User:Vipul/Shervin Pishevar

Shervin Pishevar is a venture capitalist of Iranian descent and currently based in the San Francisco Bay Area in the United States. He is a partner at Sherpa Ventures along with Scott Stanford, and is most famous for being an early major investor in Uber, an on-demand transportation company.

Early life and education
Pishevar was born in Tehran, Iran. His father Abraham was a television and radio executive and his mother was a teacher. Pishevar migrated to the United States from Iran with his parents in 1976, but his father returned in 1978. His father was placed on an execution list for airing instructions for foreign nationals on how to leave Iran in 1979 prior to the Iranian Revolution, but successfully escaped to the United States, where he worked as a cab driver while studying in a graduate program for a Ph.D. Pishevar credits his experiences in those years, and the knowledge of the sacrifices his parents made for him, with shaping the attitudes he brought to his professional life.

Pishevar was encouraged by his parents to pursue medicine. He studied molecular biology at the University of California, Berkeley, where he received a Presidential Fellowship to continue research on the magainin peptide that he had started in high school. At the age of 19, he got a patent on a new method of lysing malaria-infected red blood cells.

At the age of 20, he published an article in JAMA focusing on the involvement of doctors in torture. Pishevar's work on the subject is credited as an influence for the Istanbul Protocol that banned physicians from participating in torture.

Entrepreneur
Pishevar was initially interested in pursuing medicine, but in 1993, while he was using a library search system for malaria research, the potential of the web to facilitate search dawned upon him. He decided to switch to entrepreneurship to have a larger impact. He started a company called WebOS, from which HyperOffice (in which he continues to be a shareholder) spun off. He then went on to co-found Seges Capital and Ionside Interactive, and helped create advanced 3D graphics and an AI engine for the PocketPC. His game Argentum is the best selling game for the PocketPC platform.

From 2005 to 2011, Pishevar served as founding president, COO, and board member for Webs Inc, which ran Webs.com, a social publishing community. The company sold to Vistaprint for $117.5 million.

He also founded the Social Gaming Network (SGN) which later merged with MindJolt.

Menlo Ventures: 2011-2013
In June 2011, it was reported that Pishevar had joined Menlo Ventures as a managing director, focused on seed investments in the social web, consumer Internet, and mobile. He led Menlo Ventures in the Series B investment in Uber and also made a personal investment in the company in February 2013. Other companies he invested in while at Menlo Ventures include Fab.com and Tumblr.

SherpaVentures: 2013-present
In February 2013, it was announced that starting March, Pishevar was teaming up with former Goldman Sachs banker Scott Stanford to form venture capital firm SherpaVentures and associated startup foundry SherpaFoundry.

In June/July 2014, SherpaVentures completed raising its first round of $150 million in financing from limited partners.

In December 2014, Pishevar and Stanford announed that they were seeking $250 million for a new fund called SherpaEverest that would make investments in more late-stage companies (such as Pishevar's and Stanford's investments in Uber).

In May 2015, it was reported that SherpaVentures was raising a new $175 million fund.

Personal life
Pishevar was married to Anahita "Ana" Pishevar, who described herself on AngelList as co-founder and CMO of StyleBee, an "Uber for Beauty" app. In the spring of 2013, the couple separated, and they divorced later in the year.

In 2014, ValleyWag and the Daily Mail reported that Pishevar was dating Tyra Banks, an American television personality, former talk show host, producer, author, actress, and former model.

Politics
Pishevar acted as a donation bundler for several hundred thousand dollars in donations (estimates vary between $500,000 and $700,000) to the Barack Obama presidential campaign, 2012, to which his then-wife Ana also contributed. Pishevar and his wife also contributed $122,000 to New Jersey Democratic Senator Cory Booker.