Profile

Edison Partners provides the financial and intellectual capital that CEOs and their executive teams need to grow and scale their companies. The firm’s team brings more than 275 years of combined investing, operating and sector experience to each investment, accessible via the Edison Edge value creation platform, which is tailored to each business’ strategy, stage, and operating needs. 

Edison targets high-growth vertical SaaS, financial technology, and healthcare IT companies located outside Silicon Valley with $10 million to $30 million in revenue. Initial investments range from $10 million to $40 million and include minority, buyouts, recapitalizations, spinouts, and secondary stock purchases. Edison’s active portfolio has created aggregated market value exceeding $10 billion, and the firm manages $1.7 billion in assets.

Awards

2023 Top Growth Equity

2023 Top Women Leaders in Growth Investing, Kelly Ford

2023 Best Growth Investment Firms

2022 Top Healthcare Investors, Lenard Marcus

2022 Best Growth Investment Firms

Key People

Chris Sugden, Managing Partner

Chris joined Edison in 2002 and has been Managing Partner since 2009. A leading fintech executive and investor for over 25 years (before fintech was fintech), Chris’ investment expertise and exits span payments, capital markets and wealth management segments. His track record includes leading dozens of new investments and over 60 rounds of financing. Chris has served as board director of more than 25 portfolio companies and currently serves on the board of Dash Solutions, MoneyLion, Yieldstreet, and Zelis.

Kelly Ford, General Partner  

Kelly joined Edison in 2014 following a 20-year career operating in high-growth technology companies. She established the firm’s Edison Edge value creation platform and leads investments in enterprise software and fintech. She also leads firm operations, including investment development, value creation, portfolio management, finance and marketing. Over the last decade, Kelly has been involved in 15 financings and has served as director of 12 companies, notably Billtrust (acquired by W Cap) and Bento for Business (acquired by US Bank). Current investments include GAN Integrity, Kinetiq and Solutions by Text.

Ryan Ziegler, General Partner

Ryan joined Edison in 2003 and manages growth equity investments within supply chain & logistics, enterprise infrastructure, data management, go-to-market software, digital commerce, verticalized marketplaces, and workplace technology categories. He has sponsored and helped lead more than 50 financings and served as director and observer for 27 companies, notably NetProspex (acquired by Dun & Bradstreet) and Triplelift (acquired by Vista Equity Partners). Current investments include 120Water, 15Five, Overhaul, The Pro’s Closet and Terminus.

Gregg Michaelson, General Partner

Gregg joined Edison in 2015 and leads the firm’s healthcare technology practice. A former healthcare technology and media executive for over 25 years, Gregg specializes in data and analytics, patient engagement, and marketing technology sectors. He has been involved in 16 financings and served as director of nine companies. Current investments include Gambling.com (NASDAQ: GAMB), Health Recovery Solutions, Lokavant, PathFactory, PurpleLab, and Take Command Health.

Lenard Marcus, General Partner

Lenard joined Edison in 2005 and leads enterprise software and healthcare tech investments. He has led 10 financings, including nine new investments, and has served as a director of 11 companies, notably eSentire (acquired by Warburg Pincus). Current investments include Capital Rx, Field Effect, Sphere, Spiffy and Virtual Health.

Funds Raised

Edison Partners was founded in 1986 as a venture capital firm, before, in conjunction with a founder succession over a decade ago, evolving its strategy to growth equity under the current leadership team. What’s remained consistent for 38 years is the firm’s sector orientation and focus on companies located in North American geographies outside the major markets where traditional capital flows. The Edison team is currently 32 members strong, comprised of a mix of growth-stage experts across three industry sectors (fintech, healthcare tech, enterprise solutions) and the operating needs of companies at the growth stage.

Key Investments

120Water: Invested in 2023
Sector: Enterprise Solutions, ESG

120Water is a proven, cloud-based water management and testing system used nationally by municipalities and water professionals to manage critical water quality programs. Comprised of end-to-end, integrated software, seamless test coordination and secure data handling, the Company provides accessible, modern water quality compliance, reporting, and workflow management, empowering regulators and utilities to more effectively oversee all compliance standards while also improving public transparency.

Budderfly: Invested in 2017; exited in 2022
Sector: Enterprise Solutions

Budderfly, Inc. designs and develops energy management systems. The Company offers hardware and software solutions for measurement and management of energy consumption, creating a network of IoT devices, LED lighting, HVAC controls, variable frequency drives, refrigeration controls, and environment sensors to optimize energy usage at the point of consumption for facilities, including office buildings, retail stores, schools, recreational buildings, health-care facilities, and restaurants.

Capital Rx: Invested in 2019; partial exit in 2023
Sector: Healthcare IT

Capital Rx is a full-service Pharmacy Benefit Manager (PBM) for employers and Pharmacy Benefit Administrators servicing health plans. In addition to its PBM services, the Company offers Pharmacy Benefit Administration (PBA) services via its cloud-based claims processing platform and offers a low-fee discount prescription savings card. The Company’s product and services offerings are purpose-built to help consumers manage their medical care needs at the lowest cost possible.

Dash Solutions: Invested in 2021
Sector: Fintech

Dash Solutions (formerly Prepaid Technologies) provides a comprehensive suite of payment, incentive and workforce management solutions, which address the needs of midsize to enterprise customers. The Company’s solutions combine banking and payment integration with workflow to manage payments, fulfillment and incentives programs that enable customers to make electronic disbursements, retain and incent employees, promote products, add efficiency, and reduce risk.

