Meridian Ventures raises $35 million to back Harvard MBA-deferred founders
Founders Devon Gethers and Karlton Haney challenge Silicon Valley norms with a thesis that MBA training equips entrepreneurs for startup leadership.
Meridian Ventures, the venture capital firm established by Devon Gethers and Karlton Haney, has closed a $35 million second fund dedicated to investing in pre-seed and seed-stage enterprise technology companies across the United States. The fund specifically targets founders who have deferred admission to MBA programs, with a particular focus on those from Harvard Business School.
The investment strategy challenges the prevailing narrative in Silicon Valley that views MBA graduates as ill-suited for the rigours of startup founding. Gethers, 29, noted that the firm’s thesis opposes the common belief that business school prepares students for corporate culture rather than the flexible environment of early-stage ventures. Instead, the partners argue that such training provides valuable skills for building frontier technologies.
Gethers and Haney met in Harvard’s MBA deferred admission program in 2020 and launched Meridian Ventures in 2023. Prior to this raise, they had successfully raised a $2.5 million proof-of-concept fund, which backed 45 companies across sectors including fintech, logistics, healthcare, and artificial intelligence. The new $35 million fund, which was oversubscribed, draws capital from limited partners including publicly traded banks, family offices, and Fortune 500 executives.
The firm plans to deploy the new capital over a three-year period, with average investment sizes set at $500,000 for pre-seed rounds and $750,000 for seed rounds. Gethers stated that the fund aims to address a perceived gap between ambitious founders building advanced technologies and the capital required to support their ambitions.
Both founders graduated from Harvard Business School in 2025. Gethers, who grew up in Washington State and studied behavioural science and finance at the University of Utah, previously worked in private equity and exited his own company. Haney, 28, grew up on a farm in Arkansas, studied industrial engineering at the University of Arkansas, and worked as an investor at The Stephens Group family office.
