Pejman Nozad is a founding managing partner at Pear VC. He is often cited as one of the most successful angel investors and now seed investor with over 300 investments, including seed investments in Dropbox, DoorDash, Gusto, Lending Club, and many others.  

After an amazing career in the Bay Area he recently bought a house here in LA. Pejman, so good to have you on the show today.

Minnie, thank you so much for inviting me. I'm so excited to be here. And I really appreciate it.

Great. Well, and I think that, you know, you have a really well-known brand, in the bay area, but you know, we have a mostly LA audience. I don't think everyone really knows your story. So if you could humor me a little bit and start me on sort of how you, moved to the U S and sort of how your journey.

I'm actually venture capitalist by accident. So it wasn't, the usual path to become a venture capitalist, but maybe going back, I grew up in Iran. I was 10 years old when revolution happened and then two years after the war with Iraq, which, went for eight years. So I'm, um, I'm a child of revolution and war and difficult times.

‍

My teenagers. and I ended up, playing professional soccer and I was really good at writing for soccer magazines, but I was 17 years old. I started to write for sports magazine and they gave me most popular, radio talk show for sports in Iran, I went to college, I dropped out college, but my brother who actually, had this American dream and he was denied visa almost every month He pushed me to go to U S embassy. So I went to U S embassy and somehow the woman over a day, liked me and. She gave me a visa to come to America. And you know, when you're an early twenties, you don't analyze much of the future. And then your risk-takers. I came to America in 1992 with $700 and I, uh, didn't speak any word English.

So I think, and that money was gone because I was in love with the girl in Nirvana, and I thought I'm going to lose her. So I should call her every day. So I had this bag of quarters. Every day going to pay for it. And this is 1992. There was no, no WatsApp none of these things I think would pay for it. I was like four or $5 per minute to Iran.

So the good money was gone. And what do you do? You have no money? You don't speak language. So I ended up getting a job in San Jose. 30 minutes drive from where we were. And my first job was a carwash in San Jose. So I started to wash cars, but I tell you I'm the best car washer the world has ever seen.

I wash cars like nobody. Yeah. My English improved by money ran out. So I slept in the street in this town. I slept in my car. I got a job in the yogurt shop and I slept in an attic above that yogurt shop. And if you search internet, you see photo of me sleeping and living in that attic, waking up every morning at 5:00 AM.

Opening up the yogurt shop, 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM going to college, come back study. One of these nights, I saw an advertising for Persian rug gallery in downtown Palo Alto. And, you know, I growing up Iranian or Persian carpets. I felt I know something, but I didn't know anything. So I called for this job opportunity, which was at salesman in this gallery.

You know, rejected right on the phone, but I insisted that the owners should meet me. So he made my neck next day, I went with suit and tie and somehow he liked me and he hired me on the spot. So I became a rock salesman, this amazing, beautiful drug gallery in downtown Palo Alto on university avenue actually, is this street that Stanford university is for those of you haven't been.

So I started to sell Persian rugs. I became really good at it. After a few years, I sold a few million dollars worth of ragging one year, but Persian rugs, go to people's homes. Like for example, you come say page one, I have a, I have a home in Palo Alto. I'm looking around for my living room. We start to look at rugs and we bring all the rocks, your home.

By coming to your home. I spent a couple of hours with you and your family or children and your partners. And in, in fast forward, I learned all of my customers are venture capitalists CEOs, and I was really amazed by who they are. Not, not only the wealth they had, it was mostly. And they were describing what they're doing was all building companies based on knowledge.

And, and I thought this might be an opportunity for me, a lifetime opportunity for me to learn more than I decided I want to be part of this community. And I was very lucky because I had access to people who normally. Nobody can see them, but I was hanging out with them at the Sunday's barbecue while selling carpets is open comment of barbecue.

And I talking to their friends and, you know, little by little, I learned the word around me. and I, I want it to be part of that community, but I knew. It was like playing an NBA or I won't be the next LeBron James, but I can be the best agent in the league. So I knew my, my strength is the net pro.

I convinced the owner of the gallery to partner with me. And they, trusted me. They believe me. And we, we started to invest our own money. I didn't have much money. I actually was mostly their money. and I tell you, I have.

