About
Pear VC, Sheffield United
Seeded DoorDash, Applovin, Dropbox, Gusto, Guardant Health,…
Seeded DoorDash, Applovin, Dropbox, Gusto, Guardant Health,…
Articles by Pejman
-
Tech's Most Unlikely Venture Capitalist
Tech's Most Unlikely Venture Capitalist
In 1992 I was homeless in Silicon Valley. Well, not homeless, exactly.
256 Comments
Activity
32K followers
-
Pejman Nozad reposted thisPejman Nozad reposted thisThe early application deadline for PearX S26 closed recently — and we’ve already received thousands of applications. 🚀 Our team has been so impressed by the caliber of founders and we're reviewing applications as quickly as we can! The best part? The regular application deadline doesn't close until April 12. If you’re building at pre-seed and looking for a long-term partner from the very beginning, we’d love to meet you. 🍐
-
Pejman Nozad shared thisLast night meant a lot to us at Pear VC! We hosted Stanley Tang for a Poker Night with Stanford University students. I couldn’t help but think about the early days when I first met Stanley and the rest of the DoorDash team. They were just students with a deep sense of purpose, and a willingness to work harder than anyone else. Watching them build DoorDash into a massive, multi-billion-dollar, category-defining company has been one of the great privileges of my life. What makes Stanley special isn’t just what he built, it’s who he is. Despite extraordinary success, he has always remained grounded, thoughtful, and generous. We often talk about soccer, our shared love, and no matter how busy he is, he has always been gracious with his time. He shows up. He listens. He gives back. That consistency of character is rare. I’m especially proud of how deeply he cares about community. Coming back to our office to spend time with students, sharing lessons, encouraging them, that says everything about his values. True leaders don’t just build companies; they build people and strengthen the communities that shaped them. Stanley represents the very best of what entrepreneurship can be: ambition paired with humility, success paired with gratitude, and achievement paired with responsibility. I’m grateful for our friendship and incredibly proud of the man he has become!
-
Pejman Nozad shared thisPearX is not an accelerator. And it’s not traditional VC either. It’s a category that didn’t exist before. For years, pre-seed meant one of two things: Write a small check and wish the founder luck. Or join an accelerator built for speed, not depth. We built PearX because neither was good enough. An institutional-grade pre-seed platform — designed for founders who want to build enduring companies from day zero (and often day -1). If you want quick capital, PearX is not for you. If you’re optimizing for the highest valuation with the least engagement, PearX is not for you. But if you want: • Access to top talent at day 0 — sometimes even before incorporation • Direct involvement from senior partners • Deep recruiting support • Hands-on GTM strategy • A curated, high-signal, exclusive Demo Day • A foundation built to last 10+ years Then PearX is for you. We institutionalized pre-seed without losing the caliber, discipline, and standards of a top-tier venture firm. This is not about moving fast for the sake of optics. This is about building real companies. At Pear, we’ve backed founders at the very beginning who went on to build generational businesses. PearX is how we do that — intentionally, systematically, and with intensity. If you want capital, there are many options. If you want to build something enduring, apply to PearX. Apply at https://pear.vc/pearx/
-
Pejman Nozad shared thisQuiet Giants: The Founders of Gusto Some of the greatest companies aren’t built loudly. They’re built patiently. Josh R. Tomer London, and Edward Kim have quietly built Gusto into one of the most important companies serving small businesses today, and they’re just getting started. No hype. Just insane focus, discipline, and belief in their mission. I met the founders at the very beginning over Persian food! It didn’t take long to know. This was an easy decision to partner. They were clear, mission-driven, and completely committed to serving small businesses with dignity. That clarity never wavered. Payroll isn’t flashy. Taking care of small businesses is. For more than a decade, they’ve stayed focused while continuing to innovate, expanding products, deepening value, earning trust. That kind of execution only comes from conviction and long-term thinking. What impresses me most is not just what they’ve built, but how they’ve built it. We need more founders like Josh, Tomer, and Eddie. Builders with vision. Leaders with humility. Founders who let the work speak.
