Topic: Announcement

We’re looking for a Director of Accelerator Operations to grow our renowned early-stage Accelerator. As the Director of Accelerator Operations, you’ll oversee the program from company selection to Demo Day.

We’re looking to onboard a full-time Director before our upcoming Winter Accelerator in 2022.

In order to cultivate a more inclusive venture ecosystem, it’s important that funds like us continue to post open roles publicly. We are committed to building a diverse team internally, across our portfolio, and within the other Pear programs.

Pear Accelerator guides early-stage founders towards building category-defining companies

Pear VC is a leading early stage fund based in Palo Alto and San Francisco. We’ve partnered at the seed stage with world changing startups now worth over $100 billion, including Doordash, Gusto, Branch, Vanta, and Guardant Health.

The Pear Accelerator is a three-month long bootcamp culminating in a demo day to thousands of top investors. It includes a tailored curriculum and program across finding product-market fit, hiring your first employees, closing your first customers, fundraising your Series A and beyond. During the 2021 Summer Accelerator, we worked closely with 15 teams over 17 weeks, culminating in a Demo Day with over 700 investors in attendance.

Pear Accelerator has been the birthplace of category-defining companies Affinity, Xilis, Capella Space, Nova Credit, Cardless, Viz.ai, and more, with 69 alumni companies overall having a cumulative valuation of $1.5B. This winter, for the first time, we are offering teams an investment of $500k at a $10M valuation cap. 

Providing founders personal, hands-on help is our first priority. We intentionally accept a small cohort to foster a tight community, allowing our partners to spend quality time with each Accelerator team.

Director of Accelerator Operations Role

As Director of Accelerator Operations, you’ll have a major impact on the long term success of Pear by improving the program with each cohort. Working hand-in-hand with Pear Investment Partners, you’ll source and support our Accelerator companies, guide them through the program, and make sure operations run smoothly. You’ll support key players including founders, mentors, and sponsors to get the best outcomes possible for our Accelerator companies.

We’re looking to onboard a full-time Director before our upcoming Winter Accelerator in 2022.

Responsibilities include:

• In conjunction with the Investment Partners, plan, improve and implement the full execution of Pear Accelerator from sourcing companies through Demo Day.
• Create and execute the application & interview process alongside the Investment team.
• Manage week-to-week team progress by running weekly check-in meetings and serve as the conduit between cohort teams and the Investment Partners.
• Lead promotion and marketing of Accelerator program and managing design resources 
• Improve and augment Pear resources for companies, including but not limited to content, preferred vendors, mentors and business partners.
• Manage program logistics like operations, budgeting, scheduling, calendar management, event planning, mentor coordination, office coordination, and founder community.
• Manage the Accelerator community by making sure that founders, investors, mentors and partners build strong relationships.
• Recruit, onboard, and match mentors and teams.
• Manage program events like Accelerator Kickoff, Demo Day, speaker events, treks to companies, and social events
• Gather and analyze data of previous cohorts including details on investment rounds post Demo Day and key statistics of companies.
• Collect feedback on the program before, during and after the program. Analyze feedback and suggest improvements.

What We’re Looking For

You’re a project management guru and skilled multitasker who’s detail-oriented without losing the bigger picture. You have strong written and verbal communication skills and you thrive in a fast-paced, highly collaborative environment. You are self-directed and can hit the ground running on Day 1.

Our ideal candidate has worked in a startup environment and is interested in gaining experience in marketing, operations, project management, community building, business development, event planning, and fundraising. You must have a Bachelor’s degree and be passionate about working with ambitious founders and early-stage startups, and a good sense of humor is always appreciated. 

Requirements aside, as long as you think you can be successful in this role and would find it exciting, we would be happy to consider you as a candidate. From our years of investing, we know that VC is often a game of exceptions.

Apply Here

We also love referrals, please send them our way. We take confidentiality very seriously. As a venture fund, our reputation is our currency.

We deeply understand the value of bringing together a team with different perspectives, educational backgrounds, and life experiences, and we prioritize diversity within our team. We encourage people from underrepresented backgrounds to apply.

Pear’s Visiting Partner program is for experienced founders and operators seeking to learn the full toolkit of early-stage VC through sourcing, diligence, and advising. 

This is a 6 month commitment, either part-time or full-time, with an opportunity to become an investment partner at Pear. Out of the past four Pear Visiting Partners, two have joined Pear full-time as investment partners, one continues to work with us part-time, and one is launching their own fund.  

