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Two former deferred-MBA students have closed a $35 million venture fund aimed at early-stage enterprise startups, a bet that MBAs can be effective founders — including those who deferred enrollment. The timing matters: with seed capital tighter than in past years, this pool aims to give ambitious teams larger initial checks to scale technologies in fintech, healthcare, logistics and AI.
Devon Gethers and Karlton Haney met through Harvard’s deferred MBA pathway and turned a shared experience into a focused investment thesis. Their firm, Meridian Ventures, began as a small experiment and has since expanded into a formal institutional vehicle.
From cold calls to an oversubscribed fund
The partners started by testing the idea with a $2.5 million proof-of-concept, raised largely through direct outreach to potential backers. That initial pool financed roughly 45 startups and served as evidence that their approach could work.
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Building on that track record, they launched a larger raise while attending Harvard Business School in 2023. Despite what they describe as a challenging fundraising environment, Meridian closed an oversubscribed $35 million fund supported by a mix of publicly traded banks, family offices and corporate executives. Both founders graduated in 2025.
Their personal histories are part of the story: Gethers grew up in Washington state, studied behavioral science and finance, and moved from private equity into founding and exiting a startup. Haney was raised on a farm in Arkansas, studied industrial engineering, then worked in investing at a family office. Those backgrounds shape the firm’s practical, founder-oriented approach.
What Meridian will back
- Target stage: Pre-seed and seed
- Average checks: $500,000 at pre-seed; $750,000 at seed
- Geography: United States-focused
- Sectors: Enterprise technology — fintech, logistics, healthcare, AI and other software-led verticals
- Deployment horizon: Capital expected to be invested over ~three years
The partners emphasize that Meridian is sector-agnostic within enterprise software, and they have already deployed capital across the categories above. Their thesis explicitly challenges a common Silicon Valley view that MBAs are ill-suited to founding startups, arguing instead that deferred MBA programs produce founders with both real-world experience and access to a founder community.
For entrepreneurs, the practical consequence is clearer: a new early-stage investor providing meaningful checks at the earliest stages, plus an LP base that signals institutional confidence. For the market, Meridian’s raise suggests appetite remains for targeted, thesis-driven early funds despite broader funding headwinds.
Longer term, the firm’s strategy could influence where ambitious early founders — including those who plan to attend business school later — look for pre-seed and seed capital. It also adds to a small but growing set of funds that specifically recruit founders from nontraditional pipelines.
Update: The firm also backs founders who did not defer MBA admission; the article has been revised to clarify that point.
