Almost every day, you interact with a business where something is broken. A phone that rings but goes unanswered. A website that doesn’t convert. A sales process held together by spreadsheets and memory. It’s rarely due to lack of effort or care. Most owners are doing the best they can. The real issue is that technology and best practices have moved faster than the businesses themselves. That gap represents an enormous opportunity, not to disrupt, but to thoughtfully modernize companies that already have customers, revenue, and real-world impact.
At the same time, many of our friends began buying businesses after business school. We heard the full range of stories: the early chaos (we have how many unanswered tickets!?), the unexpected challenges (2 accidents in a single week!?), and the moments where one smart change unlocked dramatic growth. Having spent the last decade growing startups, building go-to-market motions, testing systems, and applying modern growth tactics, it became clear that these same tools could be transformative in this context.
We’ve had the opportunity to work across a wide range of industries, which reinforced how universal these challenges really are. While the details differ, the underlying patterns repeat, and the same fundamentals apply. Here are the industries we've found success in to date:
No matter the vertical, Upwind exists to accelerate growth in enduring businesses, helping new owners strengthen what works, fix what’s broken, and confidently build toward life-changing outcomes.
