Pear VC

Disambiguation (NOT our firm): This is Pear VC (formerly Pejman Mar Ventures), the Menlo Park seed fund. NOT to be confused with Pear AI (a YC-backed AI coding assistant / IDE — a startup, not an investor; easy to conflate given init’s AI space), Pear Therapeutics (the bankrupt digital-therapeutics SPAC, unrelated), or PEAR Health Labs. Our investor is pear.vc, founded 2013 by Pejman Nozad + Mar Hershenson.

Firm Profile

• What they are: A pre-seed / seed specialist (“We’re specialists in pre-seed and seed”) that partners with founders “from day zero” — not just capital but hands-on company-building (Day-0 customer discovery, first-engineer hiring, GTM, fundraising). Founder-first, relationship-driven DNA — a direct extension of Pejman Nozad’s “bet on the human first” philosophy.
• Founded: 2013, originally as “Pejman Mar Ventures” (the “Pear” name is a play on “Pejman + Mar” and on planting/growing) by Pejman Nozad and Mar Hershenson. Originally Palo Alto; now Menlo Park.
• AUM: ~$800M\ast \ast (2023).\ast \ast Fundhistory:\ast \ast FundI\ast \ast$50M (2013) → Fund II $175M\ast \ast \to FundIII\to \ast \ast FundIV$432M (closed May 2023, oversubscribed — “one of the largest seed funds raised in recent years by a non-multistage fund”). ^[Fund III size not isolated]
• Stage focus: Pre-seed and seed, pre-traction, often first institutional check. Sector-agnostic but heavily AI-anchored 2024–2026 (AI/automation/workflow across enterprise, healthcare, industrial, infra).
• Check size: $250K–$6M as lead/co-lead, **follow-on up to $10M\ast \ast .(Multiplesources;theCR{M}^{\prime }s"$250K–$10M"conflatesinitial+follow-on.Aras{h}^{\prime }sCRM"sweetspot$5M” sits squarely inside the lead range.)
• Role: Acts as lead and co-lead investor — important: Pear genuinely leads seeds (not just a follow-on name), which matters for who anchors init.inc’s round.
• Geography: US-centric (Menlo Park HQ + Pear Studio SF, a 30,000 sq-ft Mission Bay collaborative workspace opened Dec 2023). Small Canada/Spain footprint.
• Structure: Partnership with a deep operator bench (“We’ve founded 13+ companies”). Two founding managing partners (Pejman + Mar) plus investing partners + operators (recruiting, GTM, talent). PearX accelerator ($250K–$2M, ~2 cohorts/yr, >80–90% raise an institutional follow-on) and Pear Dorm (student/college-founder program, run by Khalil Fuller) are the two on-ramps. ^[inferred: IC dynamics not public; with two founding MPs + a partnership, a partner likely needs founding-MP buy-in for a seed lead — verify]

Partners

• Pejman Nozad — Co-Founder & Founding Managing Partner. “Tech’s most unlikely VC” (rug-salesman-to-VC); #1 Forbes Midas Seed List 2023–2025. Our firm-level relationship runs through him.
• Mar Hershenson — Co-Founder & Founding Managing Partner. Stanford EE PhD; ex-founder (3 companies, 14 patents); teaches Stanford’s Lean LaunchPad; founder of Equity Summit + founding member of All Raise. The technical/operational half of the founding duo. ^[no page — create if she enters the path]
• Arash Afrakhteh — Partner, enterprise/B2B + AI/ML, cloud, data infra, SDx. Ex-founder Cariden (→ Cisco). Pejman’s designated next-step for init.inc.
• Khalil Fuller — Partner & Head of Dorm (student/college founders). Our entry point into Pear.
• Other partners/operators (not on our path): Ajay Kamat, Aparna Sinha, Eddie Eltoukhy, Harris Stolzenberg, Kathleen Estreich, Nate Hirsch, Pepe Agell, Warren Shaeffer, Payam Banazadeh (visiting partner), Maryna Sivaieva, Shravan Reddy, Tom Glaser, Ryan Sells, Alex Gao, Laura Wright, Jenny Thai, Emma Krivoshein. ^[roster per pear.vc/team — roles not individually verified]

Recent pre-seed/seed activity (Pass-1 sketch — ≤5 deals)

