evon Gethers, 29, and Karlton Haney, 28 launched their first investment fund before they’d even cracked an MBA textbook. They’d deferred their acceptance to Harvard Business School to build on an idea: that other young business school graduates might be the best entrepreneurs. It inspired them to build Meridian Ventures, an investment firm built on the idea that the most overlooked founder talent pool was coming from top MBA programs. It’s quite antithetical to thoughts from VC leaders like Peter Thiel, whose famous Thiel Fellowship awards founders who decide to drop out of college to build their startups.
“It’s kind of a contrarian take,” Haney says. “There are a lot of venture capitalists out there that think business school graduates don’t make for good founders.” So far, their MBA bet has paid off.
Today, Meridian Ventures invests solely in companies with at least one founder who has earned an MBA, or is currently pursuing one, from one of ten top programs in the U.S.—including Stanford, Harvard and Wharton. The firm has a portfolio of over 45 investments, including healthtech company Onelmaging, legal startup Hona and Cast AI, an AI agent platform. Meridian is now deploying its second $25 million fund, co-investing with top firms like Bessemer, Khosla and Bain Capital Ventures.
