David Oddi

David Oddi is a co-founder and Partner of Goode Partners LLC, a New York–based private equity firm he helped establish in 2005 (alongside Joe Ferreira Jr.) to invest exclusively in the food/beverage, branded consumer products, restaurant, retail, apparel, and direct-marketing sectors. He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School.

Before founding Goode Partners, Oddi spent more than a decade at the private equity firm Saunders Karp & Megrue (SKM), which he joined in 1994 as the firm's seventh professional — roughly two years after SKM's first transaction, when the firm had deployed about $100 million of equity across four portfolio investments. He was promoted to Partner four years later. During his tenure, SKM grew to manage over $1.5 billion across three private equity funds and employed more than 30 professionals. Oddi participated in 12 platform investments and four add-on acquisitions totaling roughly $250 million of invested equity, and helped execute two IPOs, four secondary offerings, three Rule 144A sales, one strategic sale, and one turnaround — substantially all in retail, branded apparel, restaurant, and consumer products. He was also responsible for SKM's deal-origination and marketing effort, a proactive program that had the firm reviewing over 1,000 opportunities per year. Earlier in his career, Oddi worked in the Leveraged Finance Group at Salomon Brothers.

Oddi is an active board member. He currently serves on the boards of Sneaker Villa (d/b/a Villa), Silver Diner, Forman Mills, STONEFIRE Grill, and Marolina Outdoor. His former board seats include AllSaints, Capital IQ, Charlotte Russe Holding (NASDAQ: CHIC), Chuy's (NASDAQ: CHUY), The Children's Place (NASDAQ: PLCE), Dave's Killer Bread, Elephant Bar Restaurants, Incipio, Intermix, La Colombe Coffee, Lacrosse Unlimited, Luxury Optical Holdings, Ollie's Bargain Outlet, Rosa Mexicano, rue21, Skullcandy, Strike Holdings, and Tommy Bahama.

*Note on the stub data:* The provided stub labeled Oddi an "Angel Investor" focused on "Seed Round" deals. Primary sources do not support that characterization — Goode Partners is an institutional, consumer-focused private equity/growth-equity firm making multimillion-dollar platform and control investments in established companies. The profile above reflects the verified reality.

• Sector-specialist, not generalist: Goode Partners invests "exclusively" in consumer sectors — food & beverage, branded consumer products, restaurants, retail, apparel, and direct marketing. Oddi's own experience is "substantially" in retail, branded apparel, restaurant, and consumer products.
• Stage/size: Growth-equity and control investments in established, growing companies — not startups. Recent deals have included a $30M investment in Jocko Fuel and a strategic investment in Wings 'N More; historical SKM platform deals averaged in the low tens of millions of equity.
• What makes them say yes: Strong, founder-built brands with proven customer value and a runway for expansion. On Forman Mills, Oddi cited a management team that "built a great company that has a long history of providing family apparel with great style, selection, and value to its customers." On Wings 'N More, the thesis was partnering with the founder/owner to drive geographic expansion.
• Hands-on partnership: Oddi typically takes a board seat and supports operating and growth initiatives (often pairing equity with debt financing, e.g., Gladstone Capital debt alongside the Wings 'N More equity).