Meridian Capital — two term sheets in a quarter

The problem

James Okafor’s problem wasn’t deal flow — it was noise. Sixty cold decks a week landed in Meridian’s inbox, most outside thesis: wrong stage, wrong geography, or not fintech infrastructure at all. Reading them was a part-time job that produced two or three real conversations a month.

What he did on Cofounder for Startup

He set the fund’s filters once — fintech infrastructure, seed, $500k–$1.5M checks — and let the deck do the reading. Every card shows the same standardized traction fields, so comparing a Berlin payments API to a São Paulo ledger startup takes seconds, not a meeting.

He passes quietly on 90%. Nobody is told, nobody follows up twice, and no founder burns a bridge by being seen. The 10% he swipes on already fit the thesis before the first hello.

The outcome

Both term sheets Meridian issued last quarter came from founders whose verified MRR fields matched what diligence later confirmed. Median time from match to first call: eleven days. The cold-deck inbox still exists — he just no longer owes it anything.