Meridian Ventures Raises $35M Fund Betting on MBA-Deferred Founders
Two founders who deferred their MBAs to chase bigger ideas are now writing checks for others doing the same. Meridian Ventures, co-founded by Devon Gethers and Karlton Haney, announced Friday the close of a $35 million second fund dedicated to backing pre-seed and seed-stage startups led by founders with deferred MBA admissions.
The Meridian Ventures MBA-deferred founders fund is a direct pushback against a long-standing Silicon Valley belief that MBAs produce corporate thinkers, not great founders. Gethers and Haney are betting that thesis is wrong, and they have the receipts to prove it. Before this institutional raise, the pair cold-called investors and knocked on doors to pull together a $2.5 million proof-of-concept fund, which they used to back 45 companies.
From Farms and Poverty to Harvard -Then Venture
Gethers, 29, grew up in poverty in Washington State and studied behavioral science and finance at the University of Utah before moving into private equity and later founding and exiting his own company. Haney, 28, was raised on a farm in Arkansas and studied industrial engineering at the University of Arkansas before working as an investor at family office The Stephens Group. The two met through Harvard’s MBA deferred admission program in 2020, and by 2023 had launched Meridian together.
They enrolled at Harvard Business School in 2023, and while still students, began raising their first institutional fund graduating in 2025 with the raise already oversubscribed. LPs include publicly traded banks, family offices, and Fortune 500 executives.
The new Meridian Ventures MBA-deferred founders fund will deploy an average of $500,000 at pre-seed and $750,000 at seed stage into enterprise technology companies across fintech, logistics, healthcare, and AI over the next three years.
