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Month: April 2024

Welcoming Ana Leyva to the team!

Posted on by jill

Pear is thrilled to welcome Ana Leyva to our go-to-market team! Ana’s journey is a testament to her passion for the startup ecosystem, with past roles at tech unicorns Box, ServiceTitan, and Vanta. We’re so excited to have her onboard as part of our GTM team, offering her first-hand experience as a seasoned operator. 

In her short time with us, Ana has already supported over 30 Pear companies, strategizing with them on all things GTM. This includes many critical steps of sales like: nailing ICP, prospecting, customer discovery, messaging, and more. 

A Bay Area native, Ana is a first-generation college graduate from Princeton University and holds an MBA/MA in Education from Stanford. After graduating from Princeton, she joined Box pre-IPO at Series E. At Box, she was hooked on startup culture, especially the GTM and commercial arms. Following Box, she was an early sales hire at ServiceTitan and then, while at Stanford GSB, worked with Vanta to hone their early sales motion. Following business school, Ana became a founder and CEO herself with her ed-tech startup Lelu. Ana embodies the entrepreneurial spirit that Pear champions. 

“From early on, I saw both Mar and Pejman champion founders in a way that was genuine and authentic. That authenticity and commitment to being helpful is the backbone of Pear’s culture and makes it stand out in the sea of VCs.”

Ana was a Pear Fellow while at Stanford GSB, and we’re so excited to have her with us full time. She hosts Winning Wednesdays, a bi-weekly webinar series on GTM topics, and will continue to build out Pear’s GTM programming. 
Interested in connecting with Ana? Email her at ana@pear.vc.

Debunking common myths: what technical founders need to know about sales

Posted on by jill

As a technical founder, you’re no stranger to challenging assumptions and pushing boundaries. Yet, when it comes to sales, many technical founders fall prey to common myths and misconceptions about sales that can hinder their startup’s growth. Let’s debunk these myths and uncover the truth about sales:

1. Myth: A Good Product Will Sell Itself, so I don’t need to worry about sales: Especially from a technical point of view, it’s easy to believe that if you’ve built a great product, customers will come flocking. While a strong product is undoubtedly essential, it’s not enough to guarantee success. In reality, ideas are cheap, and execution is critical. Competitors will inevitably emerge, and without a solid sales strategy, your product will get lost in the noise– even if it’s better than the alternatives. Early sales are crucial for validating your idea, learning how to talk about it and gaining traction in the market. 

2. Myth: I Can’t Sell Because I’m Not “Salesy”: Many technical founders shy away from sales, believing it’s a skill reserved for natural-born salespeople. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth. In Geoffrey Moore’s “Crossing the Chasm,” he highlights the importance of early sales to tech enthusiasts – a group that technical founders are uniquely positioned to identify with and sell to. Your deep understanding of the product and its technical intricacies can be a powerful asset in connecting with early adopters. Sales isn’t about being pushy or overly charismatic; it’s about building relationships and solving problems. 

3. Myth: Sales Is a Necessary Evil: Some technical founders view sales as a necessary evil – something to be delegated while they focus on building a product-centered company. However, the best businesses understand that success lies in being customer-centric from the get-go. Sales and technical teams should work hand in hand throughout the lifetime of the company, both driven by a shared commitment to delivering value to customers. Interweaving the shared success of both teams early on fosters collaboration and ensures that the customer remains at the heart of every decision. Ultimately, the most successful companies recognize and appreciate the unique contributions that both technical and sales teams bring to the table.

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Technical founders must challenge traditional myths about the sales profession and recognize the pivotal role that sales will play in their startup’s success. A great product is just the beginning – it’s how you sell it that sets you apart. Embrace sales as a strategic imperative, leverage your technical expertise to connect with early adopters, and build a customer-centric organization from day one. By doing so, you’ll pave the way for sustainable growth and lasting success.

Want to know more about leading GTM as a technical founder? Check out our additional resources for technical founders here. 

Welcoming Hannah Berke to Pear!

Posted on by jill

We’re excited to announce that Hannah Berke joined Pear a few months ago as part of our Community + Operations team! A seasoned community leader, we can’t wait to have her on board, especially after our recent Pear Studio SF expansion. 

Born and raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Hannah was introduced to the Bay Area as an undergraduate at Stanford. As an undergrad, Hannah worked in technology integration and strategic communications at Amazon and MongoDB. She was also deeply involved in university life, serving in a number of different university offices, including the Board of Trustees, and community groups. “I learned the impact that a strong community can have on someone’s success— and that I was super passionate about creating those types of environments for people.” 

Hannah first encountered Pear through a classmate and friend who participated in PearX. She’d been hooked on startup culture ever since arriving at Stanford, and Pear’s founder-first approach stood out among VCs— “the mentality of giving before getting”. At Pear, Hannah now supports this goal, creating the community support founders need to build the best companies possible. 