Maybe the worst track record in the first nine to 12 months was, I didn't know what I'm doing. but I started to meet a lot of great people. I put lot of events, networking events, and this is late nineties. So it wasn't really fashionable. There was no tech crunch, no YC, none of these things. People really like it.

I think. One night. I brought the entire senior partnership of Sequoia capital. This is Mike Mortiz, Doug Leoni, Jim Goetz. And I brought hundred entrepreneurs, mostly from Stanford university, and everybody loved it. Nobody has seen so much energy in the room. So little by little. I learned, and my network grew and my bill though became stronger.

Venture capitalists, took my calls and, you know, I ended up being the first investor in Dropbox, you know, danger and many others.

and how was that transition going from doing VC and the rug shop to building pair with, with Mar

around 2009, I was investing my own capital and I was looking at cap table and I saw entrepreneurs raising a million dollar.

I was part of that and one or two funds for investing, but founders are left alone right after raising a million dollar. And I decided to build an institution to serve founders on day zero. But I knew I want to partner with an entrepreneur, not investor as my partner. And I reached out to Mar and my current partner.

And, we know each other for 21 years. In fact, I funded her husband's in 2000 and her company in 2003, and it took me four years to convince her, but I didn't give up in 2013, she agreed to come and work out of a coffee shop together So we partnered in 2013, we are being and gang I'm a college dropout. She's Stanford PhD with 24 patents. I have zero patents. She started three companies from scratch solar. I never started a company, but.

a huge network. I understood landscape of venture capital investing. at that time, I was invested in 120 30 startups. Most of them didn't work. They wanted work became really big. So we started there and pear is now eight years old. we want to be the best partner for entrepreneurs at earliest stages, really helping them companies go from zero to product market fit.

We have raised three funds. We have close to $500 million under management investing. You've got a fund in three, which is 160 million. You're generally invested in almost everything. I'd love to just hear about some of those early investments. I mean, a lot of those are really iconic names, you know, can you share a little bit, like, when did you invest in Dropbox or door dash?

Yeah, I'll talk about Dropbox. So I think Dropbox was. No. I had seven years experience as an angel investor. So it wasn't the early time. actually had a headache that day and I didn't want to go to YC demo day. And the YC demo day, I don't know it was at that time, 20 teams or 30 teams, it was in mountain view, but I decided to go.

And then when drew and Arash came to give this like two minutes or three minutes presentation, it was a one I had the same problem. Like how do you store your files? And they're very clearly articulated the product and the pain. And I look around and said, yes, all these companies who have a product for Google and Microsoft, I don't use it because they don't work.

So I reached out to drew and Naraj, and obviously arises Iranian. I spoke a little bit Farsi, we connected. And then he connected to me and I invited them to the rug gallery over tea. So I got to know them, but it was kind of a clear for who they were that they have. It's such a great understanding of the problem and the product was working at that time.

And after spending few meetings them, it was very, very obvious that this is a really great team after the big market, but who knew could be a $10 billion public company today. And, and I, and I think I started to help them fund. Especially with Sequoia capital B. You actually had a term sheet. We did it over a piece of napkin at the Italian restaurant need drew our Ash and Samuel Gandia at that time was at Sequoia capital.

Everything happens in like 72 hours and, um, it was the rest of history, Amazing. And, and this is you and the rug gallery angel money. How were you able to get allocation?

Yeah, I I think that not many people were an angel investor at that time. It wasn't today that everybody has the opportunity to be Angela misses. There was a few in town and my nitro was pretty big. So my kind of art, the beginning was connecting entrepreneurs to the right people, either venture capitalists or exactly.

If it's like, for example, if you were hiring good engineers, I was able to introduce you or take you with me to the home of VP of engineering, of Netscape at that time. and, and th that person, the VP of engineering of Netscape, it was my friend was openly sharing that this is how you, how you hire engineers.

So these things didn't happen in early 2009, nothing was available. And I think that is again, a part of the magic of Silicon valley as the whole. I'm not saying geographically, the whole tech that people are reading so much to share. And it's just astonishing to me. And in the fact that I'm the entire Silicon valley, didn't judge me and they opened their arms to, to invite me to be part of this community.

It's one and the other one being able to help the entrepreneurs I was taking through their home. And I think this is, this is very rare. You don't see it in many industry,

but I tell you it wasn't, easy also.