Overhaul: Invested in 2020
Sector: Enterprise Solutions, Supply Chain

Overhaul is a supply chain integrity and risk management solution that provides situational awareness for Fortune 500 companies. The solution provides real-time visibility for shipment integrity to the shipper and carrier throughout the supply chain, acting as a central data hub and connected network to report on event exceptions as goods are in transit through a combination of integrated sensor devices, apps (for sites and trucks), traffic data, and connections into existing API hooks from the customer’s TMS, WMS, ELD, and ERP.

PurpleLab: Invested in 2019
Sector: Healthcare IT, Marketing Tech 

PurpleLab is a health tech company with a mission to spur value-driven innovation across the healthcare continuum. HealthNexus™, the company’s no-code analytics platform empowers life science, payers, providers, and other healthcare stakeholders to develop real-world evidence (RWE) that novel therapeutics or clinical strategies are performing and are leading to savings in lives and costs.

Recycle Track Systems: Invested in 2021
Sector: Enterprise Solutions, ESG

RTS is a technology-enabled provider of waste and recycle management services for commercial, public and private entities that delivers its services leveraging a network of partner haulers.

Solutions by Text: Invested in 2021
Sector: Fintech, Enterprise Solutions

Solutions by Text (SBT) delivers impactful conversational messaging and convenient payment solutions that are rich, real-time, and compliant. The Company is the only compliance-first provider of enterprise texting and text-to-pay solutions in the market. Consumer finance organizations, including leading brands in auto finance, banking and lending, trust SBT to ensure convenient, effective, and compliant relationships with their millions of consumers.

TripleLift: Invested in 2015; partial exit in 2021
Sector: Enterprise Solutions, Advertising

TripleLift is the advertising technology company reinventing ad placement at the intersection of creative, media and data. The Company’s marketplace serves the world’s leading brands, publishers, streaming companies and demand-side platforms, executing over one trillion ad transactions every month. Customers choose TripleLift because its offerings—native to online video to connected television—are innovations that insert brands into content in real-time supported by experts dedicated to maximizing partner performance.

Yieldstreet: Invested in 2019
Sector: Fintech

Yieldstreet believes that private market alternatives should be a fundamental part of any investment portfolio. The Company empowers investors to grow their wealth by curating private market alternatives from some of the top investment managers, all on one easy-to-use platform. Yieldstreet provides access to a broad range of private market options across several asset classes, including Real Estate, Supply Chain, Aviation, Venture Capital/Growth Equity, Private Credit, and Art Finance.

Zelis Healthcare: Invested in 2016
Sector: Healthcare IT / Fintech

Zelis Healthcare Inc. is the leading provider of integrated healthcare cost management and payment solutions. The Company’s solutions include remittance solutions, network management, and analytical services for medical, dental, and workers compensation claims. 

Capital Responsibility

Not only are compliance and regtech key investment themes for the firm’s fintech practice, but Edison Partners is highly committed to strong and repeatable governance disciplines, spanning board mandates, composition, governance, audit and compensation, and reporting. These practices are guided by our Governance Center of Excellence, as part of the Edison Edge value creation platform. Further, the Edison team is a strong believer that high-performing organizations require diverse backgrounds and perspectives, and as such, have set measurable diversity goals for our boards and management teams in this regard.

We have exceeded our goal to invest $30-50M (Edison X) in underserved tech CEO populations with three investments led by women founder/CEOs. Sphere Technologies is a leading security software and services company in the fast-growing identity management space, led by Rita Gurevich. Slingshot Aerospace is one of the most exciting companies in space technology, founded by former NASA astronaut, Melanie Stricklan. Recent investment 120Water (mentioned above) is led by Megan Glover. Since 2021, the firm has also significantly improved gender diversity of Edison boards of directors—from 32% of boards being gender diverse to now 79%. And 90% of Edison boards are gender and/or ethnically diverse. Portfolio company management diversity has also improved—from 72% to 95%.

Finally, Edison Partners is led by seven partners, three of which are women or African American. As well, the firm’s management company is nearly 40% owned by female or African American partners.

CEO Reviews

Twice per year, Edison Partners captures a pure Net Promoter Score (NPS) across its portfolio executive community at the C-suite and VP level as a measure of satisfaction and likelihood to recommend. 2023’s fourth quarter survey was issued to more than 250 portfolio company executives and resulted in a score of 75.

Al Subbloie, Budderfly CEO

“Edison creates the environment for entrepreneurs and management to succeed. Your partnership approach has always felt genuine. I never felt that you would or could win without me and my team winning, too.”

David Baxter, Solutions By Text CEO

“Stepping into a founder and family led business with Edison’s majority recap, I was faced with a myriad of known and unknown challenges and opportunities. Edison’s team of experts and Edge platform immediately became a natural extension of ours and gave me both the guidance and confidence to make swift decisions that have transformed our culture, team, business model and go-to-market. As a direct result, we doubled revenue growth inside 12 months of investment, and we’re only just getting started.”

Misha Govshteyn, Macrofab CEO

“The Edge team just gets it. We’ve worked together to construct what the next level of scale looks like and what kind of team we need. They have been invaluable support as we continue to grow the business.”

John LaMancuso, K1X CEO

“We needed a lot of help in specialization and different functional areas. Edison Edge has been over the top in terms of support and ideation. They’ve experienced the problems before. They offer different options and pathways for your team to pursue. They don’t tell you what to do. It has been an outstanding experience.”

Barry Conlon, Overhaul CEO

“Edison is what we used to call in the military a ‘force multiplier’.”