In order to cultivate a more inclusive venture ecosystem, it’s important that funds like us continue to post open roles publicly. We are committed to building a diverse team internally, across our portfolio, and within the other Pear programs.

Pear partners with founders early to build indispensable, lasting companies

Pear VC is a leading early stage fund based in Palo Alto and San Francisco. We’ve partnered at the seed stage with world changing startups now worth over $100 billion, including Doordash, Gusto, Branch, Vanta, and Guardant Health.

Having founded and sold eight companies ourselves, we understand the challenges of building a company. We are founders’ thought partners as they iterate on the path towards product market fit. Along the way, we strive to ground founders in the hard truths, and to pull them out of the lows. 

Visiting Partner Role

As a Visiting Partner, you will work with other Pear investors and early-stage founders to build indispensable, lasting companies through working with our current portfolio, as well as leading and executing on new investments. We are looking for a 6 month or more commitment, either part time or full time, with an opportunity to become an investment partner at Pear.

Responsibilities include:

• Learn the investment process end to end from sourcing, evaluating, and selecting investment opportunities, including our next batch of Pear Winter Accelerator companies and seed investments. 
• Advocate for new investments in partner investment meetings and participate in team discussions on new investment opportunities broadly.
• Bring creativity and innovation to the Pear programs from innovating on Accelerator to helping Pear be the best partner to startups
• Serve as a thought partner and advisor to Accelerator startups over the course of the accelerator and participate in weekly check-ins with Accelerator companies to address various aspects of company building (fundraising, GTM, hiring, product-market fit, demo-day prep, etc.)
• Develop and build broader relationships across the startup ecosystem including VCs, founders, partnerships and potential talent for recruiting

Pear Accelerator 

The Pear Accelerator is a three-month long bootcamp culminating in a demo day to thousands of top investors. It includes a tailored curriculum and program across finding product-market fit, hiring your first employees, closing your first customers, fundraising your Series A and beyond. Pear Accelerator has been the birthplace of category-defining companies Affinity, Xilis, Capella Space, Nova Credit, Cardless, Viz.ai, and more in our ever-growing Pear family. This winter, for the first time, we are offering teams an investment of $500k at a $10M valuation cap. 

Providing founders personal, hands-on help is our first priority. We intentionally accept a small cohort to foster a tight community, allowing our partners to spend quality time with each Accelerator team. 

What We’re Looking For

You’re aligned with Pear’s investment approach and are looking forward to working closely with early-stage teams. We are looking for a combination of grit, resourcefulness, experience, deep subject knowledge, and a genuine passion for helping founders go from idea to IPO.

Our ideal candidate is a former founder and someone who can provide first-hand experience and advice to our Accelerator teams. You’re not afraid to get your hands dirty, but you also have the knowledge and wisdom to be a thought partner to our companies. 

As long as you think you can be successful in this role, we would be happy to consider you as a candidate. From our years of investing, we know that VC is often a game of exceptions.

Apply Here

We also love referrals, please send them our way. We take confidentiality very seriously. As a venture fund, our reputation is our currency.

Pear’s new CFO Anna Nitschke is laying down the foundations for our expansion in being the best partner for founders from idea to series A. 

Our journey to finding the perfect partner for Pear was deliberate and extensive, as we screened over 380 candidates. When we met Anna, we knew she was the right partner. Anna exudes the Pear DNA: smart, ambitious, humble, and a team player with a wealth of experience!

Anna will manage all financial functions and internal operations of the firm and its funds, spanning across fundraising, fund finance strategy, portfolio monitoring and more. She will also provide essential support to our companies and make valuable connections to our partners and resources. Pear’s portfolio over the past 8 years has grown to be worth over $90B and with Anna, we are excited about the future of Pear more than ever. 

Prior to Pear, Anna led finance & operations at Eniac Ventures. Before entering the venture capital world, Anna worked in business operations for over a decade at various startups, using her broad background in finance, human resources, and administration management to help companies scale.

In 2004, Anna moved from Europe to California for college and she graduated from University of California Santa Cruz with a BA in Business Management Economics. She is an active member of various Bay Area and NYC venture finance groups and a volunteer mentor with several organizations. In her free time, you can find Anna cycling or hiking with her husband, daughter, and crazy corgi (a Pear Corgi now!). In the evenings and on weekends, Anna turns to her passion for food and wine and is either trying out a new recipe, exploring restaurants and wineries, or throwing dinner parties for family and friends.

