About Steward Market
Steward Market exists to support ownership transitions that protect people, legacy, and long-term value.
Our Story
Steward Market was built in response to a quiet but accelerating reality.
Millions of businesses are changing hands. Trillions of dollars are moving through ownership transitions.
The outcomes of those transitions are shaping jobs, communities, and local economies for decades to come.
Too often, these decisions happen under pressure, behind closed doors, and with incentives that reward speed and extraction over continuity and care. As consolidation accelerates and ownership concentrates, the conditions under which exits happen matter more than ever.
We built Steward Market to offer a different path.
Not to stop exits. Not to moralize them. But to redesign the conditions under which they happen.
Steward Market helps founders, buyers, advisors, and capital partners navigate ownership transitions with clarity, consent, and alignment, so what gets built next is at least as strong as what came before.
We exist to make better outcomes possible, not by force, but by design.
What Ethical Exits Means
Our Mark (The Four Dots)
Our mark is simple by design. Four dots.
No hierarchy.
No single point of control.
Each dot represents a steward in the ownership ecosystem:
- Founders & sellers
- Buyers & operators
- Service providers and capital Partners
- Employees, stakeholders, and community
Individually, each role matters. Together, they shape outcomes. The space between the dots is intentional. It represents consent, timing, and trust - the things that make transitions work when they work well. Steward Market exists to protect that space.
Meet Our Founder
Hannah Sandmeyer
Hannah Sandmeyer is the founder of Steward Market and the CEO of Up & Over Advisors, a mission-driven M&A sourcing firm focused on values-aligned ownership transitions.
Her work sits at the intersection of private markets, platform design, and stewardship. She has worked inside high-volume acquisition environments, advised founders navigating exits, and partnered with buyers and investors seeking growth without erasure.
Across those experiences, one pattern became impossible to ignore. Too often, ownership transitions are treated purely as financial events. Reduced to multiples, IRR, and ROI. In reality, they are social, cultural, and economic inflection points that shape people, communities, and long-term outcomes.
Steward Market was born from that realization.
Hannah believes exits are not neutral. Who gets invited in, how deals are sourced, and what structures replace founder control determine whether value compounds or is stripped away.
Her approach is grounded, not ideological. She is pro-business, pro-liquidity, and skeptical of default systems that reward speed over stewardship.
Steward Market is her attempt to build the infrastructure she wishes had existed earlier in her career, one that treats ownership as a responsibility and creates room for better outcomes to emerge.
Our Impact Fund
Sellers can choose to opt in and contribute 1–2% of the sale price to the Steward Impact Fund. Those funds go directly to supporting the next generation of mission-driven founders and impact entrepreneurs through grants and aligned support.
It’s a simple way to reinvest a small portion of a successful transition into new businesses built for long-term value and real-world impact.
Advisors & Partners
Steward Market is shaped alongside a growing group of advisors, practitioners, and partners who believe ownership transitions can be done better.
Our advisors span:
- Legal, financial, and governance expertise
- Employee ownership and succession planning
- Impact investing and community capital
- Marketplace design and trust systems
We partner selectively and intentionally, prioritizing depth, alignment, and long-term contribution over logos or volume. If you’re interested in contributing to the ecosystem, we’d love to talk.