DoorDash-backer Pear VC closes largest fund to date

Pear VC, a pre-seed and seed investor, has raised its largest fund to date, closing on $432 million for its fourth fund, more than twice the size of its third fund.

Fund IV also beat its target of $410 million, which it listed in a filing with the SEC in May 2022. The firm has not yet filed an updated Form D disclosing the number of investors in the new fund.

“This fundraising by Pear is one of the largest seed funds raised in recent years by a non-multistage fund, marking a bright spot in an otherwise choppy VC environment,” the firm said in a statement.

Pear, based in Menlo Park, California, has grown substantially since launching in 2013. It closed on $50 million for its first fund in 2015, $75 million for Fund II in 2016 and $160 million for Fund III in 2019, VCJ research shows.

Pear did not disclose the names of investors in fund IV, but LPs in its previous fund include the Inasmuch Foundation, Los Angeles Fire & Police Pension System, the Richard King Mellon Foundation and the Passport Foundation, according to Venture Capital Journal research.

The firm said it is “a top-performing firm, having seeded three public companies (DoorDash, Guardant Health and Senti Bio) and many others valued over $1 billion (Gusto, Branch, Aurora Solar, Vanta and others). Pear’s Fund I is a top 5th percentile performing fund, in terms of net DPI,” based on Cambridge Associates’ benchmarks.

VCJ was unable to find performance data for Pear’s funds or substantiate its performance claims.

Pear will be use its new fund to double down on pre-seed and seed investments, especially in areas such as AI. The fund will also be used to back programs that include PearX, the firm’s early-stage boot camp for founders; Pear’s Female Founders Circle, a community for technical female entrepreneurs; and Pear Dorm, which supports student builders.

“We’re operators and founders specializing in pre-seed and seed — that’s all we do all day every day,” said founding managing partner Mar Hershenson. “We are a generalist firm with specialist investors and operators who act as deep thought-partners and know founders’ industries inside and out.”

To date, 41 percent of Pear’s portfolio companies have a female founder and half of the Pear team is female, the firm said.