Consumer

Technology including social, marketplaces, subscription, e-commerce, creator economy, and more.

Pear is proud to have been early investors in several startups that empower the individuals they serve in their daily lives.Our consumer team is focused on partnering with founders that truly understand the consumer and thoughtfully build the tools they need and demand. These are founders who are building the next generation of massive consumer products.

How we invest How we help founders

Pear perspectives

Here are some of the arenas we’re interested in, but there are many more interesting ideas than what we’ve shared on this page. If you’re building something cool, we want to hear from you, regardless of whether it’s listed here or not.

Consumer x AI

Large language models and stable diffusion have unlocked massive consumer impact potential. We believe the future gen AI consumer winners are those that stay laser focused on the problems they are solving for their users, and whose solution is not solely reliant on off-the-shelf models available today.

Consumer Marketplaces

Marketplaces have been an effective tool in unlocking the connection between consumers, service providers and sellers. As consumers evolve, there are abundant opportunities for marketplaces to meet their expanding needs.

Subscriptions & Services

The subscription-based model continues to grow quickly as various service providers and commerce platforms broaden their traditional revenue models. The greater accessibility and convenience to consumers as well as the predictable income stream for businesses makes us excited for the next wave of businesses building long term relationships with their consumers.

Creator Economy

The creator economy is expected to approach half-a-trillion in the coming years as more and more consumers turn on their cameras and begin to generate content in their free time. We’ve learned that creators have two primary problems: forming or consolidating sustainable revenue streams and developing new ideas for content. We’re most excited for the former, enabling creators to continue to do what they love to do, so that they may focus on the latter.

Consumer Social

Loneliness started to balloon into an epidemic even prior to the covid pandemic. With more and more Americans spending time alone, we believe there’s space for social apps to create communities with a strong sense of belonging, while also bridging the gap between online and offline experiences.

Consumer Finance

The next generation of consumers always looks for more relevant experiences that reflect the realities of the macro environment and their specific financial priorities. Areas of interest include solutions that help consumers access fixed income, intuitive saving products, fun investment experiences that expand access to new demographics amongst others.

E-commerce Enablement

Ecommerce and social commerce continues to grow. We believe there are opportunities in using AI to equip businesses with the necessary tools and technologies to effectively engage consumers online through better discovery, targeting, and personalization. When it comes to e-commerce, we are taking a pick-and-shovels approach to funding the tools needed to build and support enduring ecommerce businesses.

Entertainment & Gaming

Games drive best-in-class retention rates across the consumer ecosystem. Leaders like Minecraft, League of Legends, and Fortnite have created amazing worlds and generated billions of dollars in revenue. At Pear, we’re most excited to speak with those building gaming platforms that either serve as the tools to build the next generation of games or empower users to create their own experiences, while also reinforcing a strong ecosystem and community.

Door Dash Team

Pejman and Mar and the Pear team’s philosophy has always been first and foremost to bet on the people.

Tony Xu Co-Founder and CEO

Local Kitchen Team
local kitchens logo

Pear has supported us at every step in our journey. They are a unique team – kind, thoughtful, and willing to roll up their sleeves to help.

Jon Goldsmith CEO

Isha Patel
Kale Logo

Pear is an honest, thoughtful guiding light when it comes to strategizing a business’s go-to-market plan. When we felt ready to move from founder-led sales to hiring a sales team, Pear (Pepe) was instrumental in helping us define our hiring process and compensation structure for our sales team. Plus, Pear has a unique ability to advise on matching business models to customer cohorts, as we explored traditional SAAS versus advertising models. Our business is overall much stronger as a result of working side by side with Pear partners, whose expertise stretches across many dimensions (eg hiring, fundraising, ) but especially the go-to-market side of the house.

Isha Patel Co-Founder, Kale

Lead partners

View full team

Warren Shaeffer

Visiting Partner

link team
Danielle Jing headshot

Danielle Jing

Investor

link team

How we invest

How we invest