Navin Chaddha of Mayfield joins Nick to discuss A 17 Time Midas Lister on Greatness, the $6T AI Teammate Market, Why AI Sovereignty Is Critical, and Who Wins the Battle Between Incumbents and Startups. In this episode we cover:
- Challenges in Early Internet Video
- Lessons from Interacting with Tech Luminaries
- Investment Philosophy and Evaluation Process
- The Role of Psychology in Venture Capital
- The AI Collaboration Era
- Geopolitical Implications of AI
- Investment Strategy in a Competitive Market
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0:17
Navin Chaddha joins us today from Menlo Park. He’s the Managing Partner at Mayfield, an early-stage venture capital firm with a 50+ year history of backing iconic founders. Navin is a 17-time Midas List investor, and has led early investments in unicorns and industry leaders, including Lyft, Hashicorp, Poshmark, Nuvia, and Security.ai. Before Mayfield, he founded and led multiple startups—three of which were acquired. Navin, welcome to the show!
0:49
Thank you. It’s a privilege and honor to be spending time with you, Nick and thank you for considering me for your podcast.
0:56
It is a privilege and an honor to have you on the show. Can you give us your quick backstory and your path to venture,
1:03
absolutely so. I grew up in India, like many others, humble beginnings. India in the 70s and 80s was a poor country. Went to grad, undergrad at Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, graduated at the top of the class. Was lucky for somebody to pay for my fellowship to come to Stanford in 1992 and came for grad school to pursue my Master’s and PhD. And the internet happened, and I was lucky to be working in the area of video over the internet. The first project we had done was launching Stanford classes for distance learning on the internet. And one thing led to the other. In 1995 we see, started approaching us and said, like, Hey, you can start a company. And we said, like, hey, what do we know about a company? One thing led to the other. So 96 we start a company V Extreme, which becomes the platform for delivering video over the internet. Very quickly it becomes the de facto standard. Gets acquired by Microsoft in June of 9718 months into it, and the technology in a year is everywhere, becomes the fabric of video, of the internet. God was kind regard financial independence. I learned what to do and what not to do through working at one of the biggest companies of that time, and even today, I’ve worked closely with people like Bill Steve and others, and then left in 99 to start my second company. I beam broadcasting, which even grew faster and went public in 2000 and then was acquired in 2001 once an entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur, went on to bid my third company during the worst time it was rivio. Went through the downturn. One thing led to the other. Luckily, we were able to land it, get acquired, and in 2004 by serendipity, I joined the venture capital business. Came in as an entrepreneur in residence, and one thing led to the other. And still in venture capital, not entrepreneurism, for 21 years, and have been extremely lucky and had the honor to work with 60 plus entrepreneurs as a board member, 17 of whom have created public companies, and another 29 now have been acquired. So it’s just, it’s just been a delight. God has given me a gift of my life to be able to work with such spectacular people who are great and amazing human beings, unbelievable,
3:50
you know what? If you were doing video in the early days of the Internet, there were so many bandwidth constraints and other constraints like you know is, how did you overcome those.
4:02
So I think they were actually two big issues. One was the connectivity. Was the last mile was through modems at 14.4 kilobits per second. Nowadays we arc 100 megabits per second. Yeah, that’s, you know, 10,000x then it went to 28k so we needed innovation with what’s called Video compression, so that we could compress the bits down to send it on those pipes. And the second thing was, at that time, video could only be encoded in hardware and decoded in hardware. So you needed special cards on PCs. So we came up with an algorithm where you could do this on basic 8086, machines, which are probably in the mid 90s, 1,000th lower speed. Forget about GPUs of CPUs today. So. So that was her fundamental innovation, software only, video compression and decompression, and the magic of making it work on thin pipes. And then that’s what happens. You have breakthrough technology, and luck happens, right? People come along the way, and companies get created, and the rest is history.
5:21
Naveen, you’ve worked with so many category defining founders, and just in the intro, you mentioned these luminaries like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. And I know recently you interviewed Satya Nadella.
