Founding Business Development Lead, Phota API

What you’ll do

• Build and own Phota API’s early business development motion across AI startups, creative platforms, avatar/video companies, developer platforms, and visual AI products.
• Identify the most promising verticals where identity preservation is mission-critical, including AI headshots, avatars, personalized video, marketing assets, creative tooling, and product photography.
• Source, develop, and close high-leverage design partners, platform partners, and production API customers.
• Run founder-style customer development to understand partner workflows, current technical pain points, buying dynamics, and expansion opportunities.
• Work closely with founders to shape partner strategy, ICP, pricing, packaging, launch plans, and strategic narratives.
• Help build repeatable BD assets, including partner pitches, vertical-specific narratives, demo flows, case studies, integration examples, and launch materials.

Who you are

• You have experience in business development, strategic partnerships, API/platform sales, developer platforms, AI infrastructure, cloud, creative tools, or applied AI products.
• You are strong at identifying which relationships matter and turning ambiguous market interest into concrete commercial opportunities.
• You can speak credibly with founders, product leaders, ML engineers, platform teams, and business stakeholders.
• You are technical enough to understand API workflows, model integrations, inference, evaluation, developer experience, and production constraints.
• You are commercially sharp and can distinguish high-signal customers from interesting but low-value conversations.
• You are excellent at relationship-building, follow-through, and creating momentum across multiple stakeholders.

Ideal background

• Experience in AI infrastructure, developer platforms, API sales, model platforms, cloud infrastructure, or technical partnerships.
• Experience selling to or partnering with startups, developers, product teams, or technical founders.
• Track record of turning early customer conversations into revenue, references, product direction, or ecosystem momentum.
• Bonus: experience with ecosystems like fal, Replicate, Hugging Face, Modal, RunPod, Together, Fireworks, DigitalOcean, AWS, or similar platforms.
• Bonus: experience with developer relations, product-led growth, marketplace partnerships, or founder-led sales.

Why join

• Join at the moment when Phota API is live, working, and already seeing real market pull.
• Help define a new category: the personalization layer for visual GenAI.
• Work directly with the founders on company-defining BD, partnership, and market strategy.
• Own the early BD motion before the playbook exists, from strategic partner mapping to customer development, integrations, launches, and expansion.