Mar Hershenson is a Spanish-American venture capitalist, electrical engineer, professor, and business executive in the electronic design automation industry. She is the co-founder and managing partner at Pear VC.[1] In 2021, she ranked #29 on Forbes' Midas List.[2]

Mar Hershenson
NationalitySpanish and American
Occupation(s)Venture capitalist, electrical engineer, professor, business executive
Years active2004-present

Education and work

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Hershenson graduated with honors with a B.S. in electrical engineering from the Universidad Pontificia Comillas in Madrid, Spain.[3]

She earned M.S. and Ph.D. (2000) from Stanford University.[4] Her graduate research involved application of convex optimization to analog circuit design.[5]


As a graduate student at Stanford, she was CTO and co-founder of Barcelona Design. Later she was CEO and a co-founder of Sabio Labs (2004-2007), which was acquired by Magma Design Automation, and eventually, Mar Hershenson became Vice President of Product Development in the Custom Design Business Unit at Magma (2008-2010).[6]


From 2002-2011, she was consulting assistant professor in electrical engineering at Stanford.[7]

Since 2013, she has been a founding managing partner at Pear VC (founded as Pejman Mar)[8] and represents Pear on the Board of Directors of Solvvy, a startup developer of a customer support platform designed to answer incoming customer questions basing on machine learning.[9]

She was described as "one of the leading women in venture capital in the Bay Area".[8]

Awards and recognition

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Personal life

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She came to the United States from Barcelona, Spain for a summer job and met her future husband. Her native city gave the name to the company she co-founded.[13]

As of 2010 she has three children.[14]

References

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  1. ^ "Inside Pear VC's Tiny Startup Accelerator That's Creating An Alternative To Y Combinator". Forbes. Retrieved 2 August 2023.
  2. ^ "Forbes: Mar Hershenson". Forbes. Retrieved 31 January 2022.
  3. ^ "Mar Hershenson Bio". Broadway Angels. Retrieved 2022-09-22.
  4. ^ "Mar Hershenson joins us at TechCrunch Disrupt on how to craft your pitch deck". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2 August 2023.
  5. ^ "Stanford ENGR 245 - Lean Launchpad". Stanford. Retrieved 2 August 2023.
  6. ^ "Mar Hershenson joins us at TechCrunch Disrupt on how to craft your pitch deck". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2 August 2023.
  7. ^ "Forbes Mar Hershenson". Forbes. Retrieved 2 August 2023.
  8. ^ a b Hirani, Saad (2016-11-10). "Mar Hershenson - Making Strides in Early Stage Venture Capital". UC Berkeley Sutardja Center. Retrieved 2022-09-22.
  9. ^ "Solvvy Company Profile: Valuation & Investors | PitchBook". pitchbook.com. Retrieved 2022-09-22.
  10. ^ "Elemental, Muirwoods Ventures and Pear VC discuss investor opportunities at TC Sessions: Mobility 2022". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2 August 2023.
  11. ^ "EE Times' Top 10 women in microelectronics". EDN. Retrieved 2 August 2023.
  12. ^ "MIT Innovators Under 35". MIT. Retrieved 2 August 2023.
  13. ^ Mar Hershenson Founding Managing Partner
  14. ^ "Entrepreneur, engineer, energy ... A Conversation: Dr. Mar Hershenson", by Peggy Aycinena
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