Uplift Investors has closed its inaugural fund at its $670 million hard cap, roughly 16 months after three partners who had invested side by side for a decade launched the services-focused private equity firm.
Limited partners in the new fund include pension funds, endowments, foundations, insurance companies, and family offices.
Uplift invests in services companies. Rather than organizing its strategy around specific industries, Uplift focuses on how a company operates and makes money. The firm uses what it calls its 5-5-5 Framework. It targets five types of business models: dual-sided networks, outsourced services, professional services, route-based services, and information services. It applies that approach across five sectors: knowledge and talent, legal services, technical trades, financial services, and industrial services. Once acquired, Uplift supports its portfolio companies through five areas of operational improvement: organizational design and team development; sales and marketing; talent recruitment and management; technology, data, and artificial intelligence; and acquisitions and integration.
The firm’s view is that a company’s business model often has more influence on how value is created than the industry in which it operates. By focusing on recurring business models, Uplift can apply many of the same operating tools across companies in different sectors.
Uplift, led by managing partners Will Hausberg, Doug Rosenstein, and Brad Skaf, is headquartered in Darien, Connecticut. The three founded the firm in March 2025 after a decade investing side by side at Gridiron Capital, where Mr. Hausberg was a senior managing director.
“Over the past decade, we’ve learned that understanding a business model tells you more about how a company creates value than understanding an industry alone. That insight led us to reengineer the traditional private equity value creation playbook and build Uplift around a business model-centric investment philosophy,” said Messrs. Hausberg, Rosenstein, and Skaf in a released statement. “Uplift gave us the opportunity to create a purpose-built investment firm with the team, infrastructure, and processes intentionally designed around that philosophy. We are grateful for the confidence our investors have placed in us and excited to partner with exceptional management teams for years to come.”
Fund I is already at work, and its first two transactions show the firm’s 5-5-5 strategy in practice — both in legal services, yet built on different business models. In January 2026, Uplift formed Orion Legal MSO, with founding partner Dudley DeBosier Injury Lawyers, which runs the back office — marketing, billing, and administration — for personal-injury firms, a professional services model. In April 2026, it acquired IMS Legal Strategies, a network that matches expert witnesses and trial consultants to law firms, a dual-sided-network model.
Both companies operate in the legal sector, but they earn their money in very different ways, so Uplift runs each with its own operating plan rather than a single legal-sector approach — which is the whole point of its 5-5-5 method.
Uplift’s first fund lands against an unforgiving backdrop for new managers. First-time private equity funds in North America raised roughly $7.2 billion in 2025, down about 36% from the prior year’s $11.3 billion, according to PitchBook, as overall private equity fundraising fell some 14% to $398 billion. Capital has concentrated toward larger, established, and specialist managers while emerging firms without long track records struggle; funds in the $1 billion-to-$5 billion range alone absorbed roughly 41% of commitments.
Uplift cleared its hard cap on the first try, in the toughest fundraising market in years. If that’s the opening act, the partners have earned the right to a long run.
Both companies operate in the legal sector, but they earn their money in very different ways, so Uplift runs each with its own operating plan rather than a single legal-sector approach — which is the whole point of its 5-5-5 method.
