Meridian Ventures raises $35 million for enterprise tech startups

Meridian Ventures has closed a $35 million institutional fund to back pre-seed and seed-stage enterprise technology companies in the United States. The firm, founded by Devon Gethers and Karlton Haney, focuses on MBA-deferred founders—defined as students accepted into an MBA program who have deferred their enrollment—but also backs those who have not deferred. The co-founders met in 2020 within Harvard’s MBA deferred admission program. By 2023, the two came together with the idea of launching a venture firm. They headed off to Harvard Business School in the summer of 2023 and subsequently graduated in 2025. Prior to launching the firm, Haney worked as an investor at the family office, The Stephens Group.

The firm’s core investment thesis aims to challenge established narratives in the US tech sector, particularly those originating from Silicon Valley. “Our thesis is going against a bit of the grain, the rhetoric you hear in Silicon Valley that MBAs don’t make good founders,” said Devon Gethers, co-founder of Meridian Ventures. According to Gethers, the firm has already deployed capital into several sectors, having invested in companies in fintech, logistics, healthcare, and AI.

Before raising this institutional fund, Gethers and Haney raised and deployed a $2.5 million proof-of-concept fund to back 45 companies. With the new $35 million vehicle, the firm plans to deploy capital over the next three years. The fund’s investment strategy will focus on the following parameters:

• Pre-seed checks: The firm will target an average check size of $500,000 for pre-seed startups.
• Seed-stage checks: The firm will target an average check size of $750,000 for seed-stage startups.
• Deployment timeline: The capital is planned to be deployed over a period of three years.

The co-founders established the fund to address what they identify as a capital gap for early-stage enterprise startups in the United States. Gethers noted that the firm saw an expanding gap between ambitious founders building frontier technologies and the capital required to help carry those ambitions forward. He added that the firm’s goal with the new $35 million fund is to seal that gap.

Why it matters

Meridian Ventures is positioning itself to capture early-stage enterprise tech founders who are often overlooked by traditional Silicon Valley narratives, specifically those with MBA backgrounds.