Navin Chaddha is the Managing Partner at Mayfield, an early-stage venture firm managing $3 billion. 70% of Mayfield’s investments happen at the idea stage, when there’s only paper and pencil.
No metrics, no market size. He bets on the one thing he can evaluate " the founder".
In this conversation, he shares why he walked away from his PhD exam to join a startup, what he learned when his company went public at $1 billion and then collapsed in the dot-com crash, and why he believes you learn the most from failure.
He breaks down what he looks for beyond the idea, why he backed Poshmark before it even existed, why AI is a 100x opportunity, and why FOMO is for sheep.
00:00 Intro
01:13 No Risk, No Reward
06:30 Ideas Come and Go
09:38 Run a Marathon, Not a Sprint
12:31 A Land of Endless Possibilities
15:39 FOMO Is for Sheep
18:23 If I Weren’t a Founder or a VC…
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