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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Yves Behar's "Smart" Lock Startup August Raises $8 Million

August, the home automation startup that makes a "smart" lock that uses virtual keys, said it has raised $8 million to bring the device to market next spring.

If you are talking about the Internet of Things trend, this is that.

The San Francisco-based company's Series A round was led by Maveron, who invested along with Cowboy Ventures, Industry Ventures, Rho Ventures and SoftTech VC. The funding follows on a $2 million seed round that included angel investors such as Matt Mullenweg, Mark Pincus and others.

August was co-founded by well-known tech designer Yves Behar and entrepreneur Jason Johnson.

The lock was, in fact, debuted at the 11th D: All Things Digital conference in the summer. It is a Bluetooth device that works with a mobile application to "send virtual keys to anyone you choose to have access to your home," the company said.

As part of the investment, Maveron's David Wu will join the August board.

Here's the video of the demo at D11:

Expanding your startup into Asia? Here’s how to build out your operations in the region

Thomas Clayton has started and run numerous high-tech startups in Silicon Valley. He is currently CEO of Bubbly, a social media startup backed by Sequoia Capital, SingTel Innov8, and JAFCO. The company is one of the largest VC-backed startups in Southeast Asia, having raised over $60 million in funding.

This is the second part of a four-part series that will provide insight into starting, building, and funding a company across Asia. See part one here.

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My first post in this series described how businesses should start when considering expansion into Asia, which is home to some of the largest and fastest growing markets in the world.

The inspiration for my second post came from the many CEOs and entrepreneurs who come to me knowing they want to go after Asia and are aware of their target markets, but unsure of the best approach to start building out their operations on the ground.

For example, should they hire in-market consultants, an expatriate based in a hub city, or partner with a local player? To best answer these questions I have highlighted six key pieces of advice for execs who are growing the operations side of their business in an Asian country or the region itself.

Hire the right people - local and entrepreneurial

A company cannot hire out of a hub city like Singapore and expect those individuals to cover Indonesia, India, Thailand, and the Philippines. A business cannot even realistically cover a subset of those countries from Singapore. Having people in-market and on the ground is key in each of these countries. Nothing gets done otherwise. Someone needs to be pushing things forward in-country day-in and day-out.

You also need true local expertise. It's worth the investment to have one local person in each market rather than one person centrally trying to cover all of the markets. Moreover, given the salary differences across markets, one person in three of these countries can often cost about the same as one in Singapore or Hong Kong.

Another learning I've come across the hard way is to stay away from 'sales consultants.'

I would say that 95 percent of consultants are not working full time for a company for a reason. I've seen so many Western tech companies burn cash on these guys with zero results. They're often expats that move to Asia for the lifestyle or that were on holiday and decided to stay longer-term, and convince Western companies or regional firms to hire them on a monthly retainer to build out their operations.

The fact is that they simply don't have the exhaustive relationships to really move things forward. The only reason they keep getting business is because their Western clients can relate to these guys culturally and communicate with them effectively, thus making their clients feel more comfortable. However, this is more of a luxury than a necessity.

The other typical 'sales consultants' are local players that claim some "very close" relationship with a key player at a target firm. These people simply cannot be trusted as far as you can throw them.

The best-case scenario for hiring any of these consultants is they don't take your business anywhere and just waste your time and money. The worst-case scenario is that they will steal your intellectual property and cut you out of the loop (this is especially true in countries like Indonesia, Vietnam, China, and Thailand) - I'm serious, watch out!

Important qualities to look for in those initial candidates on the ground are guys that are scrappy and very hands-on. In Asia, there are too many candidates with a few years of work experience that just want to "manage" and not actually do anything themselves. It gets worse with even more experienced candidates. Many of the most seasoned guys are used to having teams of people around them that do everything for them.

