Mar Hershenson

Founding Managing Partner, Pear VC · 1 appearance on the record.

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investorfounderengineeracademic@MarHershenson ↗LinkedIn ↗pear.vc ↗Wikipedia ↗

Mar Hershenson is a Founding Managing Partner at Pear VC. She holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University and previously co-founded three technology startups.

10statements → 3claims → 2claims resolved → 4/5average certainty → 1.6/5average debate potential → ≈4.0/5argument clarity, estimated → 7said about them ↓

2 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not yet assessed how the 3 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

3 assertions · 1 opinion · 4 insights · 2 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 3 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 2 are resolved, 1 is not yet assessed. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Mar argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported

11 of 13 Pear Launchpad Companies Raised Top 2016 Seed Rounds

“So, you know, last year we had about 13 companies 11 of them ended up raising a seed round from great people. Accel, first round, Index, just really, really top name people. And the other two went back to school.”

Mar Hershenson May 24, 2017 ▶ 5:17 20VC: The Biggest Indicators Of Success In Founding Teams, How To Balance Both Vision and Operations & Taking Money From "The Man At The Rug Store" with Mar Hershenson, Founding Managing Partner @ Pear.vc

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1

none yet certainty 2

none yet certainty 3

100% certainty 4

100% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: speaking style how? →

223 words/min while actually speaking · 5.4 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Mar Hershenson: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews. Their coarse estimate from 16 exchanges on the produced feed is ≈4.0/5, shown at half point precision because the sample is small and produced tape scores higher.

Measured by listening to 3,344 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Mar Hershenson is the aired feed, and an editor cleaned that audio before release. Some of the hesitation was cut before we ever heard it, so read these as floors: the true rates are at least this high. These are measurements of speaking style, not scores. How it's measured →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Across 1 rated episode:

host pushback ▾ 0/10

pushed back at the host ▾ 0/10

setup questions received 85%

host pushback: the hardest questions Harry asked, tap to play ▶ 5:45“How do you decide in those very, very early days which are the ones that are worthy of spending the time on, and what the criteria is at such a nascent early stage of company build…” ▶ 19:55“how do you look to scale your time, obviously time being one of the most important things in VC, when, when there's only two of you and you have a scaling portfolio of board seats …” ▶ 9:57“How do you look to determine what and how does it vary from startup to startup?”

when Mar pushed back ▶ 13:43“Well, you probably don't remember 1999.”

What they said10 What others said7 Episodes1

Everything Mar Hershenson said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Assertion Not publicly verifiable

Seed Startups Without Lead VCs Struggle to Raise Series A Funding

“A seed company that maybe, you know, angel funded and has some sort of party round and there's no clear lead venture person has a much lower chance of getting to a series A than a company that has a lead seed fund behind it.”

Mar Hershenson May 24, 2017 ▶ 19:16 20VC: The Biggest Indicators Of Success In Founding Teams, How To Balance Both Vision and Operations & Taking Money From "The Man At The Rug Store" with Mar Hershenson, Founding Managing Partner @ Pear.vc

Assertion Supported

11 of 13 Pear Launchpad Companies Raised Top 2016 Seed Rounds

Disclosure

Pear VC Evaluates Pre-Product Founders Solely on Obsession and Drive

“And the only thing we're judging is the human being, and the founder, and whether we think they are obsessed, hungry to achieve something.”

Mar Hershenson May 24, 2017 ▶ 6:27 20VC: The Biggest Indicators Of Success In Founding Teams, How To Balance Both Vision and Operations & Taking Money From "The Man At The Rug Store" with Mar Hershenson, Founding Managing Partner @ Pear.vc

Insight

VC Platforms Are Intensive Service Operations Scaling via People, Not Software

“At the end of the day, to be honest, what we do is, you know, you can automate and replicate some of it, but it's a very intensive services business, right? It's people. Everybody's different. Founder has a problem, and they really need that human contact with…”

Mar Hershenson May 24, 2017 ▶ 7:56 20VC: The Biggest Indicators Of Success In Founding Teams, How To Balance Both Vision and Operations & Taking Money From "The Man At The Rug Store" with Mar Hershenson, Founding Managing Partner @ Pear.vc

Insight

Startups Succeed Only by Tackling Their Hardest Problem First

“I think as a founder, you can always be busy, but the only thing that matters is the hardest thing. And a lot of many founders will tend not to do the hard things first. Right. They want to like, it's because you feel more comfortable doing the easy things fir…”

Mar Hershenson May 24, 2017 ▶ 10:17 20VC: The Biggest Indicators Of Success In Founding Teams, How To Balance Both Vision and Operations & Taking Money From "The Man At The Rug Store" with Mar Hershenson, Founding Managing Partner @ Pear.vc

Insight

Concise Founder Communication Is a Top Predictor of Startup Success

“But again, I think it's almost the way the CEO or the founding team communicates. It's a great predictor of success. And again, I think being a good communicator, it's obvious, but the people that are concise and size and they come to a meeting and they're lik…”

Mar Hershenson May 24, 2017 ▶ 11:41 20VC: The Biggest Indicators Of Success In Founding Teams, How To Balance Both Vision and Operations & Taking Money From "The Man At The Rug Store" with Mar Hershenson, Founding Managing Partner @ Pear.vc

Insight

Only 1 in 100 Startup Pitches Generates Strong Investment Conviction

“You meet a hundred companies, and 95 of them, you know, it's a clear no, four of them, it's like, maybe, and one of them, you're like, oh my god, I gotta do it”

Mar Hershenson May 24, 2017 ▶ 17:07 20VC: The Biggest Indicators Of Success In Founding Teams, How To Balance Both Vision and Operations & Taking Money From "The Man At The Rug Store" with Mar Hershenson, Founding Managing Partner @ Pear.vc

Assertion Supported

Active Seed Fund Involvement Typically Lasts 18 to 24 Months

“The nature of seed is such that they're around for 18 to 24 months, right? It could be less, it could be more, but on average, that's the number.”

Mar Hershenson May 24, 2017 ▶ 20:48 20VC: The Biggest Indicators Of Success In Founding Teams, How To Balance Both Vision and Operations & Taking Money From "The Man At The Rug Store" with Mar Hershenson, Founding Managing Partner @ Pear.vc

Disclosure

Pear VC Invested in Nova Credit Before It Had a Product

“We invested before there was a product. There were students at Stanford and they were coming here to our lectures or talks, et cetera. Just an amazing team.”

Mar Hershenson May 24, 2017 ▶ 24:06 20VC: The Biggest Indicators Of Success In Founding Teams, How To Balance Both Vision and Operations & Taking Money From "The Man At The Rug Store" with Mar Hershenson, Founding Managing Partner @ Pear.vc

Opinion

Elad Gil's Blog Is Top-Tier Because Every Post Is Dense With Truth

“I mean, every piece that he writes is like, so dense with knowledge and truth. So I think he's, definitely. Definitely. That would be my number one”

Mar Hershenson May 24, 2017 ▶ 22:36 20VC: The Biggest Indicators Of Success In Founding Teams, How To Balance Both Vision and Operations & Taking Money From "The Man At The Rug Store" with Mar Hershenson, Founding Managing Partner @ Pear.vc

The other half of the tape: Mar Hershenson's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 7 times in 2 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Pejman Nozad 1 Harry Stebbings 1