Devon Gathers

Founding Managing Partner, Meridian Ventures · 1 appearance on the record.

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founderinvestorLinkedIn ↗meridianventures.co ↗

Devon Gethers is the co-founder and Founding Managing Partner of Meridian Ventures, a venture capital firm backing pre-seed and seed-stage software companies. Prior to Meridian, he founded and scaled the deferred MBA admissions consulting startup EarlyAdmit, which was acquired in 2023.

7statements → 3claims → 1claims resolved → 3.86/5average certainty → 1.43/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated →

1 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 2 not checkable as stated how the 3 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

3 assertions · 1 opinion · 1 insight · 2 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 3 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, and 2 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Devon argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported

Gethers: Legacy admissions consultants charged over $300 an hour

“Legacy admission consultants were charging north of 300 dollars an hour”

Devon Gathers Oct 3, 2023 ▶ 5:02 Startup Acquisition Stories with Devon Gethers, Founder of EarlyAdmit

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Devon Gathers on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

What they said7 Episodes1

Everything Devon Gathers said on Startup Acquisition Stories that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Opinion

Gethers: Admissions consulting costs directly drive demographic disparity at elite business schools

“If there's a segment of people who can afford those services then naturally the quality of their application is going to be higher than for people who just don't have access to those resources. And so again, this has a direct Correlation with the type of demog…”

Devon Gathers Oct 3, 2023 ▶ 8:07 Startup Acquisition Stories with Devon Gethers, Founder of EarlyAdmit

Insight

Gethers: Traditional M&A sales processes require around $5M in EBITDA

“But for business at the scale that I was at good luck. Kind of trying to go run a traditional sell process for that. I think typically in the business that we're in, if we were to go out to market to sell this business, this is like a business I would be doing…”

Devon Gathers Oct 3, 2023 ▶ 16:23 Startup Acquisition Stories with Devon Gethers, Founder of EarlyAdmit

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Gethers: EarlyAdmit saw 75 NDAs and 15% buyer engagement on Acquire.com

“We had, I think on, on the acquire platform, we had about 75 NDAs over the time span of four to five months or so. And we probably had about a 15% Like, I would say real engagement rate, like potential buyers who were actually interested and have conversations…”

Devon Gathers Oct 3, 2023 ▶ 18:30 Startup Acquisition Stories with Devon Gethers, Founder of EarlyAdmit

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Gethers: EarlyAdmit operated at 40% profit margins during acquisition process

“I remember days where we didn't get bites and we were like, well, you know, we're running at 40% profit margins.”

Devon Gathers Oct 3, 2023 ▶ 25:01 Startup Acquisition Stories with Devon Gethers, Founder of EarlyAdmit

Assertion Supported

Gethers: Legacy admissions consultants charged over $300 an hour

“Legacy admission consultants were charging north of 300 dollars an hour”

Devon Gathers Oct 3, 2023 ▶ 5:02 Startup Acquisition Stories with Devon Gethers, Founder of EarlyAdmit

Disclosure

Gethers: EarlyAdmit hired 75 global campus ambassadors to drive growth

“We, as a company, we went and hired about 75 campus ambassadors is what we classified them as. And these were students that we interviewed.”

Devon Gathers Oct 3, 2023 ▶ 11:51 Startup Acquisition Stories with Devon Gethers, Founder of EarlyAdmit

Disclosure

Gethers: Left Mercado Partners to focus full-time on selling EarlyAdmit

“And in fact, I actually left my investment firm to focus 100% on the sale of this business. I left Mercado Partners to go do that.”

Devon Gathers Oct 3, 2023 ▶ 24:06 Startup Acquisition Stories with Devon Gethers, Founder of EarlyAdmit

Appearances (1)

Episode	Date	Speaking time
Startup Acquisition Stories with Devon Gethers, Founder of EarlyAdmit	Oct 3, 2023	17m

Devon Gathers

The record, in short

Their most notable supported claim

How they sound: not measured why? →

Appearances (1)

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