“Mar and Pejman’s vision for a best-in-class ecosystem and community of tech builders is amazing, and I’m honored I get to be a part of bringing it to life.”

We’re thrilled to have Hannah on board. You can reach her at hannah@pear.vc.

Minimum Fundable Team: how early team shapes seed fundraising

Posted on by jill

My role at Pear is to directly support pre-seed founders that participate in PearX with their hiring needs. PearX is our hands-on, 14-week bootcamp designed to position founders to raise seed rounds from top tier investors. We’re experts at helping companies raise this capital; over 90% of PearX companies go on to raise capital from top investors.

We have found, that at early stage, the four largest themes driving an investor’s decision to invest in a company are:

  • Market
  • Product
  • Traction
  • Team

To successfully raise capital, you need all four to be great OR one or two to be exceptional. 

However, at pre-seed in particular, markets are difficult to size and product or traction are often still too early to measure with a high degree of conviction. For these reasons, investors will often place an outsized emphasis on the quality and completeness of the team when making an investment decision.

At Pear, we refer to the completeness of a team at this stage as Minimum Fundable Team or MFT.

Prior to raising a pre-seed or seed round, founders should ensure their MFT is a competitive advantage. We suggest that all founders ask the following three simple questions to determine the completeness of their team prior to raising:

1. Is someone on the team a deep subject matter expert with the market or product you’re building?
2. Has someone on the team built a successful product from zero? 
3. Do you have the right mix of skills across the team required to ship a quality product quickly? 

If the answer to any of the questions above is no, what steps need to be taken to fill in any gaps to achieve MFT? 

We believe that hiring is one of the best ways to do this quickly. 

One of the advantages of joining PearX is that helping founders achieve MFT is a core part of our offering. Over the last 12 months, I have worked with 30 different teams and helped fill over 25 roles. Each of these hires have played a critical role in helping those teams reach MFT and close a successful round of funding. 

If you take away one learning from this article, it’s that hiring plays one of the most critical roles in early stage fundraising. Founders who achieve MFT prior to fundraising will have a higher likelihood of success compared to those who don’t.

PearX: join the ranks of elite founders

Posted on by jill

The most elite founders walk through walls to build category-defining companies. They are unique individuals, who don’t come by very often. Having seeded and helped build companies like DoorDash, Dropbox, Vanta, Aurora Solar, Gusto, Guardant Health and Affinity from their earliest days, we know what these founders look like and what they need. We have developed PearX to partner and support the very best entrepreneurs at the very beginning of their journey to help them get to the next stage. 

We believe small cohorts of less than 20 teams give PearX companies a disproportionate advantage. As a result, 90% of our PearX alums go on to secure funding following our Demo Day. Pear’s unparalleled resources lead to these unrivaled results. Here are some of the things we offer to each PearX company.

  • Capital to build your company, your way: We invest between $250k and $2M in all PearX companies. We know that some founders only need a small amount of capital to ideate and other teams are in more cost-intensive verticals that require more funding. All companies are unique so we’ll work with you. 
  • Founder to founder: Work 1:1 with a partner who has been in your shoes and knows your industry. Our team has started and sold 10 companies to the likes of Cisco, Instacart, Plaid, and Zynga.
  • Join the best community: Entrepreneurship doesn’t have to be a lonely journey. Joining PearX means joining a community of like-minded founders. We kick off each cohort with Camp Pear: a 3-day retreat for the entire cohort to come together, learn key company building tactics, and get to know one another. Not only will you work alongside your PearX batch for 14+ weeks, but you’ll also have the wider PearX alumni network to lean on. 
  • Access Pear Studio: Everyone in PearX receives dedicated office space in Pear Studio SF, our 30,000 square foot state-of-the-art office space with standing desks, conference rooms, phone booths, and more. This space is completely free to you for the first 12 months.
  • Build a scalable sales motion: Our go-to-market team, Pepe and Ana, will guide you through the critical steps of sales: nailing ICP, prospecting, customer discovery, messaging, and more. 
  • Recruit the best talent: Our dedicated PearX Recruiter, Nate, will find your founding engineer, co-founder, or whatever critical hire your team needs. In the last two cohorts, Nate has hired 25 people for our PearX companies. Nate leads the full cycle of recruiting for your team – from sourcing to closing candidates. This is an unprecedented level of support for an accelerator, but that’s how much we believe that hiring impacts company building. Last batch, Nate hired an average of two people per PearX company.
  • Fundraise strategically: We help you raise additional capital when you’re ready. From perfecting the story and creating a pitch deck to creating a target investor list and negotiating and closing your round. In fact, 90% of companies that go through PearX raise capital from institutional investors.

Are you interested in joining our PearX S24 cohort? We’re actively looking for our next batch of founders, and we’d love to hear from you. Please apply at pear.vc/pearx!