• Dealops — $7M seed+pre-seed, Aug 2025, Pear + General Catalyst co-led (AI pricing/GTM-finance infra). Pear “moved quickly to pre-empt the seed round.”
• Amari AI — $4.5M seed, Feb 2026, Pear + First Round co-led (“autonomous AI workforce” for global-trade/customs clearance). ⚠️ Adjacency to init’s “AI employees for back-office work” framing — different vertical.
• Parallax Worlds — $4M seed, ~Nov 2025, Pear led (robotics reliability/simulation testing).
• Kin Health — $9M seed, ~May 2026, Pear participated (consumer digital health). ❓ lead/role unverified.
• Orby AI — **$4.5M\ast \ast seed(2023,Pear+NEAco-led)\to$30M Series A (2024). Arash’s board seat. Enterprise AI process-automation (Large Action Model). ⚠️ Adjacency to init’s back-office-agent thesis; acquired by Uniphore Aug 2025 (no longer independent).

Full data → /Users/sazzad14/seed-market-scan/firms/pear-vc.csv.

Headline portfolio (legacy): DoorDash, Dropbox, Gusto, Guardant Health, Branch, Aurora Solar, Vanta, Affinity, SoundHound, AppLovin, Nubank-adjacent… seeded “companies now worth over $170B” (firm claim). PearX alumni: Viz.ai, Affinity, Xilis, Capella Space, Cardless, Nova Credit, Federato, Valar Labs.

Best data channels for this firm

• Pear’s own site (pear.vc/<company>-seed/ posts) is the single best source — they publish a per-deal investment memo for most led/co-led rounds with amount + co-investors + which partner authored it. Use this as the spine.
• LinkedIn (Pear VC company posts + partner posts) corroborate amount/co-leads same-day.
• Wilson Sonsini / law-firm financing notes are reliable for combined seed+pre-seed amounts (caught the Dealops $7M-vs-$5.2M nuance).
• Weaker: auto-generated newsdesks (TipRanks) for “participated” rounds — they spotlight without isolating the lead (Kin Health). Wikipedia had a minor fund-size error ($423Mvsthecorrect\ast \ast$432M**).

Fundraise Relationship (init.inc)

• Context: Pear is a genuine seed lead at init’s stage and check size ($250K–$6M lead, ~$5M sweet-spot for Arash) — a structural fit for an institutional seed. The path is warm and advancing: past the firm’s gatekeepers and into a founding-MP-blessed next step with thematic partner Arash (enterprise/B2B AI; his Orby AI board seat + “human-simulating AI agents” thesis are adjacent to init’s “AI employees for back-office work; ITSM wedge”). ⚠️ Conflict watch: Pear has backed enterprise back-office-automation companies (Orby AI — now Uniphore; Amari AI — trade/customs). Neither is a direct AI-ITSM/AI-MSP competitor.
• Conversation log (newest first):
  • 2026-05-29 (Fri) — UPCOMING: Meeting locked with Pear (continuing the Arash hand-off from the 5/13 Pejman meeting). The raise officially kicks off 2026-05-27.
  • 2026-05-13 — Sazzad met Pejman Nozad, 1:30–2:00 PM at Pear SF — “he liked Sazzad.” Pejman is moving Sazzad to Arash Afrakhteh for next steps (the thematic enterprise/AI partner). Next action: schedule Arash (awaiting Pejman/Arash).
  • 2026-05-01 — Khalil Fuller escalated — direct intro from Khalil to Pejman. Khalil’s path now drives the firm-level relationship through Pejman.
  • 2026-04-27 — Sazzad sent product blurb (“AI lab for back-office white-collar work; ITSM wedge; pareto-efficient agent+human loop”). Separately, Niam offered a secondary intro to Darynne L (Pear student fellow, Stanford CS+Product Design) — secondary/parallel, lower priority.
  • 2026-04-23 — First meeting with Khalil Fuller (via Rishi + Isaiah).
• Mutual connections / warm path: Rishi + Isaiah → Khalil Fuller (entry) → Pejman (5/1 escalation) → Arash Afrakhteh (5/13 hand-off). Secondary: Niam → Darynne L (Pear student fellow).
• Personal & rapport notes (firm-level): Pear’s whole culture is relationship-first, founder-first, “we’re in the trenches from Day 0.” They explicitly identify as immigrants who “came to America penniless but with big ideas” — Pejman (Iran) + Mar (Spain). The thematic warmth of Pejman → Arash is not random: both are Iranian-American (Pejman from Iran; Arash a Sharif University grad). Pear’s stated belief: “Storytelling beats selling.”
• Live stage: tracked in the CRM (Google Sheet) — “Intro Made” to Arash as of 5/13.

