Brian Nichols is the co-founder of Angel Squad, a community where you’ll learn how to angel invest and get a chance to invest as little as $1k into Hustle Fund's top performing early-stage startups

Pejman Nozad grew up in Iran during the Revolution. He played soccer, worked as a sports journalist, and attended six FIFA World Cups. He dropped out of university and moved to the United States at 23 with $700 and almost no English. He found work at the Medallion Rug Gallery in downtown Palo Alto, selling Persian carpets to Silicon Valley's technology elite.

He served Persian tea. He asked questions. He listened. And slowly, over years of conversations with founders and investors in their homes, he built the most unusual network in venture capital one that predated any fund, any deal flow, or any institutional affiliation.

How the Investing Started

Nozad's first investments were small and personal. He started co-investing with the rug gallery's owners through a vehicle called Amidzad Partners in 1999. He made early bets in companies he encountered through his networks, learning how startups worked from the inside while still selling rugs on the side.

In 2013 he formally co-founded Pear VC with Mar Hershenson, a three-time founder with a PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford. The combination was intentional: Hershenson brought technical depth and operating experience, Nozad brought the relationships and the people instinct. The firm launched as Pejman Mar Ventures, rebranded to Pear in 2016.

The Portfolio

Pejman Nozad investments through Pear include some of the most commercially significant companies of the last decade. DoorDash was a Pear investment before the company had launched publicly. The firm backed it at a pre-product stage; DoorDash went public in December 2020 at $39 billion and now trades above $89 billion.

Dropbox was an early Nozad investment. Gusto, the payroll and HR platform, was backed by Pear at inception. Guardant Health, the liquid biopsy company, was a Pear seed. AppLovin, the mobile advertising and gaming company, was another early bet.

Pear raised a $432 million fourth fund in 2023, a 270% increase over the $160 million third fund. The firm now employs 26 professionals and runs PearX, an accelerator for pre-seed AI founders, as well as Pear Dorm, a student founder program.

Eric Bahn of Hustle Fund has said that the best early-stage investors are those who have built genuine trust with founders before any money changes hands. Nozad built a decade of that trust before he had institutional capital to deploy. That kind of relationship-first approach is what Angel Squad is built on 2,500-plus investors across 50-plus countries who invest because of trust, not just because of a term sheet.

PearX and the Accelerator Layer

Pear runs PearX, a 12-week pre-seed accelerator focused on AI founders. The program provides structured go-to-market guidance, investor introductions, and access to the Pear network. It is deliberately small: Pear invests in roughly 50 companies per year across fund investments and PearX companies, maintaining the high-touch model that makes Nozad's approach work.

The firm also runs Pear Dorm, a student founder program that gives students access to the Pear network and small initial checks before they have formally launched companies. About 50% of Pear's portfolio companies have student-founder origins from programs like this. That pipeline reflects Nozad's conviction that exceptional founders start building earlier than most investors look.

The office is located in a former burger joint next to Stanford University. That is not accidental.

The Seed List Crown

Nozad has been ranked #1 on the Forbes Midas Seed List three consecutive years, 2023, 2024, and 2025. The Midas Seed List ranks investors specifically on seed-stage returns, which is a more precise measure of pre-product-market fit judgment than the broader Midas List. Achieving the top spot three years running suggests that Pear's returns are not driven by a single lucky bet but by a repeatable process.

His process, by his own account, is people-first. He spends months in conversation with founders before making an investment decision. He has said he invests in the person's character, not the business plan. He has also said that if you follow trends, you don't end up funding outliers and funding outliers is the entire game at the seed stage.

Shiyan Koh of Hustle Fund has made similar points about the importance of founder character in early-stage evaluation. Spreadsheet analysis can tell you a lot about a company six months in. It tells you almost nothing about whether the founder will push through the hardest moments. That judgment is what makes or breaks a seed portfolio. Angel Squad members develop that judgment alongside Hustle Fund GPs at hustlefund.vc/squad.