Pear VC was founded in 2013 with a simple goal: to build a venture firm that truly puts founders first.

The firm began as Pejman Mar Ventures. Pejman Nozad, an active angel investor at the time, saw an opportunity to build something different—a firm where founder support came first, and where the earliest and hardest stages of company building got the attention they deserved. He recruited Mar Hershenson to join him, and the two officially launched Pejman Mar Ventures in August 2013. 

Three years later, they renamed the firm to Pear VC. 

The name captures something essential about how we work with founders. Pear trees are strong and long-lasting, but they need the right support and conditions to thrive. And when we polled our founders, they said the name evoked “pairing up”—exactly what we try to do with every team we back.

Pejman and Mar aren’t your typical venture capitalists. Pejman immigrated to the U.S. from Iran with $700 in his pocket and began investing while working as a rug dealer in Palo Alto—long before he became a full-time investor. 

Mar is originally from Barcelona, holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford, and is a three-time founder herself. Their journeys—from rug salesman and graduate student to Midas List investors—are the foundation of the can-do mentality that runs through everything we do at Pear.

Over the past decade, we’ve invested in hundreds of companies at the pre-seed and seed stages. Our portfolio includes multiple companies valued at over $1B, four IPOs, and dozens more in the making, including DoorDash, Gusto, Vanta, Cognition, Listen Labs, Forus, Guardant Health, and Gravis Robotics.

Today, Pear is a team of 20+ company builders and industry experts working toward one goal: to be the best early-stage firm in the world.