Nurturing long-term relationships with data enrichment: “Harmonic helps maintain our source-of-truth database”

“At Pear, we understand and honor the long journey,” says Katie Li, Data Associate at the firm. “We have a deep history of investing in student builders— many of our portfolio companies originate from relationships we have with student founders —so months or years might pass between the time we meet someone and the time we invest in them. Having touchpoints—and the right context for those touchpoints—is so important. Harmonic has been a huge support in helping us nurture those relationships.” 

Katie had used Harmonic at a prior firm “to enrich their data systems,” and introduced the platform to Pear when she joined the team. Pear’s emphasis on early-stage companies can mean there’s a lot of initial revision to track—“companies pivoting to find product-market fit or changing their names, for example,” she explains. “Harmonic helps maintain our source-of-truth database, so we can keep track of our network. Maybe a student who went through our Dorm program starts a company that’s not quite a fit for us. But we want to be the first to reach out when early signals suggest they’re starting their next company down the road.” 

Harmonic’s Enrichment API updates the firm’s CRM any time there’s a change in known people or known companies, so Pear has the most recent context to support every reachout. Harmonic also invests a lot of resources in entity resolution, so a company won’t fall through the cracks just because it changed its name or its website. “Harmonic is terrific about keeping those snapshots,” Katie adds.

Events use cases: “When the team can’t meet everyone, Harmonic is an excellent follow-up” 

Harmonic has allowed Pear to update its post-event paradigm through enriched data on attendees. “We host a lot of events, and a lot of people come through our space,” Katie says. “Hundreds of people attended Pear Studio’s opening party, and our team of 20 can’t speak to everyone in an afternoon.” 

The firm now collects attendees’ LinkedIn URLs in their event registration links. “Thanks to Harmonic, we can automatically enrich attendee data in our CRM. If we see someone was at the event that we should’ve spoken to but no one recalls meeting them, we’ll either reach out immediately or add them to a People List.” People Lists allow Pear to build custom lists of compelling possible founders, whether through a Harmonic search or a CSV import. The data on the people in those lists is regularly refreshed. “We’ll reach out if someone becomes a free agent or appears to be building something,” Katie explains.

Katie adds that there were two people from her personal network at the office opening event that she didn’t know were starting companies. “As soon as I enriched them in Harmonic, I realized this was the case, and I immediately reached out to both of them. This is a real-world example of the data Harmonic uncovers.”

Sourcing workflows: “A data-driven platform ensures we see all the companies that aren’t in our immediate network”

Whereas most VC firms develop expertise in particular market segments and then seek out the best startups they can find in those verticals, Pear’s generalist approach—with specialists in every vertical—is relatively unique: The firm looks for the best founders out there, regardless of industry or technology. (Their very first investment, DoorDash, is an example of this.) 

Harmonic’s Console helps Pear discover companies the firm might otherwise overlook, unearthing startups from a variety of data sources—including legal filings—well before other providers do. “Harmonic’s data-driven approach has been particularly valuable for our market-agnostic thesis,” says Katie. Its sophisticated search filters and tags span team composition, firmographics, and changes over time. “If we’re looking for seed-stage AI companies whose founders have certain characteristics—top university or major tech company experience, for example—the filters and tags are really valuable for refining those searches. Some of those opportunities might otherwise go entirely undiscovered.” 

The location filter has been particularly helpful for the firm. “Our co-founder Pejman is active in the LA startup ecosystem,” Katie explains. “We have a Saved Search in Harmonic with that filter to ensure he has the opportunity to meet founders in-person when he’s there.” 

Streamlining data workflows: “Harmonic has given me back up to 20 hours this week alone” 

With its data-driven insights and automation, Harmonic saves Pear “hours upon hours of manual work,” Katie says. That time can be funneled into meeting with founders and on the firm’s investment strategies, “rather than trying to make 10 different tools and their APIs talk to each other.” For example, Katie says, later today she’ll be enriching a list of about 1,000 people. “Prior to Harmonic, I’d search most people manually—tracking down each person on LinkedIn, pulling data points there. A list of 100 people might take 2 hours; a list of 1,000 might take 20. With Harmonic’s auto-enrichment, I get all those hours back.” 

Katie also saves time with Harmonic’s Chrome extension, which serves up unique company and team insights while she’s on a company’s website. She often receives multiple lists of new companies in a day, “and it can be hard to identify who the team is; how much funding they have; who’s invested in them; how fast they’re growing; what their Crunchbase, LinkedIn, PitchBook, and Twitter profiles are. Time multiplies exponentially if I have to find all that information manually. Harmonic aggregates data faster than any other solution we've seen.” If a company looks interesting, an investor can add it directly to the firm’s watchlist for ongoing data enrichment over time.

On partnership with Harmonic: “The team is remarkably responsive to feature requests, and to building out what we need” 

Pear has had a significant influence on the current iteration of Harmonic. People Alerts—a feature that allows firms to receive email alerts any time a connection makes a job transition, updates their headline, or adds to their work experience—was “a feature I requested and gave feedback to the team on,” Katie says. Pear also informed Harmonic’s “Free Agent” feature, which allows firms to filter down to potential founders (or repeat founders) who’ve closed out their experience on LinkedIn and appear to be taking a sabbatical. “When we see free agents, we definitely want to reach out,” Katie explains, before adding: “Harmonic has come a long way since I started working with them two years ago. The team is remarkably responsive to feature requests, and to building out what we need. It makes it easy to want to continue to grow with them, to be on this journey together.”