I remember, I went to Doug Leone, his home one day to sell carpets and the end of the day, which I think he's an Italian negotiator.

I told Doug that I can help Sequoia capital to invest in really good companies. And he paused and I said, how I said, this is what I can do. What are put an event together for you? And he actually didn't. doubt me because, okay, you're a rock salesman. You're coming to my home and you want to help Sequoia capital invest in the next Google.

That sounds kind of crazy, we did it. He said, okay, on Monday morning, I come to your office, 7:00 AM talk about it. And you know, we opened the gallery at 10:00 AM, so I made. My life mission that the tea's ready, everybody's ready. And he came 7:00 AM Monday morning. And then this is the event we did.

And this was actually a beginning of a long-term relationship with Doug Leoni. And then eight years down the road, I called him and I said, you should meet with this Dropbox people. Then, you know, at that time he was trusting me anything. I was sending to him and they ended up investing in Lubbock. So he believed me early on, and then they ended up investing in Dropbox.

And what about ones that maybe weren't obvious? Like I'm going to pick on door dash. were a lot of companies. , I even think SpoonRocket was maybe even in the same cohort. How did you, made you think company or these entrepreneurs

Yes, that's a great question. We actually exact, I think it was when rocket and few others think Munchery and I mean, there's so many food delivery company, so modern ally, we wanted to invest in kind of the food delivery space. And then. We met Tony and the team and these spend the whole week at their office going back and forth on the whiteboard, really understand their vision.

So for few reasons, we really like door dash one. I think when we spend time with the team, four of them, we, we, it was very obvious that this is a fantastic team with the vision and even day one. Tony was describing door dash as the most sophisticated logistic company. It's a tech company can move anything from point a to point B in the last month.

And he was saying, we start with food and if I can believe that. I scream before he gets melted then I can deliver anything in the book. So that was the vision. And I said,even today, investors in public make a mistake to think that door latch is a food delivery company though.

That is a logistic company that can deliver anything under a certain amount of time, but they're doing a lot of food. That's one thing, the second thing is we really liked, but the door that was there, not touching food, of the companies at that time, it said they were going to make food and we're going to deliver it for you.

We knew the unit economics was not there. so we'd like it that I say, okay, restaurants are good at making food. They're terrible at delivering. So we're going to solve that delivery part of it. And the third one, they were all technologies, mathematician, all four of them. and they said, we knew we have to build ground up technology for this.

And by the way, The seat in investing wasn't easy. Everybody was like people who you knew, Tony, the one in best, it was a two and a half million dollars round. And it was so tight. So really worked so hard to make sure we get allocation, CRV and, uh, postdoc at that time, Keith Rabois with, at foster for the major investor.

And there was not much allocation, but we did it. And we actually kept investing in the company in few later.

Well done. and why do you think you've picked so well? What do you attribute your success to?

Sure. Well, I have a philosophy of after 20 some years, I actually think in the venture capital investing, there is not one model that works a variety of different models. It can be Sequoia and benchmark or YC or angel investor Andreessen Horowitz, or you can be my friend, Mike Speiser that every three years he starts a company.

It's a billion dollar company. He only does one company every three to five years. So. The key is you have to be exceptional at it. it should be something really authentic to you and Even at pear, we working really hard to making sure three things it's working really well.

One is sourcing. So we spend a lot of time to build a playbook on how we see entrepreneurs and people have different way of doing it. We have our own way today, and it it's something that differentiated.

and I think as you can see our role, there's more investors, more capital. the value of sourcing is more than ever. Somebody like me could be building community and Netflix, somebody said I'm really good at writing blogs for marketing. And I want to be the number one person in the world for, for marketing or go to market strategies.

So to its ability to pick winners, which is the hardest part of this business actually early, because there's no product, no customers and windows deals. And third, the ability to help. Um, that should be very authentic. That how do you help, for example, the pair helping you from zero to product market fit, whatever it takes.

So everyone says that they invest in great teams. what are you looking for in great teams? we like founders who can articulate vision.

And sometimes you see founders, their vision is actually more about raising money. Next series a and series B rather than where are you in in 10, 20 years? I'll give you an example. I was with drew Houseton, the co-founder and CEO of Dropbox at the 10th anniversary of We were walking before the crowd was coming.

