Vice president Jobs in Tampa, FL

Vice President of Sales

Lavu is building the autonomous restaurant operating system of the future. We help profitable, high-growth restaurants run seamlessly and move money effortlessly, maximizing control, eliminating fees, and increasing profitability. We unify restaurant operations and finance into one simple, easy-to-use platform so owners can run, pay, get paid, and grow.

We're transforming how restaurants operate with our mobile/cloud POS across fine dining, QSR, bars, cafes, pizzerias, and food trucks in 80+ countries. Our mission: partner with owners through knowledge, solutions, and expertise that accelerate growth while advancing the industry.

This is a zero-to-one role. There is no sales team, no playbook, no inbound pipeline, and no SDR. You are building the entire commercial motion while closing deals simultaneously.

You will source your own pipeline from trigger events: CFO, COO and VP hires at multi-unit groups, PE acquisitions of restaurant portfolios, minimum wage increases, post-audit-season budget cycles, and DOL activity. You'll run discovery, anchor value to identifiable cash exposure in the prospect's portfolio, close the audit engagement, and convert to subscription.

The buyer is the person accountable for EBITDA. You are not selling to single unit restaurant owners, ops coordinators or IT leaders. You are having a financial and operating conversation with a senior operator who needs to see the numbers before they move.

Full sales cycle, end to end. No handoffs. No support structure. This is P0 for the company, you work directly with the CEO and sit on the leadership team.

Build the outbound engine: list-building, trigger-event sourcing, Clay and Sales Navigator workflows, outreach sequences. You write your own emails.

Run sales opportunities. Close the initial contract, coordinate delivery with the CEO, present findings, convert to subscription.

Document everything. Every loss reason and every win pattern becomes the foundation of the playbook.

Feed product direction. You are closer to the market than anyone. What objections surface, what integrations unlock deals, what language converts, that signal shapes what gets built.

Hire your team. Once you have enough signal to know the profile, you recruit your own backup.

The successful candidate thinks like an operator, sells like a banker, and hunts like a recruiter. Restaurant experience is useful but not required. What is non-negotiable is the motion: self-sourced, analytical, CFO/COO buyer, middle-market deal size.

Proven hunter. Your pipeline in previous roles was primarily self-generated. You have a system: how you identify accounts, how you manufacture urgency, how you get in front of the right person without a warm intro.

You've closed middle-market deals in the $100,000 to $300,000 range. Not transactional volume. Not an 18-month enterprise motion. Real money with real urgency, closed in weeks to a few months.

You've sold something analyticaldata, intelligence, business performance software, fintech, or workforce analyticswhere the core sale is "here is what your numbers are actually telling you." You can translate findings into financial impact on a CFO's P&L.

Strong written communicator. You write your own outbound. Short, specific, makes the reader feel understood. No templates that sound like templates.

You can build without infrastructure. No RevOps, no content team, no brand awareness doing your job for you. You are comfortable being the entire commercial motion.

You've sold into restaurant groups, hospitality operators, or multi-unit food service. You know how their P&L is structured, what a labor percentage point means, and when their budget cycle runs.

You've come out of a data or intelligence software company: restaurant tech (R365, Crunchtime, MarginEdge, HotSchedules), BI platforms (Domo, Looker, Sisense), or workforce analytics (Anaplan, Planful, Visier). You understand what it means to sell insight rather than software.

You've operated in a founder-led, pre-scale environment where the pitch was never finished and the product was still being shaped while you were selling it.

You have a personal network that includes CFOs, COOs, or multi-unit operators at 10 to 200 location restaurant groups.

This is the wrong role if...

You need inbound, brand awareness, or a defined ICP and campaign engine before you can generate a meeting.

Your best sales years were working a warm territory inherited from someone else.

Your comfort zone is account management, upsell, or renewal on an installed base.

You need the product to be complete before you can sell it with conviction.

You come from a big brand where the logo did the heavy lifting.

What winning looks like:

30 Days

• Fully immersed in the product. Can run the intelligence briefing from memory and translate any data finding into dollar impact for a CFO.
• Outbound engine initialized: 300-account target list, CFO/COO contacts mapped, trigger events flagged.
• First 15 discovery conversations underway.

90 Days

• 2 signed customers.
• First read on which triggers and verticals convert fastest and why.
• Outbound sequence documented, iterated on, and repeatable.

End of Year 1

• 6 closed customers.
• Sales playbook exists: ICP definition, trigger events, discovery framework, objection responses, close sequence.
• Recommendation on the second hire: SDR, second AE, or solutions consultant.
• Personal earnings comfortably above $220,000 because quota was exceeded.

About Marty & Lavu

Marty is built by Lavu, a 15-year restaurant technology company with +$40M ARR, deep integrations across POS, payments, labor, and back-of-house systems, and relationships in over 75 countries. The data infrastructure Marty runs on is already built. The integration ecosystem already exists. The operator network is already there.

Marty is the intelligence layer on top of that infrastructure, being commercialized now for the first time. The first paid engagement is complete. The product works. The findings are real. What's missing is the person who builds the commercial function.

You will work directly with the CEO, who has 25 years in technology and an analytical and sales background. Decisions move fast. You will have real input on pricing, packaging, and go-to-market. This is not a role where you execute someone else's strategy. You are part of building it.

Lavu's headquarters is in Tampa. The CEO is Tampa-based. Tampa and the surrounding Gulf Coast market also serves as a natural proving ground: a dense, growing restaurant scene with independent operators, multi-unit groups, and hospitality-driven tourism that maps directly to Marty's ICP. Being on the ground here is a genuine advantage in the early pipeline. Tampa-based candidates are strongly preferred, with relocation possible for ideal candidates. In-person time with the CEO is expected as a regular part of the role.