Vivien is a Principal on Pear’s investment team. At Pear, Vivien invests in founders who are mission-driven and who hope to improve the world we live in with technology. She brings her love for building communities through launching Pear’s Founder Circles starting with female technical founders. 

She joined Pear full time after getting her MBA from The Wharton School, where she studied Entrepreneurship and Innovation and Healthcare Management. She learned the ropes of venture capital as a Pear Fellow at Penn’s campus for two years. During her MBA, she interviewed healthtech leaders as the co-host of The Pulse Podcast by Wharton Digital Health and lead Community and Social for 600+ Wharton Entrepreneurship Club members.

Prior to business school, Vivien worked on BizOps, New Products and Growth for Airbnb, and was a consultant at The Boston Consulting Group focused on defining innovation and growth strategies for leading healthcare, consumer and technology companies. She received a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering at Northwestern University.

“Pear is where all brilliant founders should go when they have a passion to solve a problem, an MVP and are in between the 0 to 1 stage. The team works tirelessly together to support the founder through both the greatest and most challenging times.

I wanted to join and learn from a team that puts founders first and supports one another like a family.”

Outside of work, Vivien loves spending time in the outdoors, skiing on fresh powder, cycling through California’s hills, cooking Taiwanese food, and admiring art in all forms.

Connect with Vivien on Twitter @vivho or come say hi in our San Francisco office! 

Richard joins Pear as Chief of Staff to our managing partner, Mar Hershenson, and Director of Pear Accelerator. In his role, Richard is responsible for planning and operating the accelerator program, helping our portfolio companies with business development, fundraising, operations, and supporting Mar’s overall daily workflow.

“I joined pear because of the alignment and heavy double-down on community organizing. I am excited to be working with passionate and ambitious early-stage founders with big ideas!”

Prior to Pear, Richard fell in love with the venture world during an internship with Pillar VC. He completed his PhD at MIT Mathematics under Prof. Gilbert Strang, where he focused on the physical modeling of microfluidics. During his PhD, he also worked with Massachusetts General Hospital on using efficient ML algorithms to optimize hospital operations and has published in high-impact journals such as Nature.

Outside of work, Richard is a community organizer at heart who cares deeply about the mental health and well-being of students and entrepreneurs. Together with six MIT grad students and postdocs, Richard co-founded FAIL!, a nonprofit aimed to de-stigmatize failures and foster psychological safety in hyper-competitive workplaces. 

Say “hello” to Richard on Twitter @richardczhang.

Danielle joined the Pear Family in February as an Associate on our investment team working with students and recent grad entrepreneurs.

Prior to Pear, Danielle was an Investment Banking associate at Bank of America in the Equity Capital Markets group, working on initial public offerings in the technology sector. She graduated from Columbia University with a BS in Operations Research and a minor in Computer Science. 

At Pear, Danielle works to find and support student and recent grad entrepreneurs at the earliest stages who are building the next wave of category-defining companies. She’s passionate about making entrepreneurship more accessible to students and is excited to do so at Pear.

“After speaking with members of the Pear team, I was impressed by the amount of support they provide to early stage founders, particularly student founders. In college, entrepreneurship felt almost inaccessible to me so I was looking for a place where I could reverse that narrative. Pear is that place.”

Outside of work, Danielle enjoys exploring SF, running & hiking, and testing new cookie recipes.

Say “hello” to Danielle on twitter: @DanielleJing

Apply here, or be referred and nominated here by Aug 1 2023 for Fall 2023 cohort

We are excited to announce Pear Founder Circles for Female Engineers, a three-month long curated community for female and non-binary engineer entrepreneurs.

At Pear VC, we believe founders make category defining companies, and we want to create communities that support these founders through our program of inspirational founders, tactical company building workshops, executive coaches, and community bonding.

Supporting female engineer founders is in our DNA.

Pear VC is co-founded by our Managing Partner, Mar Hershenson, a 3X founder who earned her Stanford PhD in Electrical Engineering and is a supporter for women founders as one of the founding members of AllRaise, Equity Summit and other programs.

<15% of VC-backed startups have at least 1 female founder and we want to change this. Female engineers are underrepresented, even when we see female-run businesses achieving a 35% higher ROI.

We are looking for the next generation of female engineer entrepreneurs.

What do you get from this program? 

An intimate founder circle of female engineers, guided by successful female founders and leaders.

• Gain a tight-knit community of like-minded aspiring female engineer founders in the same pivotal movement of their career

• Learn from intimate fireside chats and dinners with visionary female leaders and tactical company building and presence workshops

• Gain valuable perspectives from top female general partners on what they look for

• Enjoy curated social events like tastings by our very own portfolio founders: Maker Wine, Siren Snacks and more!

