David Allen Wind
Operator, advisor and founder in New York. Founder of DAW Partners and Millwright Logic.
About
I'm an operator first and an advisor second. Over more than thirty years I've sat in most of the seats a business has: founder, owner, executive and board advisor. I've built companies, bought them, restructured them and sold them, and launched lending products alongside founders, venture investors and the capital markets.
My work sits where finance, real estate and technology meet. These days that mostly means helping solid, established businesses use modern tools, including AI, to fix the problems that have been dragging on them for years, on the systems they already run.
What I do now
DAW Partners. Since 2016 I've advised companies through DAW Partners LLC, my strategic advisory firm. The approach is simple: take one intractable problem, fix it, and move on to the next. No year-long transformation program and no seven-figure invoice. The work covers operations, revenue, capital and transactions, fintech and lending, and regulatory matters such as licensing, agency and FHA approvals, and change of control.
Millwright Logic. When a fix needs building, Millwright Logic, a subsidiary of DAW Partners, builds it: made-to-measure software, fitted to what a company already runs, with no rip-and-replace and no data migration. Its first product, HomeBase Systems, is in production with manufactured housing community owners and operators. It takes walk-ins, rental inquiries and web leads through to signed purchase agreements and leases, with real-time reporting the whole way.
Career
I started as a fixed income securities analyst at Citicorp Investment Bank. In 1992 I founded Guaranteed Home Mortgage Company in Manhattan. At 26 I was the youngest mortgage banker ever licensed by New York State. We grew it into a national lender licensed in 27 states and the District of Columbia, with more than $1 billion in loan volume, and it was later acquired by private equity. I was also a founder and board member of the Community Home Lenders Association, now Community Home Lenders of America, a trade group for independent mortgage lenders.
Later I moved into fintech while it was being invented. I held Group VP roles at SoFi and Earnest, where I relaunched and built consumer loan products, and served as interim Director of Operations at Renew Financial. I was Chief Operating Officer of RenoFi, then co-founded Hitch, a New York fintech company offering lenders a white-label home equity platform, and served as its CEO. Over my career I've raised more than $1 billion in equity and debt.
Education
JD, New York Law School. MS in Real Estate Finance, New York University. BS in Accounting and Finance, Boston University Questrom School of Business.
Writing
I write about bespoke software: tools cut to fit how a business actually works, like a custom suit, instead of making the business bend to fit the software.
- Software That Fits Like a Custom Suit
David Allen Wind on why bespoke software cut to how a business actually runs can recover margin that off-the-shelf tools leave on the table. - Stop Bending Your Business to Fit Your Software
David Wind, founder of Millwright Logic, on finding margin in the gaps between systems and building software that fits how a company really works. - TurnKey: A Custom Fit for Manufactured Housing Sales
How David Allen Wind built TurnKey, a custom application and loan workflow for a public company manufactured housing operator. - Short Posts on Bespoke Software
Short posts by David Allen Wind on bespoke software and fitting tools to how a business runs. - What 30 Years in Mortgage Lending Taught Me About Operations Software
David Allen Wind on what three decades in mortgage banking and fintech lending taught him about the software that runs a lending operation. - Notes from X
Short notes by David Allen Wind (@davidwind) on bespoke software.
Get in touch
The best way to reach me about advisory work is through DAW Partners. You can also find me on LinkedIn, X, Crunchbase and Quora.