Making it worse still, recruiters in the region tend to only focus on the biggest branded companies for their candidates. That's just lazy. Moreover, coming from Google or Cisco is an EXTREMELY different skill set and environment than the entrepreneurial, scrappy style that is required to build out a successful remote operation on the other side of the world.

One should simply focus on a track record of entrepreneurship and the ability to be a jack-of-all trades rather than experience with big brands. Recruiters don't understand this, so try to be hands on with your own network and utilize services like LinkedIn when finding your first few key employees.

Be 'local' but don't overdo it

Partnering with large local companies often results in the larger company wanting to "localize" your service. Most of them either take their localization efforts too far or focus on many of the wrong aspects.

For example, I've seen local mobile operators white-label mobile applications with a ridiculous brand and put them into the local language - which is not always necessary and can often have a degrading effect on your service, since many Asian consumers envy Silicon Valley brands and do not view operators as sexy brands.

Then these large companies, which are often the dominant players in their respective markets, will demand dozens of new customizations with a list that will grow until it seems endless.

Most of these will fall under the auspices of "localization," but the reality is the partner is just trying to play 'product manager' and thinks they know more than you do. After all, they're used to treating partners this way in their own markets. When they say, "jump" everyone always does.

This is obviously not sustainable. In short: be the master of your own localization strategy.

Start light and scale from there

In many northern Asia countries, especially Japan, large local players will want to set up joint ventures or new entities with lots of overhead. My recommendation is to shy away from this.

Joint ventures are a thing for large corporations. Keep it simple.

Also, there is no need to open a legal corporate entity until the company has sizable revenue and employees on the ground. Many entrepreneurs think this is the first thing they need to do when entering a new country. Lawyers will always tell you it's only a few thousand dollars, but they're not factoring in all of the overhead and ongoing accounting compliance that will come along with it.

In most cases, its an additional $50,000-$100,000 per year in overhead for the admin costs alone.

My advice? Wait as long as possible.

There is a large gray area in each country, but generally companies can wait until they have a few employees and over $1 million in revenue before they need to take that step.

Never assume rules are different and things must be done unethically

So many entrepreneurs ask me about the graft in countries like China, Indonesia, and Thailand. Yes, it's there, but it is way overblown and it's not necessary to get involved in order to build out a successful business here.

Moreover, graft has decreased significantly over the past decade and large players are usually above the table. I've been able to build out businesses in all of these countries leveraging hundreds of local partners without ever going down this path or even crossing into a gray area.

My advice is to draw a firm line and stay clean, which should not be difficult because as a foreigner, it is unlikely that you will ever even be approached to cross this line. If one of your local employees says it's necessary, they're trying to take the easy way out and you have the wrong people on your team.

Don't underestimate the power of celebrities in these markets

Asians have a huge affinity towards celebrities and what they are using, because they want to use it too. Word of mouth is incredibly powerful in Asia, and celebrities command huge, devout fan bases that not only follow a celebrity, but will also take action based on recommendations from a trusted figure like a movie star or cricket player.

It's the sole reason companies like Blackberry got a second life in Asia, and it led to the initial takeoff of GREE and Line in Japan. Local players realize this and leverage celebrities heavily. Working with local talent agencies is a great way to get your foot in the door and start getting some stars to help get the word out.

Mobile operators still matter in the ecosystem

If you're doing anything related to mobile, it's imperative you understand that feature phone penetration is still well over 80 percent in most Asian markets, which amounts to over four billion consumers. Therefore, working with operators is still one of the quickest ways to reach the masses.

One key benefit that operators offer is easy and seamless billing, which can provide a significant boost since many areas across Asia lack electronic payments and have meaningless credit card penetration. However, prepaid SIM cards are ubiquitous and nearly every consumer has one. Digital ad revenues are still too small in most Asian markets to be a viable business model, so charging consumers via operator billing is still one of the most pervasive local models.

The above are just a handful of lessons that I've found to be invaluable for my businesses and those that I advise or sit on the Board of. I hope that it gives others a little color as they look to expand into Asia and a cleaner entrance into this exploding market.