5:35
We were peers at Stanford. Sorry, at Microsoft during the late 90s, my office was there. It was just across the corridor. So I’ve seen all these great people
5:46
give us some of the lessons you know, or give us maybe a story or two from your interactions with some of these folks that have kind of redefined a whole generation of technology for many
5:59
of us. Absolutely right. So if it’s okay, I work with many, many privileged founders and executives. Let’s leave the names and talk about common characteristics of them. Sure. So first and foremost, these people have a people gene. What I mean by that is they beat a very nice human beings who put people first, whether it’s their employees, whether it’s their colleagues, whether it’s customers, partners, investors. So they have a very people oriented approach to carrying on life, what I call empathy. The second thing is they have curiosity to really figure out what can happen. The third thing is they have very high EQ emotional quotient. They are secure in their skin, and they know what they don’t know, and they surround themselves with other team members. Most of these people, ionically, have played team sports. They know that company, building, running a company, is all about getting teams together and getting the best out of them. Otherwise, you can have a solo practice and play badminton or table tennis. This is football, basketball, cricket. That’s what this is. They have a growth mindset. And then there are some table stakes. They need to have the hunger. They need to be able to go through any wall. They need to have integrity. They need to have drive. Those are like table stakes. They need to be visionary. They present. Well, lot of people have that, but to become this, the first five, six characteristics I mentioned, I’ve seen them in these people, and having been involved along with these people from the mid 90s and the internet over 30 years now, I think within a few minutes, I’m able to pick and that’s why Mayfield is a people first investor. I’m able to just spot whether it’s a repeat entrepreneur, a seasoned exec, or a first time entrepreneur, that’s where I spend time, not on their idea or technology, really figuring out, are they technology builders? Are they product builders? Are they company builders, and is it all about them, or will they put the company first, team, second, and themselves, first, third. That’s what I do for a living.
8:47
You’re in the investment business, and so the amount of time you have to spend with folks before making a decision is limited, right?
8:58
We’ll talk about it. Okay.
9:01
Well, tell me more. You know. How do you find these characteristics? How do you tease them out? How do you observe behaviors that indicate somebody might have the EQ and the drive and some of these other factors that you find are so important?
9:16
Yeah, so I think every firm in particular, every investor has a certain style of investing and a certain product to offer. So my first rule is, to become successful in life, you need to have given 10,000 hours and something, something, if you’re a first time guy, you must have done something, not a company. Second, you need to spend time with me. If you’re just looking for a decision in an hour, it’s not for me, because I can’t evaluate you and I’m investing in a relationship. You want a transaction, sorry, mismatch. Will you spend 10 hours with me? Not on your diligence? Five? Hours with me. Let’s go to dinner. Let’s sit down. Let’s talk. And having been around the block, having less hair, gray hair, you can suss it out, who is looking for a quick flip quick money, versus who for their largest shareholder and board member is willing to spend the time we spend more time neck at work than we spend with our spouses. And if this is the way they want to treat an investor, it’s not for me. So engagement is two way. The early signs of respect become clear is the person looking for a relationship or money. Money is plenty in this world, so please go take it so you can have no FOMO as an investor. You need to have a product and stick to it and your philosophy of investing. Other firms, other individuals, have their own philosophy and other secret sauce. This is my secret sauce, Mayfield secret sauce. So you want to enjoy the kind of food we produce, the kind of service we provide to an entrepreneur, please spend time. You’ll give us half an hour. Sorry we don’t have a product to offer you.
11:23
Are there cases? Are there cases where you get it wrong, where an entrepreneur may fool you? You know, you go to dinner and you buy the story, and you find out later that maybe it was not consistent with their true character. Absolutely.
11:40
Absolutely. I think we used to make a lot of mistakes because we hadn’t had 10,000 hours doing this. I think they’re getting better. Maybe we were a C, then became a B, then A B plus, I would say our picking skills now another maybe it’s a minus, but it’s getting better is getting better. And the second thing I learned from Jensen, whom I respect a lot, is when I’m leading an investment or a partner at nee field, we do a lot of back channel references throughout their history and create an x ray on them. Jensen has taught me, people have gotten very good at doing interviews and saying what I want to hear. They will read this, hear this, but you know what? Nick they can’t hide from the past. I’m a psychologist. Well, it’s funny because
12:44
we’ve talked about it on this show before, but
12:47
I still make mistakes and I’m still learning, but getting better, getting better, and that’s part of life. I might never be perfect, but I think I’m good enough at picking, picking people, right? But I’m not done. I’m still going.
