The Pramana Collective is borrowing from a concept made popular by VC firms by bringing executives in residence (EIRs) to its communications consultancy. StumbleUpon’s former director of communications Mike Mayzel is the first to take this on as a six-month stint.

In the VC world, these temporary posts are typically called entrepreneurs in residence and are intended for serial entrepreneurs between ventures. The EIRs are exposed to emerging companies, potential partners and investors to begin their next venture with. On the flipside, VCs get first dibs at an EIR’s new project and a view into a wider array of startups.

“EIRs can provide a founder perspective or they can just provide an inside operational perspective. Not all of them are founders, many of them ran organizations inside of companies (engineering, biz dev, product, etc.),” Pramana co-founder Sean Garrett told the Holmes Report. “Like all of us at Pramana, we have that inside perspective and Mike will be adding to that from the view of having worked inside of both Google and a high growth startup.”

Before joining StumbleUpon in 2010, Mayzel spent eight years at Google in communications, sales and partner development. Mayzel left his post at StumbleUpon this month.

Like its VC counterpart, the EIR role will be customized for the person holding the post. Pramana plans to have only one EIR at once for a specific time period, Garrett said in a blog post earlier this week. Bringing on short-term brainpower is part of Pramana’s idea to create a space for comms professionals as they transition from an “all-in 24/7” position to their next venture, he writes:

We are very open to partners or principals only being with us for a year or two before they might want to jump into the next phase of their career. But, while they are with us, we get their energy and insights, and, in turn, we can provide them with both a deep view inside of fascinating projects and a wide-lens on the industry.