disease (Cancer, Heart disease, Alzheimer’s, Diabetes etc.) and want to understand your personal health risks, join the waitlist and mention Next Play to get access.

Note:

• If there’s anything we can do to help, please reach out. Whether that be finding a new role or meeting a co-founder, we would love to play a (helpful!) role in figuring out your “next play.” You can ping us in Slack or send us an email hi@nextplay.so.

• If you could wave a magic wand, what could we be doing to better assist you in your journey? Let us know!

• Please consider sharing Next Play with friends and upvoting this essay.