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Matt Birnbaum
Talent Partner
“The best solutions are simple: break complex problems down into smaller, easily understood parts.”

A Bay Area native, Matt started his career at a small financial services firm before venturing into tech, where he grew Wildfire (acquired by Google in 2012) from 15 to 400 employees. Matt then founded UpStart Talent, a boutique recruiting consultancy that specialized in supporting high growth startups like Stripe, Thumbtack, Plaid, and Asana. In 2018, Matt joined Instacart as the Head of Talent Acquisition, scaling the company from 300 to 3000 employees. Matt lives in San Francisco with his wife, Katie, their son, Dougie, and their cats, Mama & Nacho. He holds dual degrees in Economics & Japanese from Gettysburg College.
At Pear, Matt and his team partner closely with founders to ensure they have access and the support needed to recruit top talent for their companies.
Outside of work you’ll find me…
Family, Friends, Food, & Fun.



What is your most used emoji?
😂, 😅, 🙄, and 😑
What’s your favorite book?
A Wild Sheep Chase, Haruki Murakami
What career path did you want to pursue when you were a kid?
Baseball player.
What are your favorite sports teams?
Oakland A’s (experimenting with the Detroit Tigers), Niners & Dubs
Previously
Head of Talent Acquisition, Instacart
Owner, UpStart Talent
Director of Recruiting, Wildfire Interactive (acquired by Google)
Multiple positions, Fisher Investments
Interested in
Early-stage talent strategy and how to help founders build teams from the ground up. I’m passionate about diving deep into challenging hiring situations, unpacking the root causes of roadblocks, and leveraging my previous experience and failures to develop practical, straightforward approaches that fix founder’s biggest problems. I particularly enjoy taking on challenges at scale and tackling obstacles that others have been unable to solve. I just like fixing broken shit. I get the most joy from the impact that comes from getting things done.
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