It was a massive. Kind of ceremony. And I said, drew, if you take the same walk, 10 years down the road and the 20 years of any rara city of Dropbox, where do you want Dropbox VP? And he said, I want Dropbox to reduce the days of work from five to four days. and he didn't explain anything more, but you can see the vision rather than he explained a product or saying, yeah, I want to be like $10 billion revenue company.

He was explaining me the role. Dropbox has impacted so much that You can complete your task in four days instead of five That's how I'm saying people share their vision rather than describing company or product. last, I think founders like drew are, the ones who invest a lot in themselves to grow as the company grows.

So are learner these are the people who surround, ourselves by coaches. By advisors and the constantly read actually one of the gatherings we had, one of our young founders asked drew, you were a hacker. And how did you build the company? And then now you're a CEO of a public company.

He said, I didn't know I was a hacker, but I knew if I read it. I can learn people who spend a hundred thousand dollars for private lunch with Andy Grove and Intel. I bought his book for 20 bucks and he has a list of, I think, 13 or 17 books. I recommend that your audience, actually search and see, drew Houseton book recommendations.

 I think these are people who will have principles and values and stick to their values. you know, door dash, I think it's $70 billion company. Tony takes 15 minutes customer calls.

Really still.

Yes. He actually has every day, 15 minutes to go and somebody yell at him. They don't know it's Tony and said, oh, my lunch came late. You guys are terrible. And he takes, charge is just going to see what's going on. So attention to detail is really important, even if you're running a $70 billion company.

 I think they prioritize their work. never see these founders. In to many social events, you don't see them in conferences. You, you don't see them hang out with venture capitalists. They are, there are two places. They are there with their team and with their customers.

Hmm, that's great. That's interesting. and, how do you prioritize the work of pair and like, how are you thinking about where you're putting your time and effort.

Yeah, personally, I'm actually very lucky that my partners have started and sold eight companiesSo. they're heavily involved in operation of our portfolio. I'mMost of my time is going now today to building the team and infrastructure and really thinking about sourcing and helping and how do we have more team members and infrastructure to help founders at this kind of zero to product market fit? as you know, we have. operations inside five universities as a result, 49% of our companies now founded by students.

So we have 30 students worked for us. They are not investing on our behalf. So this is not like dorm room fund. mostly they do sourcing portfolio consulting. They do events and, you know, 23 of our portfolios. Uh, ended up being venture capitalists. I think it's the best program in the world to become venture capitalists through universities.

 So that's one. We have a business plan competition every year that we give $25,000 on cap note and we have an accelerator. So we are expanding. One of the things that I'm thinking. We see most of the founders at universities before anybody else. How do we see an engineer at Stripe before anybody else?

So we are designing few programs to see entrepreneurs at this large companies before even they start the company. That's where I'm looking at.

Yeah, I think that's an interesting challenge How do you see the engineer at Stripe? Who's about to start the next great FinTech.

Yes. We actually started a new program called per founder. Circle is a free program. eight weeks program that is speaker series workshops for particular group of founders. And we're going to repeat that. The first one is for female engineers. So we put the application out there. We've got over a few hundred applicants and we picked 30 and is incredible.

 So I think, most of my time is going to design this kind of community and give before we get, and it's free, you can come to this program and go raise money from anybody you want.

There's no strict.

And we are thinking the next 10, 20 years. of pear and what kind of team members, we need. Um, I have heard that in many VC firms partners is like working in they're on their own island and they come and Monday present to each other. Our firm is very different. Everybody knows what's going on. and just to make sure I talk about sort of the basics, I think out of that $160 million fund, I think seed stage, sort of a couple million dollar investment is kind of your sweet spot.

Yeah. So typically we write anywhere between 500,000 to $2 million initial check, obviously. We have written a hundred thousand, 250,000. I read written $3 million, but that's kind of the sweet spot. we don't categorize company, but the amount they raised, but ma mainly the stage they are, you could have raised $5 million.

You still in pre-seed stage because you don't have. But you could have raised 500,000, you already in seed stage because somebody used your product. So that's how we look at our role, but we continue to invest in our companies, um, in different rounds. And sometimes I learn $50 million valuation. It's too expensive, $500 million too cheap.