• Eight Wednesday sessions happening every other week in our SF Office in South Park and virtually, sponsored by Pear VC! 

Apply here or be nominated here by Aug 1 2023

Who are we looking for?

• Female or non-binary engineering background
• Actively working on a startup idea part time outside of work, or full time
• A few years out of school

How much does it cost? 

• Free! We want to make this community as accessible!
• We expect individuals to commit ~2 hours every other Wednesday and attend all events.

Feel free to reach out with any questions to vivien@pear.vc. We look forward to reviewing your applications!

We spoke with the Kamehameha Schools Endowment, who are Limited Partners in Pear VC. They shared more about their incredible founding story, how they think about investing in funds, and the impact their investments can make on their community and beyond. 

Founding Story 

Kamehameha Schools was founded in 1887 by Ke Ali‘i (Princess) Bernice Pauahi Bishop, the great granddaughter of King Kamehameha the Great, the monarch who unified all of the Hawaiian Islands into a single kingdom in the early 1800s. Throughout her life, Ke Ali‘i Pauahi witnessed the negative impact of Western influences on indigenous culture in Hawaii. Inspired to reverse these impacts and create a better future for the Hawaiian people, Princess Pauahi bequeathed her entire estate of approximately 370,000 acres of Ali‘i (royal) lands to establish a school with the goal of furthering the education of native Hawaiian students. Through this estate, the Kamehameha Schools first campus was opened 3 years after Bernice Pauahi’s passing under the leadership of her husband, Charles Reed Bishop. 

Today, the schools operate 29 preschool campuses, and three Kindergarten through Grade 12 campuses throughout Hawaii. In total, the schools educate around seven thousand students, providing over 5,700 prekindergarten to post-secondary scholarships, and invest nearly a half of a billion dollars in education and educational support each year.

98 percent of the school’s activities are supported by the endowment. A third of the endowment is invested in real estate (largely the initial land bequeathed by Bernice Pauahi). The rest of the endowment is invested in financial assets, including venture funds like Pear VC. A part of the endowment is spent each year on fulfilling the mission of furthering education for Hawaiian students. The endowment supports campus operations, expansions to new grade levels, the establishing of charter schools, and many other programs. 

The Kamehameha Schools Endowment plays a critical role in addressing socioeconomic challenges in Hawaii, uplifting the Native Hawaiian community through education, providing financial aid to students, and perpetuating the rich Hawaiian culture. 

Fund Selection 

Kamehameha Schools Endowment invested in Pear for several key reasons: 

• Team: “Pejman and Mar are incredibly nice people. Time is a premium in the VC business, but Mar and Pejman were so approachable and showed genuine interest in their LPs, that really stood out.”
• University Connection: “Pear’s connection with Stanford really resonated. Visiting Pear Garage feels like an extension with so many students going there. As an educational institution, this resonated with us. Having a connection to a school and educational ecosystem was quite nice.”
• Unique Programs: “Seeing the way Pear is set up, it’s almost like a school for aspiring founders. It’s a very interesting Pear specific concept with programs like Pear Dorm.” 
• Early Stage: “There’s a trend toward moving early, investing earlier in a company’s formation. Pear was firmly planted in that space.”  
• High Touch: “Pear stood out to us as a unique opportunity to pursue…with Pear, we saw a high touch approach. Pear’s companies receive a high amount of attention. Pear provides a more hand crafted approach to the seed stage.” 

Impact

Kamehameha Schools Endowment highlighted the impact Pear VC has made in furthering the school’s mission.

The returns from Pear VC Fund 1 distributed back to Kamehameha translates to the following impact*: 

• 120 children with an education in one of Kamehameha’s 30 pre-schools
• 422 students with subsidized tuition at one of Kamehameha’s three K-12 campuses
• 423 scholarships towards tuition at other K-12 schools and colleges and universities
• 4,220 learners served through Kamehameha’s various community outreach and community investment programs
• 26,552 acres of sustainably managed agricultural and conservation lands

Altogether, Pear VC Fund 1 has touched the lives of 5,185 members of the Native Hawaiian community and supports the sustainable management of a meaningful portion of Kamehameha’s 360K acres of legacy lands.

Future distributions from Pear will continue to impact Kamehameha, and the long term impact to the community will almost certainly be well in excess of the above numbers.

The data is reflected of Kamehameha Schools FY19-20 reports*