Pear VC

Eddie Eltoukhy is a Partner at Pear VC who leads the firm's Life Sciences investments. He earned a PhD in Biological Engineering from MIT, where his doctoral work focused on non-viral gene therapies, and an MBA from Stanford's Graduate School of Business. Prior to Pear, he worked in R&D at Kala Pharmaceuticals, held MBA internships at Roche/Genentech and VC firm NanoDimension, and served as Head of Corporate Development at Senti Bio.

Harris Stolzenberg is a Partner at Pear VC based in Boston, focused on the firm's early stage investing on the East Coast. He returned to Pear as a partner after previously serving there as an associate; earlier he worked in investment banking, joined Pear portfolio company Pando, and co-founded and led his own Pear-backed startup, Flok. He also served as Chief of Staff at Pillar VC and studied at MIT, where he played lacrosse and football.

Kathleen Estreich is an investing partner at Pear. She previously co-founded MKT1 and MKT1 Capital, where she invested in and advised early-stage B2B startups from pre-seed through Series A, and earlier built and led marketing and operations teams at Intercom, Box, Facebook, and Scalyr (acquired by SentinelOne). She holds a BA in Political Science and History from Brown University.

Khalil Fuller is a Partner at Pear and Head of Dorm, where he works with student entrepreneurs from undergraduates to PhD candidates on developing their startup ideas. A multi-time founder, he co-founded and led Learn Fresh, a K-12 edtech company, co-founded the venture studio Boundless, and started Trak Changes and the nonprofit Gift Card Bank. He holds a degree from Brown University and an MBA and MA Ed from Stanford, where he was a Knight-Hennessy Scholar.

Mar Hershenson, a Stanford PhD and three-time founder who built analog circuit optimization technology at Barcelona Design, specializes in zero-stage investing with hands-on, teaching-driven founder development to create CEOs.

Pejman Nozad leverages his immigrant background and Persian rug‑gallery roots—selling rugs and serving tea to VCs—to build trust through months of multi‑hour dinners and deep, family‑centered conversations with founders.

Pepe Agell is a Partner at Pear VC, where he leads the firm's EMEA practice and works with founders on go-to-market, sales, and growth strategies. Originally from Barcelona, he moved to Silicon Valley in 2008 and was a leader (Co-CEO) at Chartboost, a mobile advertising platform acquired by Zynga, where he built global sales, customer success, and technical support teams. He previously served as Head of Business Development at 3scale (acquired by Red Hat) and as a Product Manager at Hilti, and holds a Mechanical Engineering degree from UPC Barcelona and ETH Zurich.

Ryan Sells is a Partner at Pear VC who previously served as the first go-to-market hire at three venture-backed startups, including VP of Revenue at Turnstile, VP of Revenue at Pipe, and Head of Business Development at Second Measure (later acquired by Bloomberg, where he led alternative data strategy in the Office of the CTO). He co-founded Dash Fund, a seed-stage fintech fund that raised and deployed $25M across two funds and 57 portfolio companies. He began his career at JPMorgan and holds a BBA in Finance and History from The College of William & Mary.

Shravan Reddy is a Partner at Pear, where he focuses on the firm's PearX pre-seed program. He previously co-founded and served as CEO of Pixelapse, a design collaboration company acquired by Dropbox, then led Dropbox teams building collaboration tools and later worked as an engineering leader at Stripe, where he grew Stripe Treasury and led Issuing bank integrations. He studied CS and Economics at Stanford and earned a Master's in Management Science & Engineering from Stanford.

Warren Shaeffer is a Partner on Pear VC's investing team, focused on consumer investments and Pear's PearX accelerator. Before Pear, he was an angel investor and scout for a16z and a Vice President at Medium, which acquired his startup Knowable, an audio-first learning platform. He was previously co-founder and CEO of Vidme (backed by NEA, acquired by Giphy) and COO of SocialEngine, and holds a degree from Harvard.

Arash Afrakhteh is a Partner at Pear VC who has spent more than two decades working across startups and large technology companies. He co-founded Cariden Technologies, an infrastructure SDN company he bootstrapped for 11 years until its acquisition by Cisco, and previously held software roles at Microsoft, Apple, and Cisco. At Pear he works with enterprise and B2B startups, with a focus on AI/ML, cloud, and data infrastructure, and holds a Computer Engineering degree from Sharif University of Technology.

Alex Gao is an engineer at Pear VC, where he builds systems to support the firm's portfolio. He studied computer science, economics, and public policy at UC Berkeley and continued in graduate school before starting his career as a software engineer at the fintech company OnePay, where he was a tech lead for nearly three years.

Aparna Sinha is an advisor at Pear and currently serves as senior vice president of product management at Vercel. She spent 10 years as a Google executive, where she was part of the early team behind Kubernetes, launched an ML-enhanced CRM system, and expanded her product portfolio to serverless computing and developer tooling for Google Cloud. Her career also includes roles at Stanford, McKinsey, and NetApp, with a focus on enterprise, developer, and AI/ML.

Emma Krivoshein is Pear's Senior Operations Associate, focused on supporting founders and building community. Originally from Oregon, she studied neuroscience and psychology at Chapman University. Before Pear, she managed operations for Verkada's Technical Support Engineering team and built marketing operations at LatchBio.

Jenny Thai leads marketing and communications for Pear and helps founders with storytelling and go-to-market. She previously built brand, content, and communications programs at startups including Asana, Clearbit, Dropbox, Yammer, and Vanta, where she most recently led content marketing. She holds a BA and MA in History from the University of California, Berkeley.

Laura Wright is a Talent Partner at Pear VC with eight years of technical recruiting experience spanning fintech, logistics, and real estate tech. She previously led or supported technical hiring at Uber, Afterpay, and Brex, including specialized pipelines and international team expansion. She holds a degree in Child Studies and Early Education and focuses on helping early-stage founders with hiring strategy and recruiting AI talent.

Maryna Sivaieva works on the talent team at Pear, helping founders recruit their earliest and most important hires. She has a background in recruiting across industries including trucking, SpaceX, Neuralink, and Plaid, where she built and scaled recruiting functions. Originally from Ukraine, she is now based in Boston.

Nate Hirsch started his career in tech recruiting at a boutique Silicon Valley agency (VonChurch), then joined Uber in 2015 as one of its first technical recruiters, focusing on machine learning and maps roles, before moving to Facebook (Meta) to build recruiting processes and lead West Coast leadership recruiting. At Pear, he advises founders and leaders on making key hires and helping teams build effectively. He holds a Mathematics degree from the University of the Pacific.