Prior to joining XGO, Kevin Paulsen was Founder and Managing Partner at Vendere Advisors. He has extensive CEO and General Management experience driving growth in startup, mid-size and large companies. During his career, Kevin has raised more than $40M in debt and equity capital in his various positions.

Kevin co-founded and served for 10 years as the President and CEO at TechSkills LLC – a privately held, national, post-secondary institution. Kevin grew the company from startup to $47M in annual revenue. He accomplished this growth organically and through the acquisition of Edgia, a provider of online education testing, and the acquisition of Boston University Corporate Education Center from Boston University, a corporate training provider for Fortune 500 companies.

Before his involvement at TechSkills, Kevin served as Executive Vice President of Global Services for Norstan, Inc., a publicly traded technology integration and consulting company in Minneapolis, MN. While there, Kevin made several acquisitions of IT consulting firms, totaling more than $50M in revenue. This brought his Norstan Consulting unit to over $115M in revenue and 750 consultants.

Prior to this, Kevin spent 21 years at IBM, where he held a number of financial, sales and consulting positions. His career at IBM culminated in a position as Vice President of Integration Services within IBM Global Services, Chicago, a $100M organization with 500 IT consultants.

After 35 successful years in the corporate world Kevin decided to start a new chapter investing and acquiring small companies and working with small business owners to improve their business performance leading to the eventual sale of their businesses.

Kevin is a graduate of the University of Iowa with a major in Finance. He has been an Austin resident since 2000 and holds a current Texas real estate license.