-
Pejman Nozad shared this🚨 The Early Application Deadline for PearX S26 is in 2️⃣ days! Apply by 𝗦𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗮𝘆, 𝗙𝗲𝗯𝗿𝘂𝗮𝗿𝘆 𝟮𝟮 𝗮𝘁 𝟭𝟭:𝟱𝟵 𝗣𝗠 𝗣𝗦𝗧 and hear back from us by the end of March. If you’re building at the pre-seed stage, PearX is designed to help you move from idea to product-market fit faster: 💰 Get up to $2M in capital 🤝 Work directly with Pear partners—all former founders and operators 🧠 Hire your founding team with dedicated recruiting services 📈 Build your GTM motion with hands-on support 🚀 Pitch to top-tier VCs at our invite-only Demo Day If you're ready to make the jump, apply today: pear.vc/pearx/
-
Pejman Nozad reposted thisPejman Nozad reposted thisCustoms brokerage is the invisible backbone of global trade—and it still runs on manual data entry and spreadsheets. Amari AI is changing that. We’re excited to co-lead Amari’s $4.5M Seed alongside First Round Capital to build the first autonomous AI workforce for global trade. Today, Amari is already powering 30+ firms and helping move $15B in goods annually. We're proud to partner with co-founders Sam Basu and Arushi Vashist as they modernize global trade. 👉 Read more about Amari on our blog: https://lnkd.in/gZjWkJz4
-
Pejman Nozad reposted thisPejman Nozad reposted thisA couple years ago Pear took a chance on me when I had no product or idea, just an ambitious college junior who they accepted into the Pear Accelerator program. They helped us through a number of pivots - I’ll spare you all the details! - and we ended up on a really promising idea. Simply put, without the Pear team Glide may not exist and definitely wouldn’t be where it is today. I have a great amount of respect for the work Ajay and Mar do. Since then, they’ve grown PearX into the best accelerator in the country. Founders get: - Dedicated recruiter support - All-star speakers like the founders of Dropbox and DoorDash - A small, close knit group of other ambitious builders - Introductions to nearly every top tier seed/Series A fund And so many other resources to give you an unfair advantage. If you’re pre-seed or even just have an idea you want to run with, I can’t recommend it enough. Here’s the link to apply: https://pear.vc/pearx/ Excited to meet this year’s batch!
-
Pejman Nozad shared thisWhen I was an angel investor, I was lucky! I sat in small rooms with Douglas Leone (Sequoia Capital). Later, when Mar and I started Pear VC, we were across the table from John Doerr (Kleiner Perkins) There was no script. No marketing theater. No perfectly memorized narrative. Just real conversation. They were smart. Humble. Driven. But most importantly, they were present. They weren’t performing. They were listening. They asked uncomfortable questions. They leaned into the founder’s pain, not just the market size!
-
Pejman Nozad shared thisMar’s dedication to help entrepreneurs is second to none! 🙏🍐 Mar HershensonPejman Nozad shared thisSo much fun this Sunday morning at TreeHacks at the project show. Congratulations to all the hackers and to the organizing students: it is an amazing production that takes huge effort to put together. One of the projects I saw was personal to me as my dad is blind. Team Shepherd (Arjun Oberoi, Shane Mion, Tony Wang , Anthony Chukhlov) built a smart cane to help the 40M blind people worldwide walk without bumping into things. 💚 Shepherd is a motorized smart cane that uses iPhone LiDAR and computer vision to detect obstacles and physically guide the user away from them in real time, and is also able to navigate users using GPS with an interactive voice interface. It was great to run into Vivian Z., my student at Lean Launchpad last year, who was part of Team Mira Mira, who built an AI powered smart mirror that helps you decide what to wear.
-
Pejman Nozad reacted on thisPejman Nozad reacted on thisExcited to share that we’ve invested in Moda's $7.5M round. In the last few weeks, I’ve watched something that product people dream of: founders across the Pear portfolio started switching to Moda… unprompted. Decks, sales collateral, brand assets... all suddenly sharper, faster, better. What’s different about Moda and why we invested: Most AI design tools generate static outputs. Moda is building a design agent that works with you — inside a canvas — and actually has taste. That last part matters more than it sounds. We’re entering a world where content is abundant (ahem, AI slop). Taste is the new bottleneck. Moda is one of the first products I’ve seen that meaningfully closes that gap. It also fits squarely into our “privilege expansion” thesis: bringing high-quality design — historically reserved for top designers, or people with access to them — to everyone. The founders (Anvisha Pai, Ravi, and John) are exceptional: technical, fast-moving, and deeply obsessed with craft. I now use Moda regularly, and I'm excited to be able to share it with all of you. Check it out at the link below. Congrats to the team on the launch, and thank you for letting Pear VC be part of the journey! Excited to invest alongside Quentin Clark (General Catalyst), ChenLi Wang (WndrCo), Sabrina Hahn, and many other founders and operators.
