B2B Information · Marketing · Technology

The operator
who has been
in your seat.

Uphoff Advisory works with founders, CEOs, and investors in B2B information, marketing services, and technology, as a thinking partner who has run businesses like yours at scale.
5×
B2B CEO roles
35+
Years operating experience
3×
Successful exits led

CEOs • Founders • Investors • Executive Teams

Two ways to work together

Engagements are selective by design. The work requires genuine attention.

Strategic Advisory

A consistent thinking partner who understands the structural economics of your market, has navigated comparable decisions at scale, and can move at the speed the business requires.
  • Business transformation and market repositioning
  • Go-to-market strategy in B2B information, marketing, and technology
  • Operational scale and agentic AI adoption
  • Investor relations and capital event preparation
Explore this engagement

Because every decision has a multiple

An operator-led benchmark and diagnostic for value creation and exit readiness.

Valuation is a lagging indicator. By the time a buyer prices your business, the decisions that set the number were made years earlier. For better or worse.

The Uphoff Value Index™ puts that number in front of you while it’s still yours to change. It benchmarks what buyers are paying for B2B information, marketing and technology businesses across eight categories, built from disclosed M&A transactions, the trading multiples of public companies in each category, and private-market buyer research. It then places your business inside its range on the factors buyers price: growth and margin read together, revenue per employee against category peers, and protection against AI disruption.

Built on 35+ years of operating experience, the UVI gives founders, CEOs and leadership teams a way to line up the decisions they make today with the value they want to create, and the timeline they want to create it on.

Uphoff Value Index diagnostic report preview
Uphoff Value Index™

The UVI works on three levels:

  • The UVI Index: a quarterly read, published on Uphoff on Media, on how buyers are pricing each category and why.
  • The client tool: places your business inside its range and shows which drivers would move it.
  • The advisory engagement: a diagnostic session, a scored results report, a prioritized value creation roadmap, and an optional ongoing engagement built around quarterly re-scoring and active work on the priority gaps.

The diagnostic covers five drivers that build value over time:

Revenue QualityPredictability, recurring mix, concentration risk
Market PositionCategory ownership, moat, brand visibility
Operational LeverageProcess documentation, financial hygiene, scalability
Leadership DepthFounder dependency, organizational resilience
Exit ReadinessBuyer mapping, value narrative, relationship cultivation

Where your market calls for it, we add a custom driver specific to your business model.

Every update to the benchmarks is reviewed by the UVI Review Panel, a group of operators, investors, investment bankers and industry analysts who work across these categories.

See where your business sits. To start a UVI engagement, use the contact form below.

Uphoff Value Index™ is a trademark of Uphoff Advisory, LLC.

Twenty-five percent of the software. All of the judgment.

Most HR and client software is built to be demoed completely and used partially. Independent research puts real usage even lower than that: a median feature adoption rate of just 6.4 percent by Pendo's count, and barely half of purchased licenses ever opened according to Zylo's 2026 index. Uphoff Advisory's tools are built to be the part that actually gets used: single-purpose apps that structure one real decision, built directly by a practitioner with 35 years of operating experience and stress-tested by the Uphoff Practitioner Panel, not assembled from a platform's feature list.

Because every decision has a multiple

Shows what your business is worth today and which decisions would move it. Built from disclosed M&A transactions, public market data and private-market buyer research across eight B2B categories.

Helps leaders managing sales, or closely connected to it, hire, coach, and manage sales reps against a clear standard. Comes with a structured interview guide and a way to compare scores across a hiring team.

Helps leaders managing marketing, or closely connected to it, hire, coach, and manage marketers against a clear standard. Comes with a structured interview guide and a way to compare scores across a hiring team.

Frameworks

View All
Two-by-two matrix plotting sales win rate against net revenue retention.

The Borrowed Win Rate Quadrant

Plot win rate against net revenue retention to find out whether you are actually winning, or closing deals an AI agent will unwind later.

Two-by-two matrix sorting business functions by agent vulnerability and lock-in versus reach logic

The AI Agent Exposure Test

A four-box test for which parts of your business survive an AI Agent standing between you and your customer.

Tony Uphoff

Tony Uphoff
McAllister Top Management FellowNorthwestern University, Medill School of Journalism
Five CEO roles. Three decades. Every major disruption in B2B information, marketing, and technology, experienced from the operating seat, not the analyst chair. The career started at the peak of print at Ziff-Davis and CMP Media, and tracked every transition since: digital, platform, and now the machine age. The pattern across all of it: walking into businesses built for the last era and transforming them for the next one. Including leading the transformation of ThomasNet.com into the platform Xometry acquired for $300M. The frameworks used with clients today were built under those conditions. Not imported from a consulting textbook.

Operating Philosophy

I believe every business exists to provide value for its customers. To best deliver that value, businesses need to evolve and transform, particularly during times of technology disruption. I've led businesses through three of those shifts myself: print to digital, digital to platform, platform to machine. I made good calls and bad ones, and learned from both. In every cycle, the leaders who got hurt focused on the environment they knew and lost sight of the customer they served.

That's where my philosophy starts: A myopic focus on the customer, followed by what I call the 4 P's: (People, Product, Process, and Performance). From there, 35 years of leading businesses through multiple transformations and several exits have helped me build a series of tools, systems, frameworks, and beliefs for building, running, and growing businesses, regardless of the era or market conditions.

I believe in the power of technology to better serve customers. Not tech for tech's sake. I believe my first job as a leader is to recruit, retain, and develop the best people I can find. I believe culture eats strategy for breakfast. I believe value creation lives in the day-to-day decisions you make. Not in a report before you sell. I believe in the power of B2B Information, Marketing, and Technology.

Northwestern University — Medill School of Journalism

Named a 2020 McAllister Top Management Fellow

One of the most respected recognitions in media and business leadership, awarded for distinction in executive management.

Ziff-Davis / CMP Media / InformationWeek

Publisher — at the peak of print

At the height of the print era in B2B media — before the disruption that would define everything that followed.

UBM TechWeb

CEO — digital transformation through the 2008 financial crisis

Simultaneous disruptions: print collapse, platform shift, global recession. Led the business through all three.

ThomasNet.com

President & CEO — full platform transformation, acquired by Xometry for $300M

Repositioned a legacy industrial directory as a modern digital marketplace. Anchored in 300+ Jobs-to-Be-Done interviews. Led to an unsolicited acquisition from Xometry.

Pipeline360

CEO — carve-out, rebrand, digital demand generation platform

Built a modern Demand-as-a-Service business from a carved-out unit. Improved EBITDA margins materially, grew international revenue.

Latest thinking

An operator's perspective on B2B information, marketing, and technology businesses navigating the machine age. For executives who want to move ahead, not catch up.
Read on Substack

Let's talk
about your business.

Uphoff Advisory works with a focused number of clients at any given time. Engagements are selective by design. The questions below are designed to start a real conversation, so the first call is substantive, not introductory.
  • You're a founder, CEO, or investor in B2B information, marketing, or technology
  • You're facing a real strategic decision, not looking for a vendor
  • You want a thinking partner who has been in your seat
This replaces the usual “message” field. It helps Tony come to the first conversation prepared, not asking the questions you have already answered on a form.

Framework Library

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