13:06
I mean, we’ve talked about it on the show. You know, there’s so many VCs that were developers or tech builders, but in some cases, maybe there should be more psychologists in the business, because it’s such a human, the humans at the center, you know, that’s the quantum unit
13:20
of success, right? And by the way, that’s the biggest thing these founders need. And the main reason is they need a supporter. They need somebody who can be their shrink. Shrink. I mean, just call them at any time and be their sounding board. I have those. These are called mentors, advisors, who are always looking out for you, but you can’t hide information from them. They’re here to watch your back once I’m in never, ever in the 60 companies boards have been unless in two cases where the founder didn’t want to be a CEO, never a CEO. Isn’t the person who started took the company to exit. That’s my belief in people,
14:07
amazing, amazing. If they fooled
14:10
us, they’ll fail anyways. So how does it matter? Right? And by the way, because of getting fooled, still in my 60 investments never happened. None of them were crooks, just markets. It didn’t happen. So I failed. They failed 10% of the time. What can I do? Nothing, but if you do your work, you can avoid but you know, we’re all humans, right? Like we have to get better. That’s what I get up in the morning and say, what can I learn from the past so that I don’t make the same mistakes? I want to make new mistakes, and I will continuously make new mistakes because you’re going after new areas, new people. They don’t come from Central. Casting, so be prepared, but your past, what is called experience, counts for something. Venture startups is an apprenticeship based business. My job is to keep people out of trouble on what doesn’t work based on the movies I’ve seen, what will work. I don’t know, man, but if you can get rid of 90% which doesn’t work, then you focus on 10% collaboratively to figure out what will work.
15:32
How much do you have to let an entrepreneur make their own mistakes and learn versus, you know, tell them about the movie you’ve seen before and and help them avoid that’s always something that, you know, I’ve struggled with. It’s a
15:48
balance, right? Like my style is more of an advisor and a coach and a specialist. I let the founders essentially go and learn, make mistakes. My only request to them is, when you jump, please know how many bones you’re going to break. And if you want to know chances of broking breaking brains in this versus this or what, I’ll give you input and advice at the end, it’s your call, right? It’s your call. You’re the CEO, not me, so I’m just an advisor. I never come in the way of founders. Give them room if they pick up the phone and say, What is your advice? Naveen, then I’ll give the advice if they need no advice like Solar City. Elon Musk, founder, along with two of his cousins. I go take notes and learn those are the best investments. They need. None of your help. I want more of them. I want more of them. So I’ve even been around Elon Musk on Solar City.
16:54
Unbelievable, amazing. Well, Naveen, tell us a bit about your thesis, and are there some themes that you’re especially passionate about right now?
