Mayfield Fund

Mayfield Fund is one of the older Sand Hill Road firms, with a portfolio history that includes Lyft, Marketo, ServiceMax, SolarCity, and a long bench of enterprise and consumer companies, and a current practice that is unusually focused on early-stage enterprise AI, infrastructure software, and what the firm calls “human-centered technology.” The partnership has reset itself around AI in the post-2022 cycle, with explicit thesis work on AI infrastructure, AI-native applications, and the implications of generative AI for enterprise workflows, and partners including Navin Chaddha, Patrick Salyer, Rajeev Batra, and Vikram Vardhan have been active across that thesis. For healthcare and AI founders, Mayfield is a credible early-stage partner for AI-in-healthcare companies that fit the firm’s enterprise-software lens, and the firm has done selective healthcare deals over the years, although healthcare is not a dedicated practice in the way that it is at General Catalyst or Bessemer. Stage focus is seed and Series A, with check sizes in the one-to-ten-million range at seed and five-to-fifteen-million at Series A, and reserves to follow through Series B; Mayfield does not run a separate growth fund and will not lead later rounds. Geography is Menlo Park-headquartered and US-centric, with a meaningful India presence through Mayfield India that operates as a separate partnership and has its own healthcare and consumer thesis. Founders who should approach Mayfield are early-stage technical founders building enterprise AI applications, infrastructure software, or healthcare-AI businesses with a defensible enterprise-software economic profile. The firm is particularly receptive to second- and third-time founders, to founders with deep technical backgrounds (former Google, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA, OpenAI engineers), and to founders willing to engage closely with a small partnership. Founders who should look elsewhere are therapeutics, devices, services-heavy care delivery, and pure consumer-DTC health, which are not core categories. The entry path that works best is partner-specific outreach with a warm intro; Mayfield partners are accessible by industry standards but operate on conviction-based diligence and prefer to invest behind intros they trust. When you pitch, lead with the founder’s technical or operating credential and the customer evidence that the wedge is real; Mayfield is a thesis-driven firm that invests in conviction rather than consensus, and partners will engage deeply once they decide to lean in. Caveats: Mayfield is smaller than its more publicly-visible peers, so the firm’s brand value at later rounds is less pronounced than a Sequoia or Greylock mark; the firm does not have a heavy platform-services bench, so the value-add is the partner’s time and network rather than recruiting or marketing services; valuations are market for the stage; governance includes board seats and active partner involvement; and the firm’s healthcare exposure is selective rather than dedicated, so healthcare founders should reference-call carefully on healthcare-specific partner experience before signing.