Venture Capital · Profile from Venture Capital Research Companion
Mayfield Fund
One of Silicon Valley's oldest continuously operating venture firms, founded in 1969 by Tommy Davis (formerly Arthur Rock's partner) with Stanford as an early partner. It backed the 1980s networking, workstation and biotech wave, then reinvented itself under Navin Chaddha as a "people-first" inception-to-Series-A firm with a focused AI strategy.
At a glance
- Founded
- 1969, Palo Alto area (later Menlo Park), California
- Founders
- Thomas J. "Tommy" Davis Jr. (formerly of Davis & Rock) and Wally Davis (unrelated); Stanford University an early partner/LP
- Headquarters
- Menlo Park, California (Sand Hill Road); historically affiliated teams in India and China
- Ownership / structure
- Private partnership; early-stage flagship funds (Mayfield I–XVII) plus "Mayfield Select" follow-on funds and a dedicated AI seed programme (AI Start)
- Leadership (2026)
- Navin Chaddha, managing partner (managing partner since ~2011; joined 2003); partners covering enterprise and AI infrastructure, consumer and engineered biology/healthcare
- AUM / capital raised
- ~$3bn AUM (firm statements, 2023–26); $955m raised in 2023 (Mayfield XVII $580m + Select III $375m); $750m in 2020 (XVI $475m + Select II $275m)
- Stage focus
- Inception, seed and Series A lead investor, with Select reserves for Series B and later follow-ons
- Signature investments
- 3Com, Silicon Graphics, Compaq, Immunex, Citrix Systems and Legato (listed in Mayfield's 1999–2001 fund materials); SanDisk (reported); Lyft, Poshmark, HashiCorp, Mammoth Biosciences; misses and failures: SGI's long decline after VC exit, dot-com-era losses, Lyft's post-IPO slump
8 deals and moves analysed
Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.
1981
3Com
Early Venture Round
1981
Immunex
Early Venture Round
1982
Silicon Graphics
Series A
1989
Legato Systems
Early Venture Round
2011
Lyft
Series A
2011
Poshmark
Series A
2014
HashiCorp
Series A
2018
Mammoth Biosciences
Series A