17:05
Absolutely so to be I primarily do inception, stage investing. Mayfield does a bunch of other things, and inception, to me, is the first money where a founder me, Mayfield does seed as and bs. My specialization, 90% of the time, is ideation stage entrepreneurs. So the most important skill is a combination of having a prepared mind and an open mind. And what I mean by that is where, when you’re selling to a business or an enterprise customer, I have a good pulse on what are their top pain points. But if it’s a consumer or a new trend, you need to have an open mind. So this is the left side of the brain. The right side of the brain, it needs to converge, but the most important skill a VC needs to have is listen and figure out. Ah, if this happens, what will it adoption look like? So you cannot have preconceived notions. Now, the world only needs this. So where can you have a prepared mind primarily right now, 90% of our investments are up and down the AI stack. Our thesis is, AI is the great equalizer. AI will collaborate with humans to make us super humans. And we believe this is not an artificial intelligence era. This is a collaborative intelligence era where humans and machines work together. Will there be some job displacement? Sure, anytime a new technology comes. So where in the stack we are investing it starts with hardware, semiconductors. I think you can’t compete with Nvidia, AMD to topple them. So in the semiconductor and hardware area, we built a thesis, what other things are needed around the GPU. Turns out cooling is very important. Fans, 100 year old technology need to get replaced with something new. Power networking. Copper cables are being replaced by optics. A lot of these areas is where we made investments. That’s a prepared mind. Next Level Up is models, which are the operating system. I’ll be honest with you, you can’t have a prepared mind. Today. It’s transformer. Tomorrow, it is XYZ. Next day, it’s diffusions. You just sit and listen and see early results and go, that’s an. Example of an open mind. The next level up from models is data in the Data Layer. Again, you can have a prepared mind, because you know the issues that will exist in the data layer. The next level up is developer tooling, white coding, because you have all this infra now you have to do something with it again, an open mind. Cursor. Who knew it could be created? Mark or who knew it could be created? Who knew things like lovable will get created? Open mind, because if you have a closed mind, you’ll say Microsoft will do everything. Models will do everything. Next Level Up is applications, intelligent applications. There, you know, buyer, what needs they have. But the open mind is in vertical industries, because in the past, no software companies have become big, but now with AI, they don’t need software. They can use agents. And the final layer where we have an open mind is what we call AI teammates. These are digital companions, which are built on agentic technologies to team up with humans. And we believe there’ll be an AI teammate for every consumer workflow and business workflow. That opportunity, just in the enterprise knowledge workers spend globally is 30 trillion, I believe, over the next seven years, 10 years, five years, 10 to 20% is going to AI companions. That’s a 3 trillion, 6 trillion market opportunity nick the same size of the information technology industry. So that’s what I would say. Open Mind. Listen, observe dream. Prepared mind. Customer is already telling me these are my top pain points, so let’s find painkillers. But the open mind ideas don’t come from VCs. I’m in the evaluation business of picking they’re all coming from entrepreneurs. I love it and I love it big companies. So I’m just saying it’s a combo, man, if I knew where the world is heading, I should be going and running companies. I’m not that smart. And by the way, all we see is and no entrepreneur is they figure it out along the way. It’s a patient’s journey. It’s a journey of understanding the customer, and it’s a lot of experimentation. You have a thesis, you try doesn’t work, then you try this thing. Eventually you get
22:44
tell us more what you mean by the collaboration era. And AI teammates, right? A $6 trillion market opportunity, which dwarfs the 660 billion enterprise. And I’m a believer in your philosophy. I very much love what you’ve written about it. You know, I’m a avid reader and consumer of your content, but help the audience understand what the future looks like for the knowledge worker and what this AI teammate philosophy, kind of how it will play out, absolutely, absolutely.
23:20
So I would say, if you go back 50 years of the information technology industry, we moved from mainframes to mini computers to desktop, then Internet came, then mobile came, then cloud came, and now we are in the AI era, before the AI era, everything we did helped us do our work better, right? These were tools which improved our productivity, made us smarter, made us suggestions. In AI, for the first time, they can do our work. So there’s a difference 50 Years of all the technology is making me do my work better, more efficiently, more faster. Now, for the first time, we are going in into an era of augmentation, where things I don’t want to do, we are pagers at night. Look at a billion video events to figure out there is something wrong happening. Second, I’m incapable of doing. Third, I don’t want to do. And fourth, where there’s shortage of jobs, nursing shortage