One partner is a career private-equity investor. The other built, ran, and sold a company. This is who leads HarborWind, and what it means to work here.
Rocky is a career private-equity investor. Before HarborWind, he spent 14 years on the deal and governance side, most recently as Principal Investor and CFO at a Chicago-based family office. In that seat, he ran the full lifecycle of lower-middle-market acquisitions: sourcing deals, structuring capital, leading due diligence, closing, and serving as a board partner to the companies he backed. He’s the person in the room who can look at a set of financials and see both the story they’re telling and the one they’re hiding. That discipline, rigorous, skeptical, but never cynical, is what we bring to every lower-middle-market industrial we evaluate.
Sean is a founder who became an investor, and that sequence matters. He built and scaled AndPlus, a B2B software and AI firm, and sold it in 2022 to Ensono, a KKR portfolio company. He stayed on to run Ensono’s North American consulting division, learning firsthand what it looks like when private equity does its job well. He founded HarborWind to bring that same operator-first approach to the lower-middle market. He brings something to HarborWind that most investors can’t: the memory of what it feels like to hand over a business you built. That empathy isn’t soft. It is a strategic advantage in a market where founders choose their buyer. The thesis behind every acquisition we make is set out in our pillar on why we buy founder-led industrial businesses.
Two partners. No layers. That structure is the point,
and it shapes the team we are building.
Screen inbound deal flow. Research industries. Build the initial investment thesis before anyone else sees the opportunity. You are not reviewing someone else’s work. You are creating the first draft of the argument.
Build the LBO models and operating cases. Join diligence calls with management teams. Your analysis is the analysis. There is no separate team that “checks” your work and presents their own version.
Support transactions through close. Work with portfolio company teams on performance improvement, integration planning, and strategic initiatives. See the full lifecycle of a deal, from sourcing through close and value creation.
Careers at HarborWind
Most early-career roles in finance keep you at arm’s length from anything that matters. You learn the mechanics and never touch the machine. At HarborWind, you are in the machine from day one.
Every person we bring on is here because they are needed, not because an org chart says so. The team we are building is small by design. That means the analyst and the intern we hire are core contributors to live deals, real diligence, and actual investment decisions.
We are not for everyone. We are for the people who would rather be stretched and learning than comfortable and waiting.
First dedicated analyst hire. Full deal lifecycle exposure from day one: sourcing, modeling, diligence, execution, and portfolio company support. Your work product goes directly to the decision-makers. No intermediary layer.
Apply NowReal deal immersion on live targets. You’ll build models on active targets, run diligence workstreams, and contribute to sourcing strategy. Culminates in a sector thesis presentation that could shape our acquisition pipeline.
Apply NowSend your resume and a short note on what draws you to HarborWind specifically. Not private equity generally. Us.