Mar Hershenson

Background

Mar Hershenson is a Founding Managing Partner of Pear VC, a seed-stage venture capital firm she co-founded with Pejman Nozad in August 2013 (originally as Pejman Mar Ventures, rebranding to Pear VC in 2016) ¹². She is based in the San Francisco Bay Area ³.

Originally from Barcelona, Spain, Hershenson graduated with honors with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Universidad Pontificia Comillas in Madrid ⁴⁵. She arrived in Palo Alto in 1995 at age 21 to pursue graduate studies at Stanford University, where she earned her PhD in Electrical Engineering in 1999–2000 for breakthrough work in analog circuit design optimization ⁴⁵⁶. She was a classmate of Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin at Stanford ⁴.

Before entering venture capital, Hershenson founded three startups over 13 years ³⁵. Her first company, Barcelona Design, developed optimization technology for analog semiconductor design ⁵⁶. Her second startup, Sabio Labs (enterprise software), was acquired by NASDAQ-listed Magma Design Automation, where Hershenson served as VP of Product Development for two years post-acquisition ³⁴. She also co-founded Revel Touch ⁴. Across her startup career, she holds 14 patents ³.

Hershenson served as a Consulting Professor at Stanford for nearly a decade, teaching the Analog Circuit Design course ³⁵. She currently lectures at Stanford University, teaching the Lean Launchpad entrepreneurship course ³⁷.

She has been recognized by MIT Technology Review as a Top Innovator Under 35, named a Champion of Innovation by Fast Company (2002), named in EE Times Top 10 Women in Microelectronics, and awarded the Design Automation Conference’s Marie R. Pistilli Achievement Award ³⁴⁵. Hershenson has appeared on the Forbes Midas List five consecutive years (2021–2025), ranking #31 in 2024 — the second-highest-ranking woman on the list that year (behind Luciana Lixandru at #18, out of 13 women total) ³⁸. She is a founding member of All Raise, founder of Equity Summit (connecting underrepresented VC GPs to LPs), and serves on the board of trustees of Harvey Mudd College and the advisory board of Carnegie Mellon University’s ECE department ³⁵.

Stated Thesis

Pear VC publicly describes itself as specialists in pre-seed and seed investing, focused on helping founders go from “0 to 1” ¹⁹. Hershenson has stated that the firm’s approach is to invest at the “zero stage” — before products exist — and to develop founders rather than merely select them ¹⁰.

Hershenson publicly emphasizes:

• Founder development over picking winners: “I went through that experience at Barcelona where I didn’t have support, nobody believed in me and said Mar you could run this company. That’s why I want to teach founders to be the best they can be” ⁶.
• Success through people, not ideas: “To make a company succeed, you should think in terms of and, not or. Team and market and execution” ³.
• Partnering for product-market fit: “Most investors in our firm have been founders and we know how hard and intense it is to go through the search of PMF” ¹⁰.

Pear’s stated focus areas include AI, B2B, consumer, biotech, fintech, climate tech, deep tech, enterprise, healthcare, and SaaS ¹³⁹.

Inferred Thesis

The following analysis is based on 24 verified Pear VC portfolio investments where Hershenson’s involvement is documented or implied through her role as co-founding managing partner. Pear VC has made approximately 260–300 total investments across various data sources ¹², so this sample represents roughly 10% of the full portfolio. Percentages should be interpreted with caution given the small sample of publicly notable investments.

Sector Distribution (based on 24 unique verified investments)

• Enterprise SaaS / B2B Software: 6 companies (25%) — Gusto, Vanta, Affinity, Solvvy, Addepar, Orby AI
• Healthcare / Biotech: 5 companies (21%) — Guardant Health, Senti Bio, BioAge, Viz.ai, Recora
• Consumer / Marketplaces: 4 companies (17%) — DoorDash, Zoosk, Local Kitchens, Path
• Fintech: 3 companies (12%) — Lending Club, Cardless, Piston
• AI / Deep Tech: 2 companies (8%) — Cognition, Mext
• Climate / Energy Tech: 2 companies (8%) — Aurora Solar, Pearl Street
• Mobile / Developer Tools: 2 companies (8%) — Branch, Dropbox

Note: Cognition could also be classified as Enterprise SaaS given its developer tools focus. It is counted once under AI / Deep Tech to avoid double-counting. Kindroid AI (1 company) is excluded from the sector count pending independent portfolio verification — it appears on Pear’s seed investment page ⁹ and AI founders blog post ¹¹ but not on the main companies page ²⁵.

Stage Distribution

Pear invests overwhelmingly at pre-seed and seed. Of the 24 verified investments in the portfolio table, all are at seed or pre-seed stage. The firm’s follow-on investments at Series A and beyond represent continued support for existing portfolio companies rather than new entries ¹⁹.