of jobs, DevOps, shortage of jobs. Sre, shortage of jobs, sec ops, shortage of jobs. 30 million developers. I think everybody should be a developer. So that’s what these coding assistants, coding companions are going to do. So we are getting into an era of abundance, where now let’s look at entrepreneurism to start. Start a tech company, you needed developers. Now I can wipe code if I have an idea, and I can be a creator. If that was done first with YouTube and now with Tiktok, it’s going to happen everywhere. So if I’m building a company, let’s look at a market called small businesses. I’m a plumber. I don’t have a receptionist. I don’t have a market here. I don’t have any expertise. I don’t have time to put my jobs on. Yelp, I have nothing. So now AI can be my worker, which I pay as I use it. Can handle calls for me. Can put me on Yelp, answer the reviews. So now suddenly, 30 million small businesses AI can be used as a worker, as a teammate, to grow their business, and they only pay when they use it. That market never used software. Now those 30 million people, I can bet you, everybody needs an AI team bit, so net new jobs are being created. Let’s look at Site Reliability Engineering and people don’t want to wear pagers at night. Let’s look at physical robotics. Aging population. You have to climb ladders to go to fire. You can put a snake thing robot and go see exoskeletons. The opportunities are endless. So if knowledge workers are 30 trillion, you just go after shortage of jobs, new creation of jobs. You go after jobs we don’t want to do if 20% of that market moves to AI workers, that’s what this is. Our jobs will become easier, mundane things, automation, augmentation AI task, we focus on value, add creative things and move in the Maslow’s hierarchy above. That’s what machines did in manufacturing. So we will move more and more into a knowledge economy where knowledge, information will be democratized, but we will become knowledge workers, and I think that’s why software, I use it, teammate, I tell it what to do, and if I’m scared of it, don’t use it. So how will it take my job? How at the end somebody has to write a check? The person who’s afraid of them taking the job, won’t use, won’t use. And I was part of a detailed study with the World Economic Forum. I want people to read it. It’s the future of jobs report, 2025 I wrote a newsletter on it, and we surveyed 1000 companies across 22 industries in 55 countries. And what we found is 92 million jobs will disappear due to AI automation, but AI will create one 70 million new jobs. Interesting, the net gain by 2030 is 78 million. And by the way, when PCs came, people thought typewriters will go out of business, they actually started doing more work. That industry grew. QuickBooks came, accountants will be out of job. Payroll Software came. It always expands the number of jobs. Look at the GDP. Growth is correlated. If Nvidia and other companies are sitting at so much profit, man, they need humans to build new products to support this growth. Well, yeah, I can’t do that. Humans want to talk to humans. So I’m, like, very, very bullish. I’m an optimist. I think we are entering a world of endless possibilities. If we get scared, we’ll be dinosaurs. Don’t be scared. Endorse this. Ride this we are the jockey. Technologies are only the horse. Tame it to your needs. Too afraid of it, don’t buy it. So if you don’t use that’s why the MIT study says only 5% of all the AI projects are successful. So address the fear if you can’t go home. It’s a great reminder. It’s kind why I’m so calm and so bullish on this thing. Having been around the block right, like I’m early 50s, I’ve seen every revolution from PC, internet, social, mobile, cloud. This is going to be the biggest era of abundance, of wealth, creation, of job creation that we can’t even imagine. New things will be possible that weren’t possible before. Now, what they are, I don’t know, man,
29:57
I couldn’t agree with you more, I mean, and it’s a great. Reminder, it’s, you know, everyone that is fearful, you know, AI is going to take my job. It’s a great reminder that each of these different technology waves, you know, whether it’s the industrial revolution or the printing press or the internet, you know it, it ended up creating more GDP, you know, more value for all. It created more jobs, and now we were already living in an era of abundance. You know, I was walking down the streets of Chicago last night and the valet crew out for out front of the restaurant. We’re all wearing Canada Goose jackets. You know that that would not have been possible when I was a kid.
30:37
The word I use is industries and work is going to get reimagined, and the people who reimagine that will be the big winners. So whether it’s corporates, execs, me as an individual, I need to reimagine myself. It’s called the growth mindset.
30:57
Growth Mindset 100% so
31:00
if you’re afraid of failure, right? Einstein said, I read a lot of his stuff, and if you don’t fail enough, how will you come up with anything
31:09
100% so, Naveen, you did a great job of walking us through the stack, right? The AI stack, and you started kind of with the infrastructure and the chip layer, you know, as we think about semiconductors and AI infrastructure and how it’s becoming a geopolitical battle, battleground and it’s seeing massive capital formation. Talk to us about what hardware founders should understand about building in this cycle that may not have been true in past generations.