 No door dash, for example, we never sold any of our shares or garden health till IPO. and then after that we could have sold door dash multiple times at five and 10 and 20 or $30 billion valuation before IPO. And you can think of as a tiny fund of $50 million, this would have been a huge return.

And so how do you think about sort of the market today and who's raising a 40 million post and they're kind of pre-seed They're, pre-product

Yeah, I think the price is obviously expensive because there's so much capital. that doesn't scare us as much as that we have a short amount of time to get to know the founder. so for us is just this fast pace of rounds coming together. Over two meetings over zoom and never go on the white board is the biggest challenge we have.

I think that few things happen. The pace of innovation is faster than ever. So the amount of really good companies is enormous.

 I think ultimately if you end up being in really good companies early, we'll return your fund.

Even though if you don't get enough allocation, you can always increase our allocation by investing more. I think there are so much capital chasing few good companies, but at the same time, the exits are bigger. When we started the fund, it used to be $1 to $5 billion. Today it's like 10 to $100 billion dollars.

Exits X's are faster, really good companies get to, huge revenue faster than ever. So can you find one or two outliers every year? And the early stages it's doable, but requires a lot of work, a lot of thinking, infrastructure and building the right team.

Got it. So because you can get more allocation over time. does

that mean,

that's gonna happen. You get an allocation is not easy. I think you have to work really hard for our founders and, and then they have to, stand up for you and then say, we won many to invest our patient money. Invest more than pro-rata is not an easy time.

right.

Totally. How about in the first check? Do like, do you like syndicating and is there often an opportunity to co-invest

Yeah, I think we, we do co-invest a lot with other seed investors and angel investors. Typically, especially if we lead the round, let's say we write one to one and a half million dollars check out of 2 million to 5 million round. We always look for co-investors, we're open to it. And I think that's, that's part of it.

We bring different expertiseAnd if we bring people who can compliment what we do, it's good for the company is good for the entrepreneurs. Good for our.

Yeah. and tell me a little bit more about you, know, page man, who are you in the partnership? Are you the, you know, optimistic one? When the companies come to pitch, are you the,

Yes, I'm the Asha. I want to fund everything. And Mars is the. And that's a good cashless teamwork. but yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm actually just let's go do it and kind of my still angel investing mentality.

But the problem is as an angel, invest, not as a VC because you're building a portfolio, every investment you make, that means one less investment in the future. If you bought a build like. For the portfolio companies, I may mean when you mess in bond, there's only 39 left as an angel investor. You just keep doing it.

There's no end And, and, and sometimes people at their earliest stages make this mistake that they give up after series a, because they think, oh, a hundred million dollars too expensive that I shouldn't invest. But in reality is just the beginning. always look at your portfolio the winners.

You just want to go all in. Even at the billion billion dollar, sometimes it's too cheap, but you have to have the stability to keep an information flow from the founder CEO, getting to know the other board members in the loop, not every six or nine months or every 18 months, they show up at your door.

They're raising series B. That's I think, especially for the seed industry. Do you do so much work early on, you take risks more than anybody else. so, and then many of the companies that would be preceded and see, there's not going to be a massive return, but the one that you see light at the end of the tunnel, you just want to keep going and pour more capital into it.

My challenge a little bit is I start to feel like I know what a good seed investment looks like, but I don't really know what a good series B investment looks like. I don't feel as well, calibrated on putting money into the later.

Yeah. I mean, one of the signals you get is that every single series B company investors calling, give me any, can we talk to this company? That means like there's something going on, but obviously you keep a relationship with the founder. You see the numbers, and you see the type of the customer they have, you see actually the type of the people that have been able to hire it is very much telling,

how else do you see. Pair evolving, but really the industry evolving, I think pair, we. We want to be the best farm at zero. Product market fit. We want to build the infrastructure and the team and enough capital for, to fulfill that promise

That's one, I think the industry, I think the era of I'm a series, a investors series B it's gone. I think you have to specialists either. At very early, I'm becoming really best. Or I am a multi-stage fund. I think anything in this, between you become medium. Um, I, and I think you have to build the team and the infrastructure and the know-how to be able to be the best.

