Key Takeaways
- • Uplift Investors closed its inaugural fund at $670 million, reaching its hard cap approximately 16 months after the firm's March 2025 launch by three partners departing Gridiron Capital.
- • The firm's limited partner base spans institutional investors including pension funds, endowments, foundations, insurance companies, and family offices, reflecting broad institutional backing.
- • Uplift employs a proprietary 5-5-5 Framework that organizes investment strategy around business model architecture rather than industry classification, targeting five recurring business model types across five service-focused sectors.
- • The three managing partners—Will Hausberg, Doug Rosenstein, and Brad Skaf—bring a decade of collaborative investment experience from their prior roles at Gridiron Capital, with Hausberg holding the rank of senior managing director.
- • The firm's operational thesis centers on the premise that understanding recurring business models and operational efficiency drivers creates more durable value creation than industry-specific expertise alone.
Summary
Uplift Investors has successfully closed its debut fund at its $670 million hard cap, marking a decisive entry into the services-focused private equity space. The firm achieved full capitalization roughly 16 months after its formal launch in March 2025, demonstrating strong institutional demand for its differentiated investment approach. The fund's limited partners represent a diversified institutional base, including pension funds, endowments, foundations, insurance companies, and family offices—a composition that signals confidence from both return-focused and mission-driven capital sources.
The firm is led by managing partners Will Hausberg, Doug Rosenstein, and Brad Skaf, three senior investment professionals who spent a decade investing collaboratively at Gridiron Capital before establishing Uplift in Connecticut. Hausberg, who held the title of senior managing director at Gridiron, brings substantial credibility and institutional relationships to the new venture. This operational continuity—where established principals transition to found a specialized strategy with a shared track record—has become an increasingly common pattern in private equity partner formation.
Uplift's core investment thesis centers on a proprietary 5-5-5 Framework that deliberately deprioritizes traditional industry classification. Instead, the firm targets five recurring business model types: dual-sided networks, outsourced services, professional services, route-based services, and information services. These models are applied across five service-focused sectors: knowledge and talent, legal services, technical trades, financial services, and industrial services. Post-acquisition, Uplift applies operational improvements across five disciplines: organizational design and team development; sales and marketing; talent recruitment and management; technology, data, and artificial intelligence; and acquisitions and integration.
The philosophical underpinning of this framework reflects an increasingly sophisticated view in institutional private equity: that a company's operational model and revenue generation architecture often correlate more strongly with value creation than the specific industry vertical. By standardizing operating tools across different sectors where underlying business models share common characteristics, Uplift can deploy repeatable value-creation playbooks and leverage cross-portfolio insights more efficiently. This approach appeals to large institutional capital seeking both operational sophistication and scalable frameworks.
The firm is led by managing partners Will Hausberg, Doug Rosenstein, and Brad Skaf, three senior investment professionals who spent a decade investing collaboratively at Gridiron Capital before establishing Uplift in Connecticut. Hausberg, who held the title of senior managing director at Gridiron, brings substantial credibility and institutional relationships to the new venture. This operational continuity—where established principals transition to found a specialized strategy with a shared track record—has become an increasingly common pattern in private equity partner formation.
Uplift's core investment thesis centers on a proprietary 5-5-5 Framework that deliberately deprioritizes traditional industry classification. Instead, the firm targets five recurring business model types: dual-sided networks, outsourced services, professional services, route-based services, and information services. These models are applied across five service-focused sectors: knowledge and talent, legal services, technical trades, financial services, and industrial services. Post-acquisition, Uplift applies operational improvements across five disciplines: organizational design and team development; sales and marketing; talent recruitment and management; technology, data, and artificial intelligence; and acquisitions and integration.
The philosophical underpinning of this framework reflects an increasingly sophisticated view in institutional private equity: that a company's operational model and revenue generation architecture often correlate more strongly with value creation than the specific industry vertical. By standardizing operating tools across different sectors where underlying business models share common characteristics, Uplift can deploy repeatable value-creation playbooks and leverage cross-portfolio insights more efficiently. This approach appeals to large institutional capital seeking both operational sophistication and scalable frameworks.
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