-
Pejman Nozad reacted on thisPejman Nozad reacted on thisExceptional pre-seed consumer and prosumer founders wanted. Over the next 30 days I’m looking to fund and partner with a few wildly ambitious pre-seed teams. First check: $250k–$2M. Pear’s bar is extremely high. But if you’re exceptional, we move fast. Here’s what I’m excited about on the team side: 👯 You and your co-founder are friends. At least one of you is technically brilliant. At least one of you can articulate a compelling vision of the future + think creatively about distribution. 🚢 You have a bias for shipping. With tools like Claude Code, there’s no excuse to show up to a pitch meeting without a demo you’ve at least tested with friends. You ship fast and iterate even faster. ✨ You obsess over UX. You care deeply about time-to-magic. You want to build something people genuinely love. This is your craft. 🥊 You're scrappy. Somehow top people from OpenAI are already helping you for free. You consistently punch above your weight. 🎨 You have taste. You have a strong point of view on how the world should be. Not everyone agrees with it. You take that as a compliment. 🏛 You're in it for the legacy. You’re not a tourist founder. This company could be your life’s work. You act like it. 🌉 SF positive. You’re excited to spend at least 12 weeks building in SF with the Pear team and me. One note: If you’re building a utility (language learning, personal training, etc.), think early about defensibility. I’m seeing too few founders focus on this. Competition is fierce. The biggest consumer companies compound through network effects, data moats, or creator ecosystems. It’s not easy. But that’s the point. PearX applications are open. A warm intro from someone I trust can help you stand out. If someone exceptional comes to mind I’d be grateful if you tagged them below or sent me a DM. 👇
-
Pejman Nozad liked thisPejman Nozad liked thisThrilled to share that Hemanth B. and I joined PearX W26 at Pear VC to build Quinn, the first AI-native commercial property insurance brokerage. Over the years, we've helped family and friends buy and insure over $20M in commercial real estate. And every single time, it was a drag. We'd talk to 10+ brokers, wait weeks, and most of them would come back with one weak quote and no real explanation. So we always felt like we left money on the table. Turns out, this isn't just our experience. Commercial property insurance is a $104B market, and most owners, unless they're one of the largest accounts, get a rushed process, limited options, and coverage that still leaves gaps. Year after year. At Quinn, our agents go deeper on every account than a traditional broker ever could, extracting key details from property documents, building a stronger underwriting story, and shopping the market across the right carriers to win our clients better coverage at cheaper rates. And because we automate the full placement workflow, we bind policies in days and each Quinn broker can support 10x more owners than a traditional broker. We're just getting started, and we're excited to be building alongside an incredible group of founders in PearX W26. And if you own commercial property or know someone who does, I'd love to connect. This problem is too big and too personal to leave unsolved.
-
Pejman Nozad liked thisPejman Nozad liked thisThe early application deadline for PearX S26 closed recently — and we’ve already received thousands of applications. 🚀 Our team has been so impressed by the caliber of founders and we're reviewing applications as quickly as we can! The best part? The regular application deadline doesn't close until April 12. If you’re building at pre-seed and looking for a long-term partner from the very beginning, we’d love to meet you. 🍐
-
Pejman Nozad liked thisPejman Nozad liked thisI'm thrilled to share that I've joined IVP to lead our new Executive Partnerships function. From our first conversation, I've been impressed with the partnership's clarity and conviction on how AI is overhauling how technology gets built and deployed, and the importance of supporting our founders through this historic period. Getting to work with these amazing investors, and an incredible portfolio featuring companies like Anthropic, Baseten, Perplexity, Chainguard, Glean and Abridge, is a dream opportunity. I'll be leading IVP's engagement with senior executives in technology, building a community of leaders who want to stay informed on the most important developments in the emerging tech ecosystem, and connect with peers to discuss how to drive their businesses forward. If that sounds like you, shoot me a note and I'd love to chat! Grateful to the team for the warm welcome, and excited for what's ahead! Let's get to work Steve Harrick Somesh Dash Cack Wilhelm Tom Loverro Eric Liaw Alex Lim Ajay Vashee Shravan N. Davey Nickels Blair Shane
-
Pejman Nozad liked thisLast night meant a lot to us at Pear VC! We hosted Stanley Tang for a Poker Night with Stanford University students. I couldn’t help but think about the early days when I first met Stanley and the rest of the DoorDash team. They were just students with a deep sense of purpose, and a willingness to work harder than anyone else. Watching them build DoorDash into a massive, multi-billion-dollar, category-defining company has been one of the great privileges of my life. What makes Stanley special isn’t just what he built, it’s who he is. Despite extraordinary success, he has always remained grounded, thoughtful, and generous. We often talk about soccer, our shared love, and no matter how busy he is, he has always been gracious with his time. He shows up. He listens. He gives back. That consistency of character is rare. I’m especially proud of how deeply he cares about community. Coming back to our office to spend time with students, sharing lessons, encouraging them, that says everything about his values. True leaders don’t just build companies; they build people and strengthen the communities that shaped them. Stanley represents the very best of what entrepreneurship can be: ambition paired with humility, success paired with gratitude, and achievement paired with responsibility. I’m grateful for our friendship and incredibly proud of the man he has become!
Experience & Education
-
Pear VC
View Pejman’s full experience
By clicking Continue to join or sign in, you agree to LinkedIn’s User Agreement, Privacy Policy, and Cookie Policy.
Languages
-
English
Native or bilingual proficiency
-
Farsi
Native or bilingual proficiency
-
German
Limited working proficiency
Recommendations received
5 people have recommended Pejman
Join now to viewOther similar profiles
Explore more posts
Explore top content on LinkedIn
Find curated posts and insights for relevant topics all in one place.
View top content