Founding VP of Sales — Automotive & Dealer Growth | CRO Track

Remote — United States
Tradora is building a consumer ownership intelligence and automotive data platform connecting the vehicle, consumer, and dealership throughout the ownership lifecycle.
Our dealer network is the initial distribution wedge. Axia, Tradora’s intelligence and orchestration layer, turns vehicle, ownership, service, valuation, behavioral, and financial data into actionable intelligence throughout the ownership journey.
We are looking for a Founding VP of Sales who can personally accelerate dealership distribution and ultimately build the commercial organization behind Tradora.
READ THIS FIRST
This is not a traditional VP of Sales role.
You will not inherit a large sales team, established territories, or an SDR organization.
We need an automotive sales executive who can personally open dealership doors, create opportunities, close rooftops, expand dealer groups, and build the repeatable sales engine behind themselves.
You will be expected to sell personally from Day 1.
If your strength is primarily managing salespeople or designing GTM strategy from a distance, this is probably not the right opportunity.
If you have meaningful automotive relationships, understand how dealerships make decisions, can create credible conversations with operators quickly, and still enjoy personally closing business, keep reading.
WHERE TRADORA IS TODAY
Tradora has moved beyond the concept stage. We have:
Live dealership deployments
Active consumer engagement through dealer distribution
Growing inbound dealer interest
Opportunities across franchised and independent automotive retail
Strategic relationships across automotive data, technology, finance, service, identity, communications, and mobility
A developed product and data architecture centered around Axia
A growing strategy across service retention, trade intelligence, valuation, consumer engagement, vehicle ownership data, and lifecycle monetization
The opportunity now is to turn early traction into a repeatable national dealer distribution engine.
YOUR IMMEDIATE MANDATE
The objective is straightforward: Put dealerships on Tradora.
You will personally own the commercial process from opportunity creation through activation, including:
Opening dealership and dealer-group relationships
Prospecting and developing new opportunities
Building relationships with dealer principals, owners, GMs, GSMs, fixed operations executives, and other senior decision-makers
Running discovery and product conversations
Understanding the dealership’s business problem rather than simply presenting software
Driving disciplined follow-up
Negotiating and closing commercial opportunities
Closing individual rooftops and expanding them into dealer groups
Working with the Tradora team through onboarding and activation
Maintaining an accurate pipeline
Building a repeatable dealership acquisition playbook
Establishing forecasting and sales operating discipline
Eventually recruiting and leading additional commercial talent
This is a player-coach role first and a management role second.
WHAT WE CARE ABOUT
We care more about what you have personally produced than the titles you have held.
Strong candidates should be able to tell us:
Which dealerships or dealer groups they personally opened
Which relationships they could activate today
How many rooftops they personally helped acquire or expand
What they sold and to whom
How they navigated dealership decision-making
How they converted individual rooftops into broader deployments
What revenue or commercial growth they directly influenced
We want specifics.
IDEAL BACKGROUND
You should have meaningful experience selling into the automotive retail ecosystem.
Relevant backgrounds include automotive SaaS, dealer technology, DMS/CRM, digital retail, fixed operations technology, automotive data, vehicle valuation, F&I, auto finance/fintech, dealer marketing and retention, inventory/trade technology, mobility, telematics, marketplaces, OEM programs, and other dealer-facing platforms.
An existing network of dealer principals, dealer-group executives, GMs, fixed operations leaders, and other senior automotive retail decision-makers is highly valuable.
Automotive experience matters. A strong generic enterprise SaaS background alone is not enough.
We need someone capable of creating credible dealership conversations immediately.
THE PERSON WE WANT
You are likely a strong fit if you are:
A hunter and closer
Highly accountable and relentless about follow-through
Comfortable working directly with founders
Comfortable operating without a large support organization
Entrepreneurial and commercially analytical
Able to build process without hiding behind process
Comfortable selling an evolving platform
Capable of translating dealer feedback into product and strategic intelligence
Strong enough strategically to eventually lead a broader revenue organization
Still willing to pick up the phone, travel, walk into stores, and personally win business
WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE
Success will not be measured primarily by meetings, presentations, or pipeline volume.
We care about signed dealerships, activated dealerships, productive dealerships, and dealer-group expansion.
Over time, we will also measure qualified pipeline, sales velocity, conversion, activated rooftop growth, ARR, forecast accuracy, commercial efficiency, sales-team productivity, and consumer activation through dealer distribution.
The objective is to build the distribution system that allows Tradora to scale nationally.
PATH TO CHIEF REVENUE OFFICER
This position has a genuine performance-based path to Chief Revenue Officer.
The CRO title is not automatic or tenure-based.
The executive who builds Tradora’s dealership distribution engine, demonstrates repeatable commercial economics, recruits and leads a high-performing sales organization, and proves capable of owning Tradora’s broader revenue architecture will have the opportunity to grow into that position.
As Tradora develops, the commercial organization may encompass dealer distribution, dealer-group expansion, strategic channels, partnerships, revenue operations, marketplace economics, automotive data commercialization, and additional monetization built around the ownership lifecycle.
COMPENSATION & OWNERSHIP
This position begins as an equity-based founding executive opportunity with no immediate cash salary.
We anticipate an initial equity grant of approximately 2%–3%, depending on automotive experience, dealership relationships, proven distribution ability, prior commercial performance, expected commitment, and overall fit.
Equity will be subject to vesting, definitive agreements, and required company/board approval.
ARR-BASED SALARY PROGRESSION
This is not intended to remain a zero-cash role indefinitely.
Tradora is establishing cash compensation tied to company Annual Recurring Revenue milestones. As Tradora reaches predefined ARR thresholds, the role is intended to transition into salaried executive compensation, with cash compensation increasing as the business scales.
Specific ARR milestones and salary progression will be discussed during the interview process and documented in the final compensation structure.
PERFORMANCE UPSIDE
There is also an opportunity to earn meaningful additional performance-based equity and commercial upside through exceptional execution and major milestones, including activated dealership growth, dealer-group expansion, ARR creation, development of a repeatable national sales engine, building the commercial organization, and progression toward CRO responsibilities.
For the right executive, this has the potential to become a career-defining and financially meaningful ownership opportunity — but only if we build something exceptional together.
WHY THIS OPPORTUNITY IS DIFFERENT
Tradora is not trying to build another dealership CRM, lead form, trade widget, or isolated point solution.
The long-term objective is to create an automotive ownership intelligence and data network connecting:
Consumer → Vehicle → Dealership → Service → Valuation → Financial Products → Ownership Decisions → Transactions
Dealer distribution gives Tradora access to the ownership lifecycle. The data generated throughout that lifecycle strengthens Axia, creating increasingly valuable intelligence for consumers, dealerships, and the broader automotive ecosystem.
The result has the potential to become much larger than conventional dealer software.
BEFORE APPLYING
This opportunity is probably not right for you if you require market-rate cash compensation immediately, primarily want to manage an established sales organization, lack meaningful automotive retail experience, have never personally carried and closed a meaningful sales pipeline, expect inbound leads to create your pipeline, or cannot commit meaningful time and intensity to building the function.
You should strongly consider applying if you understand dealership economics and culture, already know people who run or own dealerships, can create qualified dealer conversations immediately, have personally closed automotive technology or services into dealerships, are comfortable taking near-term cash risk for meaningful ownership, want cash compe

Work arrangement
Yes