Investor Profile: Pear VC

Pear VC is one of Silicon Valley's most founder-obsessed seed firms. Founded in 2013 as Pejman Mar Ventures, the Menlo Park firm was built by two immigrant company-builders to serve the earliest, hardest stage of startups. Pear partners with founders from their very first day — often before a product or even a company exists.

Thesis and origins

Pear was founded by Pejman Nozad and Mar Hershenson. Nozad, who arrived in the United States from Iran with $700 in his pocket and began investing while working as a rug dealer in Palo Alto, teamed up with Hershenson — a Stanford electrical-engineering PhD and three-time founder — to build a venture firm that puts founders first. The firm renamed itself Pear VC in 2016, a name chosen because it evoked "pairing up" — how Pear sees its role alongside every team it backs. Pear is a generalist at pre-seed and seed with specialist operators embedded in the team — today a team of 20+ company builders and industry experts.

Sectors and stages

Pear invests exclusively at pre-seed and seed, across enterprise, consumer, AI, and healthcare. Its recent conviction is heaviest in AI — the firm explicitly made artificial intelligence a target area for its latest fund, and launched PearX for AI, a dedicated track for AI builders with hacker space, cloud credits, and 1:1 coaching from AI experts at the firm and at Google Cloud. The firm's sourcing engine is student-heavy: roughly 50% of Pear's portfolio companies are student-founded, representing around $15 billion in total valuation, including Branch, Aurora Solar, Affinity, Viz.ai, and Bioage.

Fund size

Pear's most recently announced vehicle is Fund IV, which closed in May 2023 at $432 million, oversubscribed — one of the largest dedicated seed funds raised in recent years by a non-multi-stage firm, per coverage at the time. Its third fund, raised in 2019, was $160 million. Pear has not published an aggregate assets-under-management figure beyond its announced funds.

Notable portfolio

Pear seeded three public companies — DoorDash, Guardant Health, and Senti Bio — and counts several $1B+ outcomes among its seed bets, including Gusto, Branch, Aurora Solar, and Vanta. Newer names on its roster include Cognition, Listen Labs, and Forus. Pear's Fund I ranks in the top 5th percentile of its vintage by net DPI, per the firm's own reporting.

Programmes and perks

Pear runs a developed programme stack:

• PearX — a 14-week early-stage bootcamp for founders, which has already backed Affinity, Xilis, Federato, Viz.ai, and Cardless, and now runs the dedicated PearX for AI track.
• Pear Dorm — support for student builders, the engine behind the firm's unusually high share of student-founded companies.
• Female Founders Circle — a community and training programme for technical female founders; around 41% of Pear's portfolio companies have a female founder and the team itself is 50% female.
• Pear Prime — a fellowship that gives students inside access to startup teams and now recruits annual cohorts.

The firm's talent and go-to-market teams also operate as an extension of each portfolio company.