Well, that didn’t take long.
Just a week after news broke that high-profile tech investor Sherman Pishevar was stepping away from an active role at Menlo Ventures, the venerable VC firm on Wednesday is expected to name Venky Ganesan as a managing director, focused on consumer and enterprise investments.
Ganesan last month left Globespan Capital, which he joined in the dot-com summer of 1998. Along the way, he’s invested in such high-profile startups as Plaxo, oDesk and Palo Alto Networks.
Globespan, headquartered in Boston, has been pulling back its efforts in Silicon Valley amid reported difficulties raising a new fund. After a separation that was by all accounts amicable, Ganesan had toyed with the idea of forming his own venture capital fund.
Instead, Menlo Managing Director Pravin Vazirani prevailed upon his longtime friend to saddle up.
“We are thrilled to have Venky joining us,” Vazirani said. “His track record speaks for itself.”
The admiration was mutual.
“I was lucky enough to have offers from multiple firms, but the people at Menlo are special,” Ganesan said. He cited the “band of brothers” feeling among the firm’s seven other managing directors, whom he called “successful yet hungry.”
Vazirani cautioned that Ganesan shouldn’t be seen as a replacement for Pishevar, who stepped down as a managing director at Menlo after less than two years. Vazirani said Menlo had been seeking to add a new partner for more than a year and that the timing of the two moves was coincidental.
Pishevar, who had previously been a serial entrepreneur and angel investor, has announced plans for a new startup “foundry” called Sherpa; he will remain a venture adviser to Menlo Ventures, in part to continue working with portfolio companies that include Uber and TaskRabbit.
Although Pishevar’s focus on fledgling consumer Internet startups was something of a departure for Menlo — which is best known for late-stage investing in enterprise software companies such as IronPort and 3Par — Ganesan said he expects the firm will continue to do more consumer investing than in the past.
He himself will focus on seed and early stage software and Internet deals.
“You’re looking for a situation where you can be the jigsaw piece that completes the puzzle,” Ganesan said.
Contact Peter Delevett at 408-271-3638. Follow him at Twitter.com/mercwiretap.
