Pear VC

About

Pear VC is a Menlo Park, California-based venture capital firm that invests in pre-seed and seed-stage startups, known for finding founders early through its PearX accelerator program and its hands-on, high-touch approach to company building.

Investment Focus

Pear VC invests across AI, fintech, biotech, B2B, consumer, deep tech, and healthcare, with a thesis centered on finding extraordinary founders before they become obvious to the rest of the market, often before a company even exists.

The firm provides a high-touch platform covering customer discovery, first hires, fundraising, and go-to-market support.

The firm invests primarily at the pre-seed and seed stages, with select Series A follow-ons in its strongest portfolio companies.

Check sizes range from $250,000 through its PearX program up to $6 million through its dedicated seed program, with the firm typically leading or co-leading rounds as one of the first institutional investors.

Pear VC runs PearX, a pre-seed accelerator held twice a year that accepts fewer than 1% of applicants, with about 80% of PearX companies going on to raise institutional seed rounds.

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Fund

Pear VC has closed Fund V at $333 million, bringing the firm's total assets under management to more than $1.1 billion.

The firm's prior fund, Fund IV, closed at $432 million in 2023.

The majority of Fund V will go toward new pre-seed and seed investments over roughly 2.5 years, with reserves set aside for follow-on investments in breakout companies.

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Other Information

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Leadership

Pear VC was founded in 2013 by Founding Managing Partners Pejman Nozad and Mar Hershenson.

Alongside the close of Fund V, the firm promoted three new General Partners:

Arash Afrakhteh, who focuses on enterprise and B2B investments in AI, cloud, and data infrastructure and previously co-founded Cariden Technologies, acquired by Cisco
Ajay Kamat, who focuses on consumer, fintech, and healthcare and previously co-founded Wedding Party, acquired by Instacart
Shravan Reddy, who focuses on AI infrastructure, robotics, and vertical AI, previously co-founded Pixelapse, acquired by Dropbox, and led engineering at Stripe

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Investment Strategy

Pear VC positions itself as finding founders earlier than the rest of the market, frequently before a company exists, and backs them with a high-touch platform spanning customer discovery, early hiring, fundraising, and go-to-market strategy.

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Notable Investments