Harris Stolzenberg

Background

Harris Stolzenberg is a Partner at Pear VC, the Palo Alto-based pre-seed and seed fund founded by Pejman Nozad and Mar Hershenson ¹. He joined as a Partner on May 20, 2025, announced via LinkedIn, to lead Pear’s expansion onto the East Coast from a base in Boston ².

Stolzenberg grew up in South Florida and attended MIT, where he was a dual-sport athlete in lacrosse and football ³. After graduating, he worked as an Investment Banking Analyst at Deutsche Bank ⁴. He then joined Pando — a Pear VC portfolio company that provides income-pooling financial products — as a Financial Analyst and later Chief of Staff ⁴⁵.

Following Pando, Stolzenberg joined Pear VC as an Associate, where he gained exposure to early-stage deal flow across the Pear ecosystem ². He later co-founded Flok with MIT classmates Jared Hanson and Anthony Emberley — an end-to-end company retreat planning platform targeting distributed teams ⁶⁷. Flok was backed by Pear VC and participated in Y Combinator’s Winter 2021 batch ⁸. After Flok, Stolzenberg spent roughly a year as Chief of Staff at Pillar VC in Boston, where he supported the firm’s investment and portfolio operations and acknowledged learning from partners Jamie Goldstein and Sarah Hodges ².

He returned to Pear in May 2025 as a full Partner — his second stint at the firm and, by his own account, a full-circle return ². He is based in Boston and focused on building Pear’s East Coast presence, visiting universities including Brown, MIT, and Carnegie Mellon to meet founders and promote PearX ⁸⁹.

Stated Thesis

Stolzenberg publicly describes a generalist approach grounded in the belief that transformative companies can emerge across almost any sector ¹. He prioritizes founder quality over specific ideas: “The founders I’m drawn to have deep conviction, high velocity, and an instinct for where the world is going, not just where it is.” ¹

He has expressed particular enthusiasm for backing young founders and students: “You’re seeing more and more that young people — students — can create category-defining companies.” ⁸

On his geographic mandate, he has stated his goal is “making Pear the go-to early stage firm on the East Coast,” citing that “there are good builders across the East Coast” ⁸. Pear’s published stage focus is pre-seed and seed, with check sizes ranging from $250K–$2M at pre-seed (via PearX) and $1M–$6M at seed ¹⁰.

Inferred Thesis

Harris Stolzenberg joined Pear as a Partner in May 2025. As of March 2026 — approximately 10 months into his tenure — no individually attributed investments have been publicly documented. The inferred thesis section below is therefore based on his stated investment philosophy and observable behavior rather than a countable portfolio.

Stolzenberg’s stated investment philosophy is explicitly generalist with a founder-first orientation, which is consistent with Pear’s overall approach across enterprise, consumer, fintech, healthcare, AI, SaaS, deep tech, biotech, and climate tech ¹⁰. He has not articulated sector exclusions or strong preferences beyond founder quality signals.

His behavioral patterns as a new partner are geographic: he is actively courting East Coast founders, visiting Brown, MIT, Yale, and CMU, and running PearX info sessions in Boston and Pittsburgh ⁹¹¹. This suggests his near-term deal flow will skew toward East Coast university ecosystems — a distinct geographic niche within Pear’s traditionally West Coast (Stanford/Berkeley) sourcing.

His background as a founder and operator (Deutsche Bank → Pando → Pear Associate → Flok → Pillar VC) suggests affinity for founders who have operator experience or are building in markets where they have lived the problem firsthand. His own founding experience — co-founding Flok after personally experiencing the coordination pain of remote-team retreats — mirrors the “founder with domain insight” pattern that Pear articulates in its investment thesis ⁶.

No portfolio data is available to compute sector or stage percentages for Stolzenberg individually. Any analysis based on the broader Pear VC portfolio (260+ companies) would reflect fund-level data, not his personal investment thesis, which has not yet been expressed through a documented track record.

Portfolio

No individual investments attributed to Harris Stolzenberg have been publicly documented as of March 2026. He joined Pear as a Partner in May 2025 ², and Pear does not publish attribution data linking individual partners to specific deals.

For reference, Pear VC as a firm has made approximately 260 total investments ¹², with 34 investments made in 2025 and 4 in early 2026 ¹². Notable Pear portfolio companies include DoorDash, Gusto, Guardant Health, Affinity, Aurora, Cardless, and Federato ¹³. These reflect firm-level activity and cannot be attributed to Stolzenberg individually.

No individually attributed investments publicly documented as of March 2026.

In Their Own Words

On the founders he seeks:

“The founders I’m drawn to have deep conviction, high velocity, and an instinct for where the world is going, not just where it is.” ¹

On young founders and the opportunity for students:

“You’re seeing more and more that young people — students — can create category-defining companies.” ⁸

On Brown University’s startup potential:

“It was really awesome to see. I think there will be a lot of companies started from Brown, going forward.” ⁸

On his East Coast mandate:

“There are good builders across the East Coast, and Brown was one of those schools we wanted to spend some time at.” ⁸

On returning to Pear (from his LinkedIn announcement post, May 2025):

“I’ve joined Pear VC as a Partner, spearheading our expansion to the East Coast—starting with Boston.” ²

On his founding experience with Flok and dealing with pivots:

“Before starting a company, I actually worked as a venture capitalist at Pear VC. So, I got to like see more startups than most people have. I was less stressed than most people just knowing that I had seen so many companies pivot before.” ⁶

On validating a startup idea:

“Once you hear the same problem again and again, I think it was pretty clear. We needed to dive in.” ⁶

On PearX’s track record:

“90% of the last batch raised seed rounds led by top-tier institutional firms, and over a third of the batch hit $1M in revenue by demo day.” ⁹

What Founders Say

No independently sourced founder testimonials about Harris Stolzenberg as an investor were found. He joined Pear as a Partner in May 2025, and no public founder reviews, tweets, podcast mentions, or Product Hunt comments attributing investment experience to him individually could be identified across the searches conducted for this profile. Pear VC’s website does not carry testimonials specifically naming him.

Sources