Pear VC: State of Early Venture in 2022
Mar Hershenson and Pejman Nozad founded Pear VC in 2014 to invest in early-stage start-ups in Pre-Seed and Seed funding rounds. Over the years, Pear developed numerous cohort-based programs to work with founders and build new ventures such as Pear Garage, Pear Competition, and Pear Fellows.
The case examines the history and evolution of the early-stage venture capital industry over the last two decades. The case also explores the challenges associated with managing and scaling early-stage venture capital firms. Hershenson and Nozad provide insight into different aspects of early stage venture capitalists’ jobs: deal sourcing, pre-investment due diligence, work to support portfolio companies, and managing the venture capital fund as a business.
Learning Objective
The learning objectives of this case are:
- Understand the changing dynamics of seed stage investing over the last decade.
- Analyze the key investment criteria and the underlying incentives when evaluating investment terms.
- Evaluate the appropriate balance between portfolio operations to support companies and investment sourcing to enhance deal flow.