Sherpa Ventures Starts $150M Fundraising With $15M Infusion From TPG

Sherpa Ventures - a new early-stage venture firm recently founded by well-known Silicon Valley investor and entrepreneur Shervin Pishevar, formerly of Menlo Ventures, and former Goldman Sachs tech banker Scott Stanford - has started off its efforts to raise $150 million for its initial fund with a $15 million commitment from private equity giant TPG Capital, according to sources close to the situation.

The pair declined to comment on the new funding anchor for Sherpa, which has apparently already made more than two dozen investments in startups since its creation earlier this year. They include BackOps, a cloud-based company that offers back-office services like accounting, human resources and financial reporting; and Munchery, a gourmet-meal delivery service.

Along with Sherpa, Pishevar and Stanford also are working on a second part of their new business, called Sherpa Foundry, a business aimed at helping major strategic corporations gain a digital edge with their existing assets.

Interestingly, TPG recently made a big investment in Uber, the red-hot travel-logistics company. Pishevar has been a close adviser to co-founder and CEO Travis Kalanick.

As I noted in a February post about their new endeavors, the pair's efforts will certainly be interesting to watch:

Indeed more than many in the tech scene, the incessantly networking Pishevar is perhaps well suited to such an ambitious effort like Sherpa. He's has worked closely with a lot of Web 2.0 s hottest startups, such as Uber, Fab and Warby Parker, while also leading Menlo's investment in Tumblr.

An active angel investor, he has also started a number of companies, such as the Social Gaming Network, which was merged with MindJolt.

And Stanford is equally well known in Silicon Valley, having shepherded a wide variety of high-profile deals for the banking giant, while heading its global Internet investment banking business from San Francisco as a managing director. He's been at Goldman for a dozen years and has been involved in investments in Facebook, Zappos and LinkedIn. Before banking, he worked at pioneering search company, LookSmart.

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Tip of the Day How to Produce Great Outdoor Photos With Your iPhone

Your iPhone is a great tool to catalog your outdoor explorations. For an example, check out the image of Longs Peak that I took with my iPhone in Rocky Mountain National Park. Until I acquired a Nikon camera a few weeks ago, I relied solely on my iPhone for outdoor photography. I purchased the 32GB model of the 5s for the extra photo storage. I am no professional photographer, but I travel for work or play about once a month so you can imagine how many photos I have amassed.

Here is some insight into the best apps and tools to use for your adventures:

The native Camera app is great. Some choose Camera+ ($1.99) for the advanced zoom and continuous flash features; but some features, including touch exposure, are also available on the native Camera app. You can change to panoramic mode almost instantly, as well as add filters right in the app. 

To work with exposure right in your native Camera app, just tap on different places on the screen-light and dark-before you take the picture. You can also turn on HDR (high dynamic range) which takes three separate pictures with different exposures and stitches them together.

Another great app for taking photos is ProCam ($0.99). The best feature of this possible camera replacement is the time feature, which is perfect for propping up your phone on a rock to take a photo of your whole group.

After you are done snapping away at beautiful mountain tops or spring flowers, you can use InstaSize (free) to crop, edit and resize photos to showcase and post in Instagram (free).

To end your great outdoor adventure, use Flickr (free) to upload photos straight from your iPhone to create a visually appealing photo collection. You can share albums, create sets, and send links to all your friends and family.

All in all, the iPhone 5s camera is a great way to record your adventures. So next time you take a trip, think about using these tools and apps to create a memorable experience with your iPhone.

Topics:

• Camera+
• Flickr
• Instagram
• InstaSize
• ProCam
• Top Story
• Travel
• How-To
• iPhone
• iPhoneography

5 Top Travel Apps for New York Urban Adventure

A visit to Manhattan isn't something you should take lightly. Some people may want to just thrust themselves into the city lights and let the push and bustle of the crowd take them where it may. My adventure was a more planned affair, with lists of sights to see, places to eat, and department stores to shop.

I used my iPhone for tracking and planning my movements around Manhattan and also downloaded a number of applications before leaving. Each app offered its own insight, covering planning, navigation and even historical perspective.

1. TimeOut (Free)

If you want to act like a local without permanently shifting zip codes, this is your app. Timeout is a print and web resource for people who live in major urban areas, ranging from New York to London, Dubai and beyond. Its New York app provides great insight into the city's cultural events, nightlife, and eateries through its simple menu, which asks: What, When, Where? It can help you plan a trip by revealing what is taking place during your visit, or share random insights with your traveling companions.

2. Fodor's City Guides - New York (Free)

When planning a trip, Foder's City Guides offers more tourist-oriented information. Its New York guide packages everything offered in the city's various neighborhoods, allowing users to switch between sights, restaurants, shopping, performing arts, nightlife, and hotels. The lists are by no means exhaustive. However, they prioritize highlights so visitors on a quick trip won't miss what's happening right around the corner.

3. New York - Offline Map (Free - $4.99 for premium)

To be honest, I used offline maps of New York before the trip more often than while I was on the ground. I installed them on my iPad, but found it a little too large so I tended to consult Apple's Maps or Google Maps on the iPhone in the heat of the moment. These apps, however, were very helpful in planning the trip and creating the itinerary of what to visit which day.

New York Offline Map product provides some basics, but its lack of detail is frustrating. Most notably, when zoomed in you won't see street names for anything but major thoroughfares, and the names may be placed somewhere other than where you're looking. The app does overlay the subway system onto the street maps, but it is very hard to read and not very informative about what to do based on where you are. However, if your cellular network and Wi-Fi both abandon you, this may be the only map you have unless you're carrying around something on paper (heaven forbid!)

4. New York Subway Map - (Free)

If you are looking for a subway map, this app does the job. Not only does it include the entire system, it offers guided instructions of how to get from point A to point B. If however, you don't know which station is nearest your destination - as we experienced looking for a boat tour around the Statue of Liberty - then it isn't much more helpful than its paper counterpart.  If you have absorbed the language of New York and its subway system, then this app will prove a credible companion.

5. MapMatcher New York (Free)

MapMatcher offers the unique ability to compare a current map of New York with a historic or other representation of the city (like a tourist map).  I found this a fun, if buggy, way to get some historical perspective of New York. Sometimes the maps I tapped on revealed only a white screen, but when it did work, it demonstrated how the city has changed overtime and how much more detailed our lives are now than they were in the past.

New York tends to just happen to you. Adventures in New York force choices, and as in life, those choices have consequences of distance and the sights seen along the way. Had we arrived at the Statue of Liberty tour with great expeditiousness then we would have missed the rather beautiful, if cold and breezy, walk along the Hudson River through Battery Park City and the Financial District. By not knowing the best path, we saw things that those on more constrained tourist leashes would never see.

A Den In a Trunk Lets You Travel With All the Comforts of Home

No matter how light you try to travel, the airlines will still find a way to tack on extra baggage fees. So stop trying to beat the system when you fly and just go all out. Bring a massive wardrobe, every gadget you own, and thanks to Pinel & Pinel, a complete and stylish sitting room that folds away into a rolling Boudoir trunk.

The leather-wrapped seat was inspired by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's famous Barcelona chair, and is complemented by a matching footstool, a reading lamp, a side table with drawers, a small library, and a mini sound system with an iPhone dock. Plus, with a price tag of somewhere around $26,500 what's an extra $50 of luggage fees in the grand scheme of things? [Pinel & Pinel via SoBlackTie via Homecrux]