31:40
Absolutely the first advice I have, I have for people, is innovate around the edge. Some problems are solved the GPU, AI accelerators, if you had to do a startup in that you started five, seven years back. Now look at what are the problems at a system level. This new GPU beast has created its power, cooling, networking, feeds, speeds. Please go solve those problems, because you have weak incumbents there. Second, the world has changed. You won’t have 10,000 customers. You’ll have 10 called the hyperscalers. They’re going to buy 80 to 90% globally, of the supply. Third every country in the world because of sovereign data sovereignty data governance issues, is going to build its own cloud. The example I give to people is the telecom industry. Every country has its own telecom company. IT’S NOT AT and T in the UK, it’s called British Telecom Germany, Deutsche Telekom, India, its own companies. So this is where sovereign AI, because of regulation governance. So startups first have to do well in the US, but the importance of global markets, they need to study the telecom industry. New sovereign clouds, what I call Neo clouds, are not just happening in the US. So the market will go from 10 to maybe 50 customers. That’s it. This is like the telecom industry. You’re not going to have more than 50 100 customers. So the orders will be big and supply chain will be the issue. So get closer to the tsmcs of the world. So those are my and you need to be the best fundraiser. These are capital intensive projects, which sounds Yes. So I think those are the five things that come to mind, as I would say, the stuff, right? Why has
34:05
sovereignty, you know, become so important? Why do you think each of these nation states needs, you know, its own AI infra, kind of like the telecom industry. Why did they need their own communications? Yeah, I
34:21
think like the communications was more because of regulation and privacy and geopolitical risk, so that is one reason the AI sovereignty will happen. But that’s related to data, is the new oil regulations and everything. But people have realized, if AI is the intelligence layer, AI is democratizing experience, education and everything. If. If you don’t have a local company providing that, all the value you’re going to create on that is going to go outside your country, and that’s a big problem. Big problem because you become a net importer of intelligence, and they don’t want us to become for AI or China, what the Middle East is for oil, this is going to be like water, air and oil. For the industry I have to produce. I can procure Nvidia, but I need to produce intelligence in my geography. Otherwise I’m gonna I’m gonna get and that’s the part most people don’t understand. They think it’s regulation, fear of data going outside. People know, man, if this is the future, this is the oil, this is the water, this is the oxygen. What if the US says I’m not going to supply it to you? You’re done. You can’t be competitive anymore if you don’t have local intelligence.
36:13
This is intelligence, completely
36:17
intelligence as a service. How can you not it’s like saying, I run my country on all the government decisions are made by an outside country. But how,
36:28
in ways, the the financial ecosystem is is dependent on the US and and maybe, maybe that is another reason why sovereignty will matter.
36:39
I can buy Nvidia and all the other technologies I can hire people and provide intelligence all the electricity is provided, like telecom by local companies.
36:50
So the geopolitics is, is a major conversation right now. Another one is the incumbents versus the upstarts. Like, yeah, talk to us about this race to dominate. Ai, do it? Do the incumbents actually have the structural advantages that people assume? Or is there a scenario where startups capture a far larger share of value than expected?
37:13
I think it will be. It’s time dependent right now because of the hyperscalers and the dominance of some chip vendors value has accreted in the hardware layer to incumbents and in the providing of intelligence as a service to The cloud providers and hyper scalers. Models, startups, data startups, next level up, middleware and tooling, startups, apps, teammates, startups, so, but today, all the spend is in infra. So that’s where they dominate.
37:58
Are we in a bubble? Everyone keeps talking about the bubble because of all the money crowding into infra and models for that matter,
38:06
I think valuations are high. It always happens. I think public companies are cheap. Look at their growth, and they’re still trading on earnings. Private Markets, valuations are high. I don’t like it. We are paying three, four year forward multiples on these late stage companies, assuming picture perfect execution, and a handful of companies will be able to do that. 80 to 90% won’t get there. But luckily, we focus on early stage. There is inflation, but it’s not as bad. You see what I’m saying. I see what you’re saying. Always happens. But by the way, a few companies will be able to grow into these valuations. Most other ones may not like what we saw in 2020, 2021, it’s a balance. So let’s not look at those outliers, Black Swans, and say, everybody will be a black swan. Man, never happens. How do you problem of humanity, right? You pick open AI anthropic and say, I’m going to be that. It’s the same what people used to say, I’m Airbnb. Of x, Uber of x. What happened? There’s only Uber Uber.