Cross-check vs existing wiki

• No existing conflict flag. Pear was a bare orphan link before this page (referenced from Rishi and Niam connector stubs); no Pear mention exists in the competitor cap-table synthesis or any AI-ITSM/AI-MSP competitor file. This page resolves those orphan links.
• ⚠️ New adjacency surfaced (not previously in the wiki): Pear’s portfolio includes enterprise back-office-automation bets — Orby AI (Large-Action-Model process automation; Arash’s board seat; acq. Uniphore) and Amari AI (“autonomous AI workforce” for trade/customs). Neither is AI-ITSM/AI-MSP, so no direct competitor conflict, but they sit in init’s broad “AI does white-collar work” category — handle as a positioning nuance with Arash, not a blocker.

Related

• Pejman Nozad · Arash Afrakhteh · Khalil Fuller
• Rishi · Niam (connectors)
• Init Intelligence
• First Round Capital · General Catalyst (Pear co-leads on recent seeds)

Pass 2 deal pattern (2026-05-25)

Exhaustive ~18mo pull (Nov 2024 → May 2026). Full source-tagged rows: /Users/sazzad14/seed-market-scan/firms/pear-vc.csv (19 data rows; 14 net-new beyond Pass-1’s 5). Spine = Goldilocks AI deal table (goldi.ai/intelligence/vc/pear-vc) cross-checked against firm blog + primary press; every row triangulated ≥2 sources.

• Seed lead-rate (the headline for us): Pear genuinely leads/co-leads ~9 of ~16 confirmed in-window seeds (~55-60%) — they are a real seed anchor, not a follow-on name. Led outright: Socratix AI ($4.1M),wexler.ai($5.3M), Burst ($2.1M),ParallaxWorlds($4M). Co-led: Dealops ($7M,w/GeneralCatalyst),AmariAI($4.5M, w/ First Round), August ($7M,w/NEA),Spur($4.5M, w/ First Round), Remuner ($6.5M,w/Seaya).\ast \ast Participated:\ast \ast Nomadic($8.4M), Moda ($7.5M),SalesPatriot($5M), Pay-i ($4.9M),ListenLabs(seedwithin$27M combined), TrueMeter ($4M),KinHealth($9M, ❓lead).
• Check / stage: Pear’s lead/co-led seeds cluster $4M–$7M (firm’s own seed page states $1M–$6M seed checks; PearX $250K–$2M). This brackets init’s ask cleanly and confirms Arash’s CRM ”~$5M sweet spot.” Pre-seed is rare in the labeled data (mostly PearX-internal).
• Cadence: steady ~1–2 led/co-led seeds per month plus a thick participation tail; Goldilocks shows 23 deals/12mo (+44% YoY), but Series A is now their single largest stage (44% of all deals) — Pear has drifted up-stage while still anchoring seeds.
• Sector mix: heavily AI-applied-to-a-vertical-workflow — and strikingly init-adjacent: Socratix (“autonomous AI coworkers for fraud/risk teams”), August + wexler.ai (legal-AI automating white-collar work), SalesPatriot (AI procurement automation for defense), Spur (“AI QA Engineer”), Amari (“autonomous AI workforce” for customs), Moda (AI design agent), Dealops (GTM-finance automation). Plus robotics (Parallax), health (Burst, Kin), climate (TrueMeter).
• Partner attribution: weakest field — Pear does not publicly tie a partner to most deals. Confirmed: Payam Banazadeh (visiting partner) authored Parallax; Mar Hershenson joins Glide’s board (and a single-source attributes August to her); Arash Afrakhteh holds the Orby AI board seat (2023). No public deal of Arash’s surfaced in-window.
• Notable init adjacencies: Socratix AI (“autonomous AI coworkers… human-in-loop”) and SalesPatriot (AI back-office procurement automation) are the closest thesis twins; Amari/Orby are the back-office-automation adjacencies.
• Best data channel: Goldilocks AI deal table (clean stage/amount/date/role spine) + Pear’s own blog (pear.vc/<co>-seed/, names amount & co-leads, sometimes the authoring partner) + FinSMEs/BusinessWire/law-firm financing notes for primary corroboration. Goldilocks collapses to the latest round per company (Listen Labs shows as Series B, hiding the seed — recover via press) and occasionally understates amount+role (Remuner: showed $5.5M/participant;truth$6.5M/co-lead). COULDN’T-GET: “Known” ($9.7M,Dec2025,roleblank—same-namecollision)and"Series"pre-seed($3.1M — generic-name collision) could not be triangulated.