INTERNAL SHARING · APR 2026
Dify North America
US Market Insights
Frontline observations, diagnosis, and strategic leverage points for the North America GTM team.
Overview
What We'll Cover Today
Part 01
Situation
What works in Asia, and why it doesn't work in the U.S.
Part 02
Diagnosis
What I observed when I was doing BD.
Part 03
Solutions
Digital, events, and partnerships. Some practical tips.
Part 01
Situation
Where Dify stands today — and why the U.S. is a different game.
01 — Global Snapshot
One Product, Two Worlds
Asia — Momentum
China: Strong open-source awareness, strong developer adoption, and solid enterprise conversion.
Japan: They don't have a strong open-source environment, but we went viral there, and enterprise adoption is high.
Overall: We've proven product-market fit in Asia. The go-to-market model is working there.
US — Gap
Awareness: We have GitHub stars and are recognized all over the world. But we still don't have strong market presence in the U.S.
Conversion: Compared with Asia, we still don't have the same level of commercial traction.
Conclusion: The U.S. needs a fundamentally different GTM approach.
Today's session: why this gap exists, and where the leverage points are — based on frontline experience.
02 — Structural Difference
Same GTM, Different Market
The reason our GTM worked in Asia is that the market conditions were different. In the U.S., those conditions don't really exist.
Why It Worked in Asia
Less competition — In many cases, Dify was the only one and the best AI platform option
Platform preference — In Asia, many enterprises prefer one unified platform instead of many separate tools
Trust transfer — Because we were founded in China and we know the market there, it's easier for us to convert our awareness into enterprise trust
Why It Doesn't Work the Same in the U.S.
Much more crowded market — Buyers have too many choices
Different buying preference — U.S. buyers usually want the best tools for each job, not one all-in-one platform
Pressure from both sides — We have some RPA competitors like n8n moving fast, while Google, AWS, and Salesforce are selling their own AI platforms
We can't simply copy the Asia GTM playbook into the U.S. We need to treat the U.S. as a new market.
Part 02
Diagnosis
What I observed on the frontline — where it breaks, and why.
03 — Frontline Observation
People Know Us, But Nobody "Knows" Us
We do get some inbound. Some potential customers have researched us, and some have even used our open-source version. But outside of that group, one sentence I hear the most:
"You guys are interesting, but how come I've never heard of you before?"
When I was doing BD, I consistently felt like there was nothing backing me up. I didn't have enough content to share with potential customers for internal circulation, I had no local case studies to reference, and searching Dify on LinkedIn returned almost nothing from third parties.
The real issue is trust. We don't have enough public content, local case studies, or third-party validation. And this shows up at every stage of the sales process.
04 — Funnel Breakdown
Where Potential Customers Drop Off
The lack of trust and market awareness doesn't just hurt at one stage — it shows up everywhere. Here's what the funnel actually looks like:
L1 · Initial Screen
~80% drop off here. Potential customers search us, but they don't find enough information to justify a meeting, so we get filtered out before we even get a chance.
L2 · Post-Meeting
~50% of the remainder stall here. The champion likes us, but they have nothing strong to show internally, no external validation, and no clear proof points to bring back to their boss.
L3 · Competitive Eval
Low close rate. We don't have enough North America case studies, enough comparison materials, or enough follow-up capacity to keep pushing the deal forward.
The bottleneck is really at the top of the funnel. Our problem is not just conversion — the funnel is too narrow because the market doesn't know us well enough yet.
05 — What the U.S. Market Requires
The Core of Enterprise Selling Is Trust
And trust comes from two sources:
1. Networking
Decision-makers know your team, VCs can speak for you, and partners can bring you into warm conversations. Relationships open doors that cold outreach never will.
2. Market Awareness
When people search for you, they can actually find credible content. Your name keeps showing up during the evaluation process. You exist in the buyer's world before the first meeting.
Right now, we're weak on both. That's the core problem — and it's also the clearest place to invest effort.
Part 03
Solutions
Three directions we can focus on, and some practical tips from my experience.
06 — Digital Marketing
Make Sure People Can Find Us and Trust Us
01
Don't treat your customers as stupid
Focus on real use cases — show how people are actually using Dify, what problems they solved, and how they got there. The reaction we want is "this is worth a conversation," not "just another vendor ad."
02
Give your champion some back-up
We already have customers with real results. Turn those into public case studies — something a champion can forward to their boss and say "look, it's already working here."
Simple test: can our champion use one link to help move the deal forward?
07 — Event Marketing
Enter the Ecosystem, Let Resources Come to You
Events are not the main battlefield — digital is. But in the Bay Area, some things only happen in person.
01
Frequency matters more than scale
The Bay Area ecosystem doesn't remember one-time visitors. Show up once, nobody notices. Show up five times, people start coming to you. At least 1–2 events per month — small is fine, consistent is everything.
02
Real things happen at these events
A partner offers to co-host your next workshop. A target account's engineer adds you on LinkedIn after a demo. A VC brings up your space at an afterparty. These moments don't come from cold outreach — they come from being in the room.
Not every event leads directly to pipeline, but many of them create future content, partnerships, and warm opportunities. These efforts reinforce each other — an event becomes a blog post, becomes a LinkedIn story, becomes a partnership conversation.
08 — Partnership Bridge
Convert China's Network into US Trust
We already have partnerships on the China side. Many of these partners also have U.S. teams — we don't need to start from zero.
01
Cloud Vendors
We already have relationships with AWS, Oracle, and Azure on the China side. Use existing marketplace and joint GTM relationships to get into their U.S. ecosystems faster — the trust is already there, it just needs to be transferred.
02
AI Infra Companies
Companies like MiniMax and Novita Cloud are right here in the Bay Area. I've already had multiple conversations with MiniMax's GM and Novita Cloud's COO — the interest is mutual, and the next step is execution. Joint events, joint solutions, co-marketing — the value is stronger when both sides show up together.
Digital and events both take time to accumulate. Partnerships may be the fastest way to create the first wave of trust-backed opportunities.
Q&A
The GTM team is not alone. I know product and fundraising are also pushing on their own tracks, so we can work as a team and solve this to make the whole organization move together.