Wayne Zhang
Engineer-turned-GTM operator focused on US market development, CEO-level strategy, partnerships, and business development for technical AI products.
Focus: market expansion · North America market development · technical AI GTM · strategic partnerships · internal AI transformation.
Experience
Chief of Staff — Strategy, Partnerships & Internal AI Transformation
- Produced market intelligence and strategy reports every 1–2 weeks for Dify's management team, translating North America GTM progress, developer adoption patterns, enterprise AI adoption signals, competitor moves, and partnership signals into ICP, positioning, product narrative, use-case, and partnership strategy recommendations.
- Contributed to investor relations by drafting board and existing-investor updates, mapping strategic relationship opportunities, and converting selected partnership conversations into CEO-level investor pitching opportunities.
- Led internal AI transformation using Claude Code and Codex, helping business teams build AI workflows around daily operations while creating market research and performance measurement systems.
North America Market Development & GTM Lead
- Served as Dify's first U.S.-based GTM hire, owning early North America commercial conversations and closing approximately $250K in customer revenue across ICP discovery, qualification, product education, negotiation, and account conversion.
- Helped shape U.S. SaaS GTM strategy as the business expanded to approximately $3M in U.S.-sourced ARR, including market strategy, growth experiments, customer feedback, and a positioning shift from developer-first users toward non-technical business teams.
- Mapped 50+ U.S. AI, developer tools, cloud, and startup ecosystem contacts and developed selected relationships; represented Dify at NVIDIA GTC, AWS events, and San Francisco AI / developer conferences.
Business Development Lead
- Shaped GTM and SMB growth strategy for an AI-driven video and social media marketing platform, defining positioning, channel strategy, early acquisition motion, and customer feedback loops.
- Built local partnerships and executed community-led and paid acquisition experiments across Facebook Groups, Reddit, Instagram, and LinkedIn, contributing to a 35% increase in SMB acquisition.
- Translated customer feedback into product insights, supporting A/B testing, UX refinement, and SMB marketing use-case prioritization.
Education
Selected Focus
Strategic GTM: market entry, ICP discovery, positioning, buyer narrative, product feedback loops.
Market intelligence: customer signals, competitor movement, ecosystem mapping, account research.
AI-assisted workflows: company teardown, account intelligence, outbound angles, research systems, performance measurement.
Commercial execution: partnerships, sales enablement, early customer conversations, field learning.