Edwin A. Goodman

Ed’s career spans some of the formative decades of modern venture capital. He has invested across technology, healthcare, consumer businesses, and international markets, helping build investment organizations and identify companies well before their potential became broadly understood.

He began his venture career at Patricof & Company, where he managed a fund that participated in Apple Computer’s final private financing before its initial public offering. He later led the United States venture capital and investment banking activities of Hambros Bank, where the team financed companies including Staples, Corporate Software, PetSmart, and Veeco Instruments.

Ed’s work at Hambros extended beyond individual investments. He helped expand the bank’s venture platform by overseeing the creation of biomedical investment funds and a multinational venture business with funds operating in Japan, Australia, and Israel. That experience gave him an unusually broad perspective on how capital, entrepreneurship, technology, and institutional relationships develop across markets.

In 1999, Ed co-founded Milestone Venture Partners with Todd Pietri and initially served as its Managing Partner. Today, as a Co-Founder and Venture Partner at Activate, he focuses on identifying new opportunities and contributes the perspective of an investor who has seen multiple generations of companies, technologies, and venture institutions emerge.

Before entering financial services, Ed worked in his family’s business, Bergdorf Goodman, and helped his father complete its sale to Carter Hawley Hale Stores. That experience gave him an early understanding of entrepreneurship as something more personal than a financing or transaction.

Ed has also maintained a sustained commitment to education, civic participation, and institution building. He is a former Chairman of the Fashion Institute of Technology, a Trustee of the Andrew Goodman Foundation, a founding director of DonorsChoose, and a former Board Chair and Life Trustee of Choate Rosemary Hall.

Ed mentors aspiring venture capitalists through an NVCA-sponsored program and is an active angel investor. He's working to improve his Spanish and his tennis game, and makes time for his book club, yoga practice, and several philanthropic projects. He holds a BA in English Literature from Yale University and an MBA from Columbia Business School.