Headline image via Thinkstock, other images via Thinkstock, Thinkstock and AFP/Getty Images

Entrepreneurs gather in Eden for the first Summit Outside

Last Friday, my friend Shak pathed, "Productivity at tech companies must be low today. Half the folks are headed to Utah while the other half are looking for an ice cream truck."

Told to pack for a camping trip but not much else, 850 like-minded individuals showed up in Eden, Utah last Friday for the first Summit Outside event, hosted by the Summit Series team famous for its weekend retreats like Basecamp and Summit-at-Sea. For Outside, attendees were encouraged to disconnect, with the promise of "finding a better connection."

Without WiFi or outlets, a group of the world's most Internet-addicted human beings found immense freedom letting go of the digital world and reconnecting with nature.

It was the first major event held in Eden, Utah since the 45-person team purchased Powder Mountain for $40 million earlier this year. Weekend tickets started at $2,000 and went up to $12,000 depending on housing options like a 10-person dome, quad tent or air-conditioned RV.

Summit donated a portion of ticket sales to local nonprofits and attendees made optional donations at registration. In total, Summit Outside raised nearly $100,000 for Ogden Valley and Weber County nonprofits, including the Weber School Foundation, Ogden Valley Land Trust, Weber Pathways, Weber County Fire Officers Association and The Nature Conservancy.

When the mountain purchase was announced, there were several complaints from local townspeople who were dubious of the team's ability to preserve the mountain's old-fashioned charm. Change is still a thing you should believe in, as the event drove more than $2 million dollars into the local economy and resulted in over 300 local jobs.

Upon arrival, attendees geared up for the weekend with free Nike Fuelbands, headlights, tin cups and camouflage backpacks for carrying around their new Tom's sunglasses. After chucking bags into tents and strapping on hiking boots, attendees were delighted by surprises at every turn like a sonic meditation deck, a late-night noodle truck, a flash sale of coconuts and LeWeb founder Loic LeMeur giving office hours in the middle of a forest.

Attendees stopped by the activity tent to sign up for paint ball, hiking, horse-back riding and mountain bike riding - or a knot tying workshop with Philippe Petit, the man featured tightrope-walking between the World Trade Center towers in the documentary Man on Wire.

Somewhat retired, Petit decided to climb the stage at the event's closing plenary instead.

Each morning on Powder Mountain, we practiced yoga on The Lotus Deck, overlooking Ogden valley. Teachers included Sasha Bahador, Founder of ShaktiLife and Kenneth Von Roenn III, Creator of Skanda Yoga.

Just a 5-minute walk down the hill, Taylor Kuffner's robotic orchestra, known as "The Gamelatron" was tied to trees in a forest of hammocks, providing an oasis of relaxation for weary Summiteers.

One of the more popular surprises was the Duck Pond, a hedonistic escape from the killer content and outdoor adventure experiences. Aerated and perfectly clean for swimming in, the Duck Pond served as an ideal cool down during the 90 degree days. Summit's Chief Reconnaissance Officer Thayer Walker says the Duck Pond will be a permanent structure for the years to come.

As entrepreneurs do, the Summit team members are building a permanent community that didn't exist before, a home they're proud to live in, and one they can call their own. "Our goal is to create a center of gravity for the innovators, entrepreneurs, and thought-leaders of the world," says Summit co-founder Jeremy Schwartz, pictured below with fellow co-founder Brett Leve. "We hope Summit Eden will become a community built around a shared ethos that emphasizes collaboration as tool to drive positive, multidisciplinary output."

Many will compare Summit Series to TED, Davos or even Burning Man, but lining up such energetic entities side-by-side is boring. While there were quite a few speakers at Summit Outside who have also spoken in Long Beach, and people important enough to fly to Switzerland each year, and a lot of dust and dancing in The Electric Forest, what's more interesting is why events like this exist, and how The Summit Series team has brought such magical experiences to life that are shaping a generation of change-makers.

