Meridian Ventures Raises $35M Fund to Back MBA-Deferred Founders

A $35 million fund has been raised by Meridian Ventures to support founders who have deferred their MBA education, with the goal of backing pre-seed and seed-stage companies in the United States.

Meridian Ventures was born out of a shared experience: deferred MBAs. The firm's founders, Devon Gethers and Karlton Haney, met in Harvard's MBA deferred admission program in 2020. Gethers, who grew up in poverty in Washington State and studied behavioral science and finance at the University of Utah, had previously worked in private equity and launched his own company (which he later exited). Haney, who grew up on a farm in Arkansas, raised chickens, birds, and "anything that flew," according to Gethers.

The two came together with the idea of launching a firm that backed people who had also deferred MBAs. Their thesis is going against a bit of the grain, the rhetoric you hear in Silicon Valley that MBAs don’t make good founders, Gethers said. He noted that an MBA prepares students for corporate culture, not the flexible, free-wheeling world of Silicon Valley.

To prove their thesis, Gethers and Haney went out and cold-called prospective limited partners and knocked on doors until they raised $2.5 million as a proof-of-concept fund to back 45 companies. The two headed off to Harvard Business School in summer 2023 and about a year into it, decided to try and raise their first institutional fund. The funding environment was tough, but the pair ended up raising an oversubscribed $35 million fund from LPs, including publicly traded banks, family offices, and Fortune 500 executives, Gethers said. They graduated from Harvard Business School in 2025.

This new fund will back founders building enterprise technology in the United States. Meridian is agnostic, Gethers said, noting that the firm has already invested in companies in fintech, logistics, healthcare, and of course, AI. The average check size will be $500,000 for pre-seed and $750,000 for seed, and the capital hopes 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."

The fund is expected to be a game-changer for MBA-deferred founders, who often struggle to raise capital due to their unconventional path. By backing these founders, Meridian Ventures is providing them with the resources they need to succeed and making a positive impact on the tech industry.