Kevin Paulsen
kevin@vendereadvisors.com
Mobile: 512- 705-5770
Kevin Paulsen is 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.
Juan Cabezas
Juan Cabezas is Managing Director at Vendere Advisors responsible for value creation and business sales for Main Street and lower middle market companies. He is also a Managing Director at Denary LLC, an investment banking and corporate development advisory firm.
He has a twenty-five year management and senior management career leading turnaround situations and high-growth organizations at IBM, Tivoli Systems, General Electric and three start-ups through unprecedented profitability and explosive market growth worldwide. Two of the startups resulted in acquisitions; one by Microsoft, the other by ASG.
At Denary, Juan has been an advisor for several years to a variety of industrial and technology companies on investment banking and corporate development matters including: Valued-directed growth strategy, operational excellence, rapid scaling, mergers and acquisitions, institutional funding and other strategic transactions. Prior to Denary, Juan was Senior Vice President of Corporate Development at AM Technical Solutions and the VP Marketing and Sales for Austin based software start-up (pre-A-round), nVision Software, Inc. He positioned the company as a manager of composite applications and web services and sharply grew sales, led the efforts to raise private equity funds, and finally worked to sell nVision to ASG in Naples, FL. Prior to this, he was with Zebra Imaging, Inc. an early stage company, where he was Vice President of Marketing and Sales, General Manager Commercial Division within the highly advanced holographic imaging market. Previously, Juan was the Senior Vice President of Global Marketing and Strategic Alliances for General Electric’s Global Security business, responsible for mapping out and executing growth strategies, including entry into new markets, new channels and new platforms; establishing strategic partnerships as well as setting the direction and driving M&A. His responsibilities also included leading the global marketing organization (CMO) and the technology Centers of Excellence. He grew the business to $3B through organic initiatives and M&A. Prior, he served as President of Casi-Rusco, Inc., a $60M, stand-alone GE Company and led its significant business turnaround, achieving record sales and profit under his leadership. Prior to GE, Juan was the General Manager for the Software Products Division and Vice President, Corporate Development for Reciprocal, Inc. an early stage B2B internet security company, acquired by Microsoft. Previously, Juan served as Vice President of Business Development at multi-billion dollar Tivoli Systems, a wholly owned subsidiary of IBM. During his tenure there, Juan provided leadership in technology and business acquisitions, international licensing and reseller agreements more than doubling Tivoli’s top line. Prior to that, Juan was at IBM where he served in multiple executive, operational and General Manager roles including IBM Software Group Strategy Executive, Product Development Executive, General Manager Custom Software and Enterprise Solutions, General Manager Compatibility, Design & Verification Services, and Communications Systems Business Line Executive.
Juan holds a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Northwestern University, masters’ degrees in both Industrial Engineering and Business Administration from the University of Miami. He is fluent in English and Spanish.