Content

The Summit Team offered content and activities ranging from a 3-hour mountain biking tour to a discussion of the female hormonal system to an hour-long talk about the recent Trayvon Martin trial. When asked to reflect on a high point from the weekend, Shervin Pishevar, Co-founder and Managing Partner of Sherpa Ventures, answered:

"The Trayvon talk. Cheeraz [Gorman]'s tears opened a flood gate of love and truth. It changed hearts and minds and planted the seeds of a new social justice movement. Our nation still needs a process of reconciliation. There's too much locked within our hearts. We need to get in that circle we formed in the forest and widen to all so we can all feel what we did that day."

Humans weren't the only ones leaving Powder Mountain with new flight patterns. Summit partnered with Earthwings, a raptor nonprofit, to release two rehabilitated birds of prey into the wild at the event.

Summit also partnered with Pack and Pounce, a local animal shelter to create a puppy pen where attendees could adopt puppies destined to be put down. 9 puppies were adopted and saved.

The event could've been called the "Summit of Love" - not because of the plethora of mountain-top sessions - but because love was on everyone's lips, particularly speaker and therapist Esther Perel, who wins the award for giving the most talks in a 48-hour period.

As entrepreneurs, we are used to giving all of ourselves to our companies and careers, then we come home at night with just leftover scraps of our energies for our loved ones. How will we ever have as successful relationships as we do careers if we keep carrying on like this? Esther didn't have all of the answers, but she made us realize that if its a fulfilling love life we want, we need to explore the possibilities of adjusting our current priorities.

Production

The Summit team's production talents are extraordinary. On Saturday night, attendees were invited to have dinner around a quarter-mile long picnic table in a field. The walk to dinner was led by jazz musician Jonathan Batiste.

For many photo-takers, this visual feat and delightful feast was a highlight of the weekend.

The Summit team knows how to throw a party too. After dinner, the electronica ensemble Thievery Corporation played a 2-hour set before 50 fans jumped on stage for a late-night dance party. There were all dozens of artists and DJs, like Big Boi, RAC, Sean Glass and DJ Equal, who played until the wee hours of the morning for sparkly-pantsed dancers. To listen to all of the artists who performed this weekend, SoundCloud's David Noel made a playlist for you.

Curation

While Summit is often knocked for being exclusive, its curated community creates an environment for some of the world's most ambitious people to open up professionally, emotionally and physically. "It's going to be a place on Earth that becomes a sacred space for growth and development," says Nicole Patrice De Member, the Founder of Toi and the woman responsible for introducing Summit to Greg Mauro, the entrepreneur and Eden, UT resident who brought the Powder Mountain opportunity to the team. "The people who need love will end up here. We want the world to be a part of this. It's not a secret journey, but you still have to go on that journey to get here."

Summit designed the event with serendipity built-in so that porch-front dinner conversations, afternoon walks down dusty Main Street, or late night discussions in the tea hut became places where we shared journeys of success, failure and personal hardship. "No matter where I went or what I did, I stumbled upon some of the most amazing, interesting people I've ever met. It's a magical experience unlike any other," says Summit first-timer Ryan Matzner, Fueled's Director of Strategy.

The first night of Summit Outside I stood next to a stranger as we waited for our camp mates. I said "Hi" and gave him a warm hug the way you might a friend. He said, "Thank you, I really needed that." He then told me his father had just passed away that morning. And instead of canceling plans to be with his immediate family, he decided that his first step towards healing was to be with his Summit family. In a place so loving, empowering and supportive, I understood.

Summit Outside was the team's first big event on Powder Mountain - and for most in attendance, those 72-hours were a transformational experience. The Summit Team's passion shines through everything it touches, and they've fortunately chosen to build their home in one of the most beautiful settings on Earth. In Eden, once again, we feel like we're just at the beginning of it all...