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How to Pitch Pear VC

Pear VC writes pre-seed checks of $500,000 to $2 million and typically targets about 7% ownership, with most of that capital flowing through PearX, its twice-yearly, 12-week accelerator that caps each cohort at 25 teams. If you are searching for how to get in front of Pear before you have a full seed round lined up, that program, not a cold inbound email, is the front door.

What Pear VC Actually Invests In

Pear is a pre-seed and seed stage firm based in Menlo Park with an additional office in San Francisco, founded in 2013 by Pejman Nozad and Mar Hershenson as Pejman Mar Ventures before rebranding to Pear VC in 2016. The firm has grown to roughly $800 million in assets under management across four funds, with Fund IV closing at $432 million in May 2023. Pear has backed companies across fintech, consumer, e-commerce, enterprise software, and biotech, and its portfolio includes DoorDash, Guardant Health, Gusto, Dropbox, Vanta, Branch, Viz.ai, and Aurora Solar, several of which have gone public or crossed billion-dollar valuations. That range matters for a founder deciding whether to apply: Pear is not a single-sector fund, it is a generalist seed firm that leans on operator experience across categories rather than a narrow thesis.

Typical Check Size and Ownership

The clearest, most citable number on Pear's own site is the PearX structure: $500K to $2M checks at pre-seed, with the firm aiming for about 7% ownership and tailoring the exact amount to what a given team actually needs. A separate research summary of the firm puts its overall check range from $250K to $6M across pre-seed and seed, which lines up with Pear writing smaller accelerator checks early and following on as companies graduate into a priced seed round. If you are raising your first institutional round, the $500K to $2M band is the number to anchor your ask to, not the wider range built for later-stage follow-ons.

How Deals Actually Reach Pear

Pear runs three parallel paths into the firm, and knowing which one fits you changes how you should spend your time.

The first and most structured is PearX itself. Pear opens applications for two cohorts a year (recent cycles have been labeled S and W, for summer and winter), with early and regular deadlines and decisions typically landing four to eight weeks after the application closes. This is a direct, open application, no warm intro required, and it is explicitly open to idea-stage teams as well as those with early traction.

The second is Pear Fellows, an apprenticeship-style scouting program that places students and early-career people at partner universities into sourcing roles for the firm. Fellows surface deals from their own networks, meaning some founders reach Pear's partners through a fellow's referral rather than a direct application. It is a real pipeline, but it is not one a founder can apply to directly.

The third is the traditional path: warm introductions from existing portfolio founders, co-investors, or operators Pear already trusts. Pear's own partners have written that they look for signals of product love and market understanding regardless of how a deal arrives, but a warm intro still shortens the distance between a first email and a real read of the deck.

What Pear Looks For at Each Stage

Pear's investment team has been explicit in its own writing about what changes between pre-seed and seed. At pre-seed, the firm has said that metrics matter less than evidence you are building something people actually want, with market size argued from the bottom up rather than asserted with a big TAM slide. At seed, the bar shifts: the firm has written that what matters most is depth of love from a small set of customers, not breadth of casual interest, because a handful of people who are true ambassadors for the product is a stronger signal than a wide base of mild users. If your pitch currently leads with vanity metrics or a market-size slide with no methodology behind it, that is the first thing to fix before applying.

How a Founder Gets In Front of Them

For a founder with no existing relationship to the firm, PearX's open application is the most direct, repeatable way in. Pear states that over 80% of companies that complete PearX go on to raise capital from institutional investors, and the firm frames the program explicitly as preparation for exactly that round, including help building a target investor list and support through negotiation and close. If you are not ready for a 12-week, high-touch accelerator commitment, or Pear is not the right thesis fit for what you are building, your application still needs to land somewhere, and it needs to reach more than one fund to be worth the time you put into it.

That is the problem Pitch Protocol was built to solve. Founders submit one application, from Claude, Cursor, or any AI agent, and get matched against the investment thesis of every partner fund in the network rather than betting the whole effort on a single firm's open window. A short research pipeline asks tailored follow-up questions so partners are reviewing substance, not a generic deck, and partners typically decide within about 48 hours. If Pear VC's pre-seed structure does not fit your timeline or your sector, applying once through Pitch Protocol puts the same pitch in front of the rest of the network without you having to track a dozen separate application calendars.

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Skip the cold outreach. Apply once, free, from the AI agent you already use. It takes about ten minutes, and the funds that match reach out to you directly. Apply to Pitch Protocol →

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does Pear VC typically invest at pre-seed

Pear VC writes pre-seed checks of $500,000 to $2 million through PearX and typically targets about 7% ownership, tailoring the exact amount to what a given team needs. A separate research summary puts the firm's overall range from $250K to $6M across pre-seed and seed, which reflects smaller accelerator checks followed by larger seed round participation.

What is PearX and why does it matter for applying to Pear VC

PearX is Pear's twice-yearly, 12-week accelerator that caps each cohort at 25 teams, with cycles labeled S and W for summer and winter. It is a direct, open application with no warm intro required, open to idea-stage teams and those with early traction, and decisions typically land four to eight weeks after the application closes. Over 80% of companies that complete PearX go on to raise capital from institutional investors.

What does Pear VC look for at pre-seed versus seed

At pre-seed, Pear has said metrics matter less than evidence you are building something people actually want, with market size argued from the bottom up rather than a big TAM slide. At seed, the bar shifts to depth of love from a small set of customers rather than breadth of casual interest, since a handful of true ambassadors for the product is a stronger signal than a wide base of mild users.