Geographic Focus

Pear is heavily concentrated in the San Francisco Bay Area and broader Silicon Valley, consistent with its deep Stanford ecosystem ties ¹⁹. The firm operates from offices in Menlo Park and San Francisco (Mission Bay) ¹¹³.

Check Size

$1M–$6M at seed, with a target of approximately $2.5M per initial investment ¹⁴. Pear’s seed portfolio companies raise an average Series A of $16.9M, compared to the industry average of $10.9M, suggesting strong signaling value ⁹.

Founder Profile Patterns

Pear is notably student-centric: roughly 50% of portfolio companies have student-founder origins through programs like PearX (their accelerator) and Pear Garage (for Stanford students) ¹¹⁵. Multiple portfolio companies (DoorDash, Affinity, Branch, Aurora Solar) trace their origins to Stanford-affiliated programs ¹¹⁵¹⁶.

Co-investor Patterns

Notable co-investors across Pear portfolio companies include Founders Fund, Sequoia Capital, NEA, 8VC, Khosla Ventures, and Tiger Global ⁹¹¹.

Notable Gaps

While Pear claims a generalist approach, the verified portfolio shows limited representation in pure consumer social, gaming, crypto/web3, or defense/government technology. The firm’s biotech and healthcare investments (Guardant Health, BioAge, Senti Bio, Viz.ai) represent a meaningful concentration that is not always emphasized in public messaging.

Portfolio

Note: This table represents approximately 10% of Pear VC’s ~260–300 total investments ¹². Many exact investment dates are not publicly disclosed. Years marked “~YYYY (founded)” use the company’s founding year as a proxy. Early investments (Dropbox, Lending Club, Zoosk, Addepar, Path) were made by Pejman Nozad as an angel investor and later folded into Pear VC’s track record ¹⁴. Gusto’s year is based on Pear’s statement that they met the founders in 2012 ¹⁸.

In Their Own Words

On measuring success:

“That’s how I measure my success. By helping founders from 0 to 1, it will generate great companies, multiple jobs, and so on. But fundamentally, I think growing people is really what makes me happy.” ⁶

On her motivation:

“I went through that experience at Barcelona where I didn’t have support, nobody believed in me and said Mar you could run this company. That’s why I want to teach founders to be the best they can be.” ⁶

On perseverance:

“Success is overcoming failures because there is no success that comes for free.” ⁶

On the Pear team approach:

“We tell founders to think of us as ‘Ocean’s Eleven’: we’re a unique cast with specific skills, a common plan, and coordinated execution.” ¹³

On zero-stage investing:

“Pear has always invested very early, at the zero stage. We have been running an accelerator/incubator for the last eight years. We are doubling down on zero stage.” ¹⁰

On pitching (from her TED talk):

“The secret to successful pitching is FOMO — the fear of missing out. You need to tell your audience a story that will make them feel that if they don’t say yes, they will be missing out on something really big.” ²⁶

On climate tech:

“Super excited (and worried) about Climate Change opportunities. The events that took place this summer opened everybody’s eyes to the reality of climate change being here.” ¹⁰

On work ethic:

“Number 1 ingredient is very hard work. I wake up at 5am…I average 12 hours of work daily.” ⁴

What Founders Say

Tony Xu, Co-Founder and CEO of DoorDash:

“When you first get started, you are always unsure of what you are doing. Pejman and Mar and the rest of the Pear team’s philosophy has always been first and foremost to bet on the people. To a founder, there is nothing more confidence-inspiring and inducing than to have someone say that to you — that they have your back.” ¹⁵

Note: Pear discovered DoorDash at a demo day, met the co-founders at their Palo Alto apartment, and invested in the seed round. Pear connected DoorDash CEO Tony Xu with SoftBank, which led a $500M funding round. Pear has invested in three companies founded by DoorDash alumni. ¹⁵

Bobyard founder (PearX S23):

“Home — I spent all my waking hours in the Pear office during PearX. Support — the team believed in my vision and took a chance on me. Family — I work out of the Pear SF office now, and every day I see people from the Pear team.” ²⁷

Bobyard founder (PearX S23) on learning:

“I learned what good looks like. I’m a solo founder and a first-time founder. I didn’t know how fast a team could move until I entered PearX.” ²⁷

Advex founder (PearX S23):

“As we’re now a seed stage company, we’ve really been leveraging the hiring help from Pear and it’s been a huge help in understanding how job descriptions should evolve over time and ensuring we hire the right person for the business needs.” ²⁷

PearX founder (unnamed) on fundraising:

“Through the Pear network, we found our CTO and would not have been able to find, evaluate, and hire our technical co-founder without Pear.” ²⁷

No independently sourced founder testimonials were found outside of Pear VC’s own website and blog. The quotes above are from Pear’s marketing materials and should be treated as potentially curated. Additional independent founder quotes were not discoverable through public search.

Sources