Company attributes
Venture Capital Firm attributes
Other attributes
Pear, previously known as Pejman Mar Ventures, is a venture capital firm founded in 2013. The firm was established by Mar Hershenson and Pejman Nozad, and is based in Palo Alto, California. In addition to its venture capital business, Pear also runs several accelerator initiatives under its Pear Dorm program. As of March 2019, the firm is managing a portfolio of 92 active companies and has sold off its ownership in 20 companies. Their investments include Dropbox, Zoosk, Path, and Lending Club. Its most recent investment was for Polarr in March 2019, a company providing an online photo editing platform.
Pear provides funding for companies in a variety of business sectors. The firm invests in companies at three financing stages: pre-seed, seed, and Series A. Since its conception, the firm has managed to amass $169.2 million in total, with its most recent completed funding round held in April 2017. This funding round managed to raise $4.2 million.
The company organizes a series of events under the “Pear Dorm” program where it searches and finds startup companies to back. “Pear Garage” is a part of Pear Dorm program specially targeted toward graduates from Stanford University, where they try and pitch their ideas to solve real-world problems without financial or equity obligations. “Pear Summer” is a similar program targeted towards startups and entrepreneurs.
Other similar initiatives target MBA or MSx students at Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB), MBA students from Harvard Business School (HBS), and also students from MIT or the University of Pennsylvania. Applicants are required to apply in a respective category before the deadline to be considered for the program.
Pear is an early-stage venture fund founded by Pejman Nozad and Mar Hershenson. Their co-founding managers have historically seeded very early stage tech start-ups such as Doordash, Guardant Health, Gusto, Dropbox, Lending Club, Zoosk, Addepar, Path and many others.
Their motto is simple: they invest in exceptional founders who are buildingamazing companies. They utilize every resource they have to assist their founders and entrepreneurs shape the future.
