Ecosystem Lead

About Us

Venice is the world’s leading consumer AI company built on principles of privacy, free speech, and user sovereignty.

We’re building the Port City of AI, in which millions of individuals, third party apps, and AI agents gather, interact, and access sophisticated AI resources. Our mission is to make artificial intelligence approachable and useful in everyday work—bridging the gap between cutting-edge research and practical, real-world impact.

We’re a fast-moving startup where every team member is expected to make a clear impact. Our culture is rooted in curiosity, ownership, ethical principle, philosophy, and collaboration—whether we’re designing better AI workflows, supporting our growing community, or shaping the future of human-AI interaction.

Joining Venice AI means joining a team of unorthodox builders who believe in moving quickly, delivering a beautiful and highly useful consumer product, and maintaining an edge in the rapidly evolving world of agentic machine intelligence. If you’re energized by big ideas, entrepreneurial spirit, individual empowerment, and the opportunity to help shape a company from the ground up, you’ll feel right at home here.

Why We Are Hiring

We are looking for someone to own Venice’s builder and protocol surface. You will turn Venice’s API and VVV token into a flywheel of teams building on, integrating with, and extending Venice. You are the business owner of Venice’s developer ecosystem, not a developer advocate and not a generic BD hire.

What You’ll Own

• Grants and Incentives. You own Venice's capital deployment into the builder ecosystem, and the pipeline that feeds it. This is the core of the role and where most of your time goes.
• Design and run the grants and incentive program end to end, including application process, evaluation criteria, milestone-based funding, and reporting cadence.
• Source and recruit teams building on Venice and VVV through outbound to founder communities, builder events, developer circles, and crypto-native dev communities.
• Convert that pipeline: interest becomes an application, an application becomes a funded milestone, a funded milestone becomes a shipped integration.
• Evaluate and select counterparties across independent developers, existing projects with unique use cases, and applications that put Venice's capabilities to work.
• Make funding decisions and disburse capital against milestone-gated, shipped outcomes.
• Track every dollar deployed against what actually launches. Teams shipping on Venice is the core measure of success.
• Accelerator. You run Venice's accelerator program from sourcing and selection through demo day.
• Select and back a small cohort of earlier-stage teams building their entire company on Venice.
• Provide hands-on support across concentrated capital, milestone guidance, GTM and distribution, and direct access to Venice's team and partner network.
• Guide cohort teams from company formation through product launch.
• Graduate durable products into Venice's partnership ecosystem.
• Partnerships and Builder Advocacy. You land partnerships that expand what builders can do on Venice, across traditional software and crypto-native ecosystems.
• Source and close integrations, protocol collaborations (x402 payment rails, Base ecosystem), exchange relationships, and co-marketing with AI and crypto projects.
• Represent the builder internally with real weight on the company roadmap, and work with the Head of API and engineering to prioritize what unblocks integrations and deployed capital.
  

Who You Are

• Crypto-native. You understand token mechanics, grant structures, and how crypto builder communities actually form. You’ve been in the space through a full cycle.
• Has run or directly operated a grants program, ecosystem fund, or equivalent capital deployment function, not just advised on one.
• Technical enough to hold a credible conversation with a founder about API integration, model selection, and architecture. You don’t need to ship code, but you need builder respect.
• Existing network in crypto-AI, crypto builder, or developer tooling communities that you can activate on day one.
• Deal closer. You’ve negotiated and closed partnerships with real terms, not just MOUs.
  
  

Strong bonus

• Experience at a Layer 1 or Layer 2 foundation, crypto accelerator, or venture fund deploying into builder ecosystems
• Familiarity with agent payment protocols, x402, or wallet-native app models
• Existing relationships in the Base/Coinbase ecosystem
  
  

Not a fit if

• Your background is traditional B2B SaaS BD with no crypto exposure
• You’re looking for a developer advocate role (writing tutorials, doing demos). This is a business ownership role.
• You want to manage a large team. This is an IC operator role that may grow a small team later.