Menlo’s Shervin Pishevar And Goldman’s Scott Stanford Leave Their Day Jobs To Do Something Really Vague, By Design

Menlo Ventures partner Shervin Pishevar and Goldman Sachs managing director Scott Stanford have left their day jobs to build a new venture called Sherpa. The creation of the firm, which was first reported by AllThingsD, is designed around a new model for building and creating companies through a mix and match of strategic corporate partnerships and working with well-known entrepreneurs.

Sherpa will be divided into two parts: First, there will be The Foundry, which Pishevar says will use funds and assets from a number of strategic corporations, combined with help from some well-known entrepreneurs to create new companies. There will also be a corresponding fund to invest in those new companies that have been created.

If that seems vague, it’s by design — Pishevar wouldn’t reveal either the strategic corporations that the new venture would be working with, nor any of the well-known entrepreneurs that we can expect on board. That information, we’re told, will be revealed at a later time. But the idea of combining strategic resources from corporations that have them to spare, along with entrepreneurs to help found or advise new companies does sound appealing.

What we do know is that the firm will combine the talents and the contacts of two of the most well-connected men in Silicon Valley. Pishevar is best known for his investments as an angel investor and venture partner in the collaborative consumption space, putting money into businesses like Uber and TaskRabbit. Meanwhile, at Goldman Sachs, Stanford has been behind the scenes of nearly every big tech IPO over the past few years, including Facebook, Zynga, and Groupon.

While he’s leaving Menlo as a venture partner, Pishevar will remain a venture advisor at the firm. He’ll also become a strategic advisor to on-demand car service Uber, which he invested in through Menlo in late 2011. Pishevar said that the model for Sherpa will be similar to the work he’s done with Uber, where he’s apparently gotten more deeply involved than is typical for VCs, even those who are on the board of the company’s they invest in.

The circumstances behind Stanford’s departure are less clear, but we have confirmed that he and Shervin will partnering on the new venture.

We’ll be keeping an eye on Sherpa, and will keep you up to date as more details come to pass. In the meantime, check out this video of Shervin being interviewed by our own Alexia Tsotsis.