Pear Builders: A Community of Seasoned Software Engineers Starting Companies Soon

Pear VC
3 min readOct 5, 2020

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We believe that great founders are made not born. Great founders surround themselves with people who help them grow. Great founders are constantly learning how to be better builders and better storytellers.

Engineers in our network have told us that the community they had in college disappeared upon graduation. Those engineers collaborated with us to create Pear Builders, which provides a support system to engineers with a few years of work experience who aim to start a company soon. Pear Builders is only for engineers who have the determination to solve the world’s biggest problems, and who are seeking to lean-on and to support other engineers to grow together.

Company building cannot be achieved alone. To attain customers, employees, and investors, you will have to communicate your vision so they see the future with you. To lead people through the ambiguity of the early stage, you need to be a storyteller as well as builder. We want to give you the opportunity to become better storytellers in a supportive environment and learn a lot from each other along the way.

The Program

Pear will run 10 person, intensive month long cohorts six times per year. While most of our Builders have full time jobs, we expect everyone to participate in all of our programming which occurs in the evenings:

Week 1 (6 hours): The week will start with members of the Pear team introducing themselves and going over their life story. This usually takes the form of a slide deck with pictures that you talk over. Pejman’s story of being homeless in Silicon Valley to eventually founding Pear always seems to leave people speechless. Throughout the rest of the week, each cohort member will get a chance to present their story to the group.

Weeks 2–4 (3 hours per week): Each cohort member will be expected to meet with three of their peers each week. Pear will coordinate the schedule and provide a list of questions to guide the conversation. The goal is to find thought partners, friends, and maybe even co-founders.

Graduation (1 hour): Pear will host a ~virtual~ Happy Hour where Builders will get the opportunity to meet the rest of the Pear team. We will welcome you into the larger Builder community and share what resources are available to you going forward.

After the Cohort

Your relationship with Pear doesn’t end after the cohort. We currently have a thriving and growing community. There are also resources that you can take advantage of on a monthly basis:

  • Slack channel with a Donut integration to meet Builders from past cohorts
  • Office Hours with Pear Partners to discuss ideas
  • Exclusive fireside chats with industry experts
  • Happy Hours hosted by Builders on topics ranging from energy to healthcare

If you’re an engineer with a few years of work experience that is thinking of starting a company soon, we’d love to meet you! Fill out a short application and someone from our team will be in touch about joining our next cohort.

→ Click here to apply!

Meet some of our Builders!

Nancy Hung, MIT ’19 // Nuna Health
Pranjal Daga, NU ’15 // Cisco
Melissa Zhang, Duke ’17 // Coinbase
Jon Khaykin, UC Berkeley ’17 // Affirm

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Pear VC
Pear VC

Written by Pear VC

0 to 1 venture capital. We partner with entrepreneurs from day zero to build category defining companies. Founded by @pejmannozad and @MarHershenson. | pear.vc

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