Pear VC

On April 21st 5pm we are hosting Susie Wee, PhD, CEO and Co-founder of DevAI,  at Pear VC.  Susie is going to tell us about being a PhD turned CEO. She has an incredible background having led Cisco’s global developer program, holds 57 patents, and earned her PhD in EECS from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. We will be talking about: 💰 AI Researcher Grant, a new Pear program  for entrepreneurial PhDs and Professors working on AI applications.The grant includes $250K in funding and $600K in cloud credits to support company-building efforts. 🚀 PearX, our pre-seed to seed 12 week bootcamp program. Susie was part of PearX S24 and will cover how she went from an ideal to a seed round led by Emergence Capital. 🧑🎓 ➡️ 👩⚖️ General advice for researchers, PhDs, Post-docs and Professors that want to take a technology from the lab/research environment into the market (licensing, incorporation, IP issues, initial hiring, fundraising, etc. RSVP below: https://lnkd.in/gcYevFYq

Really excited to share our latest Pear Healthcare Playbook podcast episode 🎙️ with our newest Pear Industry Council Advisor! What does it really take to scale value-based care across millions of patients? In our latest Pear Healthcare Playbook, I sat down with Dr. Ali Khan, MD, MPP Khan, Chief Medical Officer of CVS Health/Aetna, a CVS Health Company Medicare and one of the most experienced operators in the value-based care world. From Iora Health to CareMore to Oak Street Health, Ali has helped build some of the most transformative models in U.S. healthcare. So grateful for Ali to share his wisdom and time! We covered everything from: 🩺 How to scale a care model from 20 clinics to 200+ 🩺 Why payer-provider alignment is still broken—and how to fix it 🩺 How full-risk contracting can actually work (if done right) 🩺 The future of AI in healthcare operations 🩺 The mindset every founder needs to survive the 0→1 journey in healthcare 🩺 Ali also drops real talk on common startup mistakes (spoiler: you should be pivoting in year one), and why Medicare Advantage is at an inflection point as the pendulum swings from cost reduction to clinical outcomes. Whether you're building, investing, or just curious about how to drive real change in healthcare—I highly recommend taking a listen (pro tip: the podcast episode is more dynamic than the substack post) Link in the comments! #valuebasedcare #healthcareAI Pear VC

Applications for PearX are open now! Apply in the link below! 🍐

Our first Carnegie Mellon Lab to Market Event, accelerating deep tech commercialization brought together an incredible community in Pear VC's San Francisco Studio. 🔬 250 deep tech founders, researchers, corporate partners & investors 🧠 25 speakers at the bleeding edge of their fields, sharing insights in a day-long dialogue 🤝 25 concurrent 1:1 office hour meetings 🍽️ 8 curated dinners across San Francisco, connecting 91 founders, investors & partners in intimate conversations Grateful to our Organizing Committee that brought this formidable day into firm relief: Namrata Banerjee, Jesse Thill, Melanie Simko, Jenny Belardi, Michael Lisanti, Anita Jesionowski, Amy Klinke, Matthew Christian, Cindy Chepanoske, Stephanie Hamil To our incredible event partners Pear VC and JPMorganChase for their sponsorship, thought partnership, and elbow grease: Mar Hershenson, Vivien Ho, Arash Afrakhteh, Emma Krivoshein, Kaitlin Shavey, Hannah Berke, Maile Paulmeier, Justin Krauss, Christina Flakes To our Leadership and Speakers who, many of whom traveled through high winds across the country to lead a forward-looking dialogue: Theresa Mayer, Martial Hebert, Justin Krauss, Aditi Dashputre, Howie Choset, Herman Herman, Xiaoyu Kaess, Ph.D. George Kantor, Alex Acero Larry Pileggi, Arash Afrakhteh, Zachary Lipton Hanseul Nam, Anupam Datta, Jerry Chen Vyas Sekar Anupam Rastogi, Priya Ramachandran, Zico Kolter, Graham Neubig, Gauri J., Scott Dietzen Carnegie Mellon University Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship Project Olympus CMU

I started my first company Barcelona Design back in 1999. At the time, I was wrapping up my PhD thesis on Automated Design of Analog Circuits and I was headed towards an academic career. Almost on a whim, I decided to drop the academic offers and start a company. However, I was completely clueless about how to go about it. After four years as a researcher, I  was vaguely familiar with what a startup was. It was the midst of the dot-com boom, lots of activity and noise but there were far fewer resources around starting a company than today. I remember going to the Stanford bookstore and buying a book on starting a business “Starting a High-Tech Company (IEEE Engineers Guide to Business” (not quite the type of info you would find about startups today in 2025), attending a class at the GSB and trying to hire *senior* people to learn from them. At the time, a PhD founder was not considered the long-term CEO - they needed “a business partner”. Not surprisingly, as soon as I raised the first money, a search for a CEO was started. Although this would be considered “crazy” today, at the time it was the norm. I learned throughout my career that an experienced CEO is not what makes great companies. An early startup needs a founder that is also a great CEO and founders with a growth-mindset can get there. One of the reasons I started Pear was to give people like the old me, a place to start companies and grow into great CEOs. I believe that PhD founders make great founders: we are analytical, we are trained to process a lot of information and come up with new ideas, we know a lot about a very particular area and we are not afraid of learning something new. For those PhD founders that want to grow to be great CEOs, Pear is your place. I want to partner with you to build great companies. Come join us!  https://lnkd.in/gbSaHUAG Come learn more at our info session: https://lnkd.in/gcYevFYq 

🚀 Announcing the Pear AI Research Grant! 🚀 $250K investment + $600K credits We're thrilled to launch the Pear AI Research Grant—a unique opportunity designed to empower pioneering researchers who are pushing the boundaries of Artificial Intelligence. This initiative offers recipients a $250K uncapped convertible note along with $600K in credits, enabling you to propel your groundbreaking research towards real-world applications and transform innovative ideas into world-changing companies. Join a vibrant community of entrepreneurial academics dedicated to solving complex problems, advancing knowledge, and making a meaningful impact on society. At Pear, we have a proven track record of backing exceptional PhDs, professors, and researchers, supporting them every step of the way in turning their visionary ideas into reality. Are you ready to take your research to the next level? Let's build the future together! Learn more and apply now! 👇 https://lnkd.in/ggep2A3i

Applications for Pear VC x Anthropic Hackathon on 4/26 are now open!

Don't miss this great opportunity. A dynamic, fast-paced and all around awesome team!

So grateful to launch Pear VC’s 8th Female Founder Circle Cohort with an incredible group of 40 technical female builders leveraging AI to tackle healthcare, consumer, fintech, proptech, legal, security, infrastructure, enterprise and beyond! We have a 5% acceptance rate and over 50% of our founders raise capital, and our founders have raised over $300M in funding total since 2021. We're grateful to our supporters WilmerHale, Mercury and OpenAI and for the Pear team to share their expertise with this group of future disruptors and leading founders. I have no doubt we will have a unicorn in our batch. Excited for 10 weeks of programming in person in our lively SF Studio!

Today's the day, PearX S25 applications are now open. Find out more on Ajay's post below.