Arash Afrakhteh

Partner

If you want to change the world for the better through your startup, the best place to start is your own team.

Arash has been an entrepreneur for more than two decades, with experience at startups and big tech. He co-founded Cariden Technologies, a pioneer infrastructure SDN and bootstrapped it for 11 years to a majority market share before its acquisition by Cisco.

At Pear, Arash is focused on enterprise and B2B startups with a sub-focus on AI/ML, Cloud, and data center, data infrastructures, and SDx with x being various aspects of infrastructure. He loves working with founders from day one, getting into the trenches, and collaborating on company building, from engineering and processes, to hiring and culture, and GTM and fundraising. He believes that a leader’s impact begins with their team.

Arash is based in Menlo Park and graduated from Sharif University of Technology with a degree in Computer Engineering.

What is your most used emoji?

🚀

What's your favorite book?

The Divān of Hafez

What career path did you want to pursue when you were a kid?

Break dancer

What are your favorite sports teams?

The German national soccer team. Other than that, if there is a choice of watching a game or playing in a game, I always choose the latter.

What are your hobbies outside of work?

Skateboarding, road and mountain biking, skiing, training for triathlons, and acting in theater

Previous Experience

Co-founder/CTO/Head of Eng at Cariden Technologies, bootstrapped to dominant market position and acquired by Cisco
SW at Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, and three startups all with exits
Built three high performing engineering teams from ground up
Built four product lines from inception to market dominance, worked on products used by millions
Deeply technical product-oriented software engineer, software architect, AI/ML, data stacks, and distributed systems