Vice President: Sales

Lavu Inc; Tampa (FL); On-site; USD 100,000 - 300,000; Full time

Job summary

Lavu Inc. in Tampa, FL is seeking a zero-to-one Head of Sales to build the entire commercial motion with no SDR or inbound pipeline and to close deals directly with senior restaurant operators and multi-unit groups.

You will source your own pipeline from triggered CFO/COO hires and acquisitions, run discovery, anchor value to cash exposure, and convert engagements into multi-year subscriptions. This role reports to the CEO and sits on the leadership team; in-person time in Tampa is expected.

Qualifications

• Proven hunter with self-generated pipeline.
• Experience closing middle-market deals ($100k–$300k).
• Strong written communicator able to craft outbound emails.

Responsibilities

• Own full sales cycle end-to-end with no handoffs.
• Build the outbound engine: list-building, trigger events, and sequences.
• Run opportunities, close initial contracts, and convert subscriptions.
• Document loss reasons and win patterns to inform the playbook.
• Provide market feedback to shape product direction and pricing.
• Hire backup once signals indicate need.

Job description

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.

Vice President of Sales: Marty AI

Marty AI · Powered by Lavu

Reports to

CEO

Location

Tampa, FL in office

Employment

Full-Time

Deal Size

$100,000 – $300,000 ACV

Equity

Meaningful

Stage

Zero to one. No playbook. No inbound. We have closed customers.

#1 Restaurant POS on G2

Operating in 75+ Countries

40% YoY Growth

EBITDA Doubling Every Year for 4 Years

A New Category. A Genuinely Unfillable Gap. Until Now.

Every multi-unit restaurant group runs on 10 to 15 disconnected systems. Lavu for POS. 7shifts for scheduling. MarginEdge for invoices. OpenTable for reservations. Each one has its own north star metric. None of them talk to each other. Nobody is watching the whole picture.

The result? Operators run blind. Labor creep happens shift by shift. Revenue leaks through comps, pricing gaps, and lapsed guests. Control failures compound quietly, shared logins, void patterns, managers overriding what no one is tracking. By the time it shows up on the P&L, the money is gone.

This gap has always existed. It was unfillable because no human can parse 50,000 signals per day across a restaurant portfolio and surface what matters in time to act.

Marty does.

Marty is not a reporting tool. It is operational intelligence infrastructure: a connected system that watches every location continuously, identifies where cash is leaking, and surfaces what to do about it before the shift ends.

In our first full engagement across a well-known multi-unit hospitality group, Marty connected 13 data sources over a 90 day period and identified $2.9M in hidden operational exposure: $1.24M in labor, $980K in revenue, and $680K in control and compliance risk. None of it was visible in any single system. All of it was recoverable. (usemarty.com/report)

For growing operators, Marty solves a second problem: standardization. When you go from 5 locations to 20, you lose the ability to run operations the way you did when you could be everywhere. Marty restores that visibility and control at scale. It is the operational backbone operators didn’t know they could have.

The Role

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.

What You’ll Own

• 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.

Who You Are

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.

Non-Negotiables

• 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 analytical—data, intelligence, business performance software, fintech, or workforce analytics—where 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.

Strong Advantages

• 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.