Harvard grads launch $35 million Meridian Ventures fund for MBA-deferred founders
Harvard grads Devon Gethers and Karlton Haney just launched a $35 million fund with Meridian Ventures to back early-stage startups run by MBA-deferred founders.
They started the firm after meeting at Harvard Business School's deferred MBA program, and their first, smaller $2.5 million proof-of-concept fund backed 45 startups.
Oversubscribed fund targets US enterprise tech
Even with fundraising being tricky lately, their new fund was oversubscribed, pulling in support from big banks, family offices, and Fortune 500 executives.
The focus is on U.S.-based enterprise tech startups (think fintech, logistics, healthcare, and AI), with stage-specific average check sizes of $500,000 for pre-seed and $750,000 for seed.
Gethers says they want to close the capital gap for frontier tech founders and believes MBAs can thrive in the startup world: "Our thesis is going against a bit of the grain, the rhetoric you hear in Silicon Valley that MBAs don't make good founders,"