CEO Coach for Bay Area Founders

Most CEO coaches have never been a CEO.

I've built and sold four companies, including a unicorn. Now I coach founders running $5M to $50M businesses, in the Bay Area and beyond.

Walter Paulsen, CEO coach

Track Record

Four companies built. Four exits. One unicorn.

01

Blackhawk Network

Founding team

Grew the Safeway business unit from $0 to $500M in under four years. Spun out as a public company unicorn.

02

CardFact

President

Grew to seven figures at 95% margins. Clients included Shell Oil, CVS, Kohl's, Polo Ralph Lauren, and Ruth's Chris. Sold.

03

Redbox Gift Card Exchange

VP and GM

$300M+ in gift card transactions across 1,000+ kiosks. One patent. Sold to Blackhawk.

04

SkuLoop / Giiv

SVP Business Development

Acquired by Antuit.ai.

Who I work with

A few patterns I see in the founders who reach out.

The founder hitting the ceiling of what got them here

The instincts that built the company aren't the instincts that scale it. The work is figuring out which to keep and which to retire.

The CEO who needs a peer, not a cheerleader

You don't need someone to validate you. You need someone who's been in the chair and will tell you what they see.

The operator preparing for the next step

Whether it's the next round, the next hire, or the exit, the decisions get harder and lonelier from here. That's the work.

What founders say

In their own words.

"I enjoyed working with Walter from two aspects. One was nuts and bolts, bouncing ideas about our overall strategy and direction, and talking through the dynamics with individual stakeholders. Being able to talk through those really helped me dress rehearse how those conversations might go."

Working with Walter gave me the confidence to take my ideas and put them into reality, which is exactly what the executive team was looking for me to do. In a very nice way, he calls BS on your excuses. That little pushback, just asking 'why is that?' made me realize it was me blocking myself.

I'd never had a coach before and I was skeptical going in. If you're skeptical, it's worth getting over that and giving it a shot.

Ben Gruber portrait
Ben Gruber
Director of Product, AnimalBiome

"We were really early stage. I had just left my role at Google after eight years to dive into this full time, and we were trying to figure out how to scale an idea into a real business."

A lot of advisors had big picture ideas, but Walter got into the weeds and gave us practical, specific advice about customer interviews, scaling the product, and B2B sales, advice we were actually able to implement. It was integral in starting the sales motion that has now scaled into the significant company we've grown into today.

And Walter cares about you as a person, not just the business. That contributed to us being stable enough to be confident and grow the company.

Evan Fisher portrait
Evan Fisher
Co-founder & COO, Sparkit

"The company had been steady state on a referral-only basis for quite a while, and the big driving force was figuring out how to take it to the next level."

What I really need is a sounding board, someone who has been around the block, with the business chops my peers and friends don't have. Walter gives me the unvarnished, sometimes slightly uncomfortable truth. And that's what I need.

I had to change my mindset about growth and embrace it. Now we've gone from a mom and pop local company to rapid growth with a client like Waymo, and we're rebuilding into a truly national provider. Walter has certainly been a component of our success. Highly recommended.

Rama Polevka portrait
Rama Polevka
CEO, Black Mountain Dynamics

"We met Walter at a very early stage, when we were still figuring out how to move from an academic research environment into a business and investor-facing setting."

Walter helped us improve our pitch deck, sharpen how we articulated our ideas, and communicate the value of our technology to a business audience. He pushed us to move beyond claims like 'better' or 'faster' and show measurable comparisons against the state of the art. As a result, we strengthened our pitch, won a campus-scale competition, and brought funding to the team.

What stands out most about Walter is that he saves you time by being direct. That combination of honesty, clarity, and strategic questioning is very valuable, especially for early-stage founders.

MA
Majed Alharbi
Co-founder, MOFicient Solutions

How I coach

One primary engagement. Two ways to go deeper.

The Core Work

1:1 CEO Coaching (Outgrow Method)

For founders who want predictable 15 to 30% annual revenue growth through proactive customer conversations. We work on the decisions only you can make: where to focus, who to hire, what to stop doing, and how to grow without breaking what already works. I bring the operator's lens, not the textbook.

Book a call

Vistage CEO Peer Groups (Palo Alto)

A confidential monthly room of founders. Vistage members grow 2.2x faster than comparable U.S. companies their size. I chair the Palo Alto group.

Learn about the group →

Strategic Advisory (GO GROW AI)

Top-tier strategic rigor for middle-market companies, at a fraction of big-firm cost. Engagements run from focused sprints to ongoing advisory.

Talk about an engagement →
Walter Paulsen portrait

About Walter

I spent twenty-plus years building companies before I started coaching them. Founding team at Blackhawk Network. President of CardFact. VP and GM of Redbox's Gift Card Exchange. Co-founder and CEO of Alula Hydronutrients. Four companies, four exits, one unicorn, one patent.

In 2020 I started coaching full-time. In 2022 I took on a Vistage Chair role in Palo Alto. The pattern I kept seeing was the same one I'd lived: founders who had built something real and were now hitting the limits of what got them here. Most of the coaches available to them had never been in the chair. I had.

I work with founders in the Bay Area and across the country. If you're running a $5M to $50M company and the work has gotten lonelier than it should be, we should talk.

The work starts with a conversation.

Thirty minutes. No pitch. We'll talk about what you're building, where you're stuck, and whether the work is a fit.