Meridian Ventures Launches $35M Fund for MBA-Deferred Founders
▼ Summary
– Meridian Ventures, founded by Devon Gethers and Karlton Haney, raised a $35 million fund to back pre-seed and seed-stage companies started by deferred MBA graduates.
– Gethers and Haney met in Harvard’s deferred MBA program in 2020 and launched the firm in 2023, drawing on their own backgrounds in private equity and family office investing.
– The firm’s thesis challenges the Silicon Valley belief that MBAs don’t make good founders, aiming to prove otherwise through targeted investments.
– After initially raising a $2.5 million proof-of-concept fund to back 45 companies, the founders raised an oversubscribed $35 million fund from LPs including banks and family offices.
– The new fund invests in U.S. enterprise tech, with average checks of $500,000 for pre-seed and $750,000 for seed, spanning fintech, logistics, healthcare, and AI.
Meridian Ventures wasn’t built in a boardroom , it was born from a deferred MBA experience. Now, co-founders Devon Gethers and Karlton Haney have closed a $35 million fund targeting pre-seed and seed-stage startups led by founders who share a similar path.
Gethers, 29, told TechCrunch the concept for the firm first took shape after he connected with Haney in 2020 through Harvard’s MBA deferred admission program.
Growing up in poverty in Washington State, Gethers studied behavioral science and finance at the University of Utah, moved into private equity, and later launched his own company, which he eventually exited. Haney, 28, was raised on an Arkansas farm, tending to chickens, birds, and “anything that flew,” according to Gethers. He studied industrial engineering at the University of Arkansas and worked as an investor at The Stephens Group, a family office. The two teamed up in 2023 with a shared vision: backing founders who had also deferred their MBAs.
“Our thesis runs somewhat counter to the common Silicon Valley wisdom that MBAs don’t make good founders,” Gethers said, pushing back on the idea that an MBA primes someone for corporate life rather than the agile, risk-taking culture of startups.
To test their theory, Gethers and Haney cold-called potential limited partners and pounded the pavement until they raised a $2.5 million proof-of-concept fund, which they used to back 45 companies.
They started Harvard Business School in summer 2023 and, about a year in, decided to pursue their first institutional fund. Despite a challenging fundraising climate, they secured an oversubscribed $35 million fund from LPs that include publicly traded banks, family offices, and Fortune 500 executives, Gethers noted. Both graduated from Harvard Business School in 2025.
The new fund will focus on U. S.-based enterprise technology startups. Meridian remains sector-agnostic, Gethers said, and has already invested in fintech, logistics, healthcare, and, of course, AI. Typical check sizes are $500,000 for pre-seed and $750,000 for seed rounds, with capital expected to be deployed over the next three years.
“We saw an expanding gap between ambitious founders building frontier technologies and the capital required to help carry those ambitions forward,” Gethers said. “With this $35 million fund, our goal is to seal that gap.”
(Source: TechCrunch)