And that I think I, first of all, I don't know. What is the difference between series a and series B used to be, you don't know,

Because if you are saying I'm the best series a investor, I think Greylock, in addition, Horowitz and Sequoia will claim the same thing. And they haven't. I just heard today that additional was like 273 people to have an army and another 272 people. In addition to that investor that can help us. So how do you say I'm a better investor at that is hard to connect.

right. And I think I heard that Andreessen has more newspeople on staff than tech crunch does. so page nine, you had a front row seat.

As many of these iconic venture funds have evolved. You've known Doug Leoni for decades. Um, do you have reflections on, on how you've seen them evolve?

Well, I actually think number one thing about Sequoia for me has always been obviously the performance. But being able to recruit and train the next generation of it leaders inside these firms, even dog came as a exactly. If salesperson to coy, now he's a global CEO and you can see historically they have been able to recruit people like Alfred Lin and roll-off, and I think there have been always quiet about what they do.

They don't celebrate. With founders have achieved, I mean, that WhatsApp is sold for $19 billion to Facebook and Sequoia was invested in every single round. you never heard about from Sequoia So that, that kind of sharp focusing on delivering And then Doug, particularly. you know, one morning I, up in the morning. I saw a text from Humana at four 30 and I thought he's in China. I said, Doug, we're in China this morning. So no, I was exercising at four 30 because I have so much to do. And he wakes up every morning at 4, 4 30.

So that commitment also, it matters So I think I admire about dog and the Sequoia as a whole thing, but there are some really good. Firms out there they're doing like, I think Anderson hall. It was just an amazing job of, uh, building a different type of a venture capital firm that is full service from zero to IPO and beyond now, I think VC firms have their own hedge fund after because they have all the visibility of the company will last 15 years keeping the stock and growing it.

Yeah. And so one thing you said page one was were saying that founders. Prioritize their time how do you personally think about prioritizing your own time and your, your own email inbox and sort of endless list of things that come to you?

 most of the time, my time is going with my team and entrepreneurs and that's how I prioritize it. And sometimes, you know, I just want to, my day, I want to get three things done. That is the most important thing. And I think about it yesterday. I think it was in the morning. Everything else is secondary.

and if I get that three things done is a good day. I just want to make sure, okay. Those three things done is done at that three things might be an one sentence email to an entrepreneur. It shouldn't be a big task, but the impact is big. So I always think, okay, let's get three things done. And I move things.

I always have time, my calendar. I think if you, have your calendar all the way book, you're not going to be productive. Some people think if I have my calendar, back-to-back meetings means a pretty productive day. I actually think opposite some of my best ideas or conversation I have with people like you.

It's just, I pick up the phone, I called Minnie, Minnie. I had this idea. What do you think? And when he said, so those are the best thing that you want to do. And you want to have time for yourself to think through. I actually played professional soccer, but I came to the U S I was exercising for few years.

I didn't exercise until I met Mike Abbott, like Abbott is he, he was VP of engineering of Twitter, went to Kleiner Perkins, and now he runs secret projects and apple and Mike wakes up in the morning and he runs and swims, I think a mini triathlon every morning. And I said, Mike, how do you do this things sitting on is all in your mind?

And I said, what do you mean? He said, health is the most important thing we have. And I always thought if I do this thing every morning, whatever happened, the next stuff, the rest of the day, even the bad things, I've done the most important thing, which is my health. And I said, yeah, I think he is right. So I'm trying to keep that distance.

Uh, so important. What do you, what's going on in your head when you were playing soccer? What are you telling yourself? What's your mental game? Like? What, when you score, when the other team scores, you know, what are you thinking about?

Focus being a team player, sacrifice for my, uh, Teammates. Um, but yeah, I think y'all, I was, I always wanted to be a great team player and support others.

What position were you?

I played SIM center midfield.

Well, that's the supporting position. There

Yes.

 Well, I learned so much. I actually think soccer is such a reflection of life And I think you are like, life things can change. you can change a game of 90th minutes, either win or lose, but there's always hope.

So keep going at it, even if you're down,

Yes. It's, it's actually, you know, we have accelerator that we have our demo day and I was speaking with them yesterday and I said in soccer, you can score minute one, or you can score me at 90. Both of them is one goal and you can win the game. So when you go fundraise, don't get disappointed. If you hear a lot of nos, because the yes could be the last meeting after the whole, like two months or one month.

Yeah, many parallels with sports. I totally agree. we'll move on. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.

I really appreciate it. They invited me. Thank you so much.