Business Development Lead for Snowflake for Startups

About Snowflake

At Snowflake, we are powering the era of the agentic enterprise. To usher in this new era, we seek AI-native thinkers across every function who are energized by the opportunity to reinvent how they work.

Role Overview

The Business Development Lead for Snowflake for Startups will be a pivotal member of a small, agile, and global team. This role acts as a coordination overlay across Sales, Marketing, and Solutions Engineering (SE) teams, with the primary goal of targeting and winning workloads from top AI startups.

Key Responsibilities

• Driving Engagement and Introductions to New, High-Priority AI-Native Startups:
  • Leverage existing networks and cultivate new relationships to secure introductions to founders of AI-native startups.
  • Actively participate in industry events, conferences, and networking opportunities to identify and engage with promising startups.
  • Identify and recommend key events for sponsorship to enhance Snowflake's visibility and generate leads within the AI startup community.
  • Contribute to the creation and dissemination of valuable content, such as workshops and PR initiatives, to attract and inform AI startups about Snowflake's offerings.
• Categorizing and Maintaining a High-Priority Startup List:
  • Develop and maintain a meticulously categorized list of high-priority startups, classifying them into Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 based on strategic importance, growth potential, and alignment with Snowflake's objectives.
  • Continuously monitor the venture funding landscape and key product trends within the AI startup ecosystem to inform and refine startup prioritization.
  • Collaborate with internal teams (Sales, Marketing, Product, AI Partnerships, Venture) to ensure a unified approach to outreach and engagement with prioritized startups.
• Driving Growth and Results from Tier 1 and Tier 2 Startups:
  • Allocate time strategically, dedicating approximately 60% of efforts to Tier 1 startups, 20% to Tier 2 startups, and 20% to other high-potential opportunities.
  • Facilitate introductions between Tier 1 startup founders and Snowflake's Executive Leadership Team (ELT) to foster deeper relationships and demonstrate Snowflake's commitment.
  • Provide comprehensive go-to-market (GTM) support, leveraging Snowflake's enterprise customer base to create a prize target for AI startups' GTM efforts.
  • Support the PLG motion by promoting Cortex REST APIs to attract "off Snowflake" startups and create a path for them to move additional data and workloads onto Snowflake.
  • Work to transform relationships with Foundation Model (FM) providers from transactional sales channels into genuine product partnerships, ensuring that FM partners recognize the value of AI startups consuming tokens via Cortex.
  • Collaborate with sales and solutions engineering teams to ensure they are trained on how to effectively sell FM access and token capabilities.