39:18
How are you balancing investment in this sort of environment with inflated valuations, lots of these AI companies don’t have great unit economics, right? And there’s kind of this shift to being focused on potential and upside versus, you know, margins profitability. You know, how do you not miss some of the most iconic companies of the next generation, while still you know, focusing on fundamentals and doing right by LPs,
39:51
we are in the business of creating consistent returns, which have to be better than. And most illiquid investments. So our competition is not just we see some chasing hot deals. We are not in the business of buying beachfront properties. We’re not in the business of buying logos, hot companies. I don’t know what those means. I’m a venture capital investor. I’m not a real estate investor. I’m not a media company. My job is, take small boxes of money, make it bigger. People can invest in bonds or investors. They can invest in public markets, real estate buyout, private equity, as long as we are 500 pips better than the private equity and buyout markets. Our LPs are ecstatic. So I never look at what we are going to miss. I don’t know, man, at the inception stage, I only get measured by what we do and what returns we are producing. It’s a financial scorecard, and we have been top decile since mid 2000s to now, and our net IRR over a 55 year period, upcycle, down cycle is close to 30% so we are a financial investor who cares. We are not in a real estate company. We are not in open AI. I don’t care. I’m no FOMO. I’m in the business of taking small boxes of money, making it bigger, and producing consistent returns. And if you do in the venture capital business, early stage three, back to back, top quartile funds, you end up in top 5% in results of venture capital, not in logos and brand. So we have decided we are an investor, like Mr. Warren Buffet was we make money, right? Like now some hot symbols, right? Like, what can I do? That’s not my business. Man, you’re not in any beachfront property. I know nothing about real estate. You’re not in any hot deal. How do I know the deal is hot? Did it make money, for example? Man, in the last six weeks, my team just told me we became part of five unicorns, and all those companies were funded at the inception stage. Only this year, I say, okay, pay for money. They’re doing well. When they make real money, then we’ll talk, man like you can’t eat mine, beachfront properties. You can’t eat hot deals. You can when money comes it’s a cash on cash business. That’s when you can celebrate. Investing is easy. Getting money out, that’s not easy. So our fundamentals are clear. It’s a financial scorecard. How much money do we take from lps on a one year basis across all our LP funds. How much money do we give them back? Three year period, same, six year period, same, nine year period, same, I think we are top two or three in the industry. On dpi. Model is working, right? We don’t have multiple offices, multiple branches. We’re a small firm. Small means 1.4 billion investing in early stage startups, not 10 billion. We have a certain restaurant, which is only on Sand Hill Road. We make some special food. And there’s a line of LPs, line of entrepreneurs who want our product, and we are happy. So we’re a Michelin star, maybe one, maybe two, maybe three, but very specialized. If people disagree, we’re not a Michelin star restaurant. At least we are an In and Out Burger. We make one kind of burger, fresh french fries and great shakes. You want a chicken burger, I don’t have it. You want a veggie burger, I don’t have it, but we do well. We are happy there’s a line of people. There’s a line of people. So that’s my philosophy, right? And please take it in the right way. I’m giving you the crown jewels. We’re just humble natural investors who stick to our nitty gritty and are just trying to do well for entrepreneurs. Do well for our LPs and our employees, and we are quite happy doing it. I don’t know what the business of others is. I don’t know what is hot. I don’t know what is not hot. I don’t know what is beachfront. I only know how to take small boxes of money, and after 789, years, outperform all indices. That’s it. That’s my business.
44:46
Well, Naveen, it’s certainly refreshing. You know, in an ecosystem of momentum rounds and chasing logos, it’s back to basics. You know, this is returns focus.
44:55
We are in the financial services business man for private. Venture companies, not real estate and hot companies. I don’t know what those mean.
45:06
Naveen, if we could feature anyone here on the show, who do you think we should interview and what topic would you like to hear them speak about?
45:13
I would like go to Jensen, right, like this person has created an iconic company talked about every year, everywhere, first, 20 years, tough, many deaths, didn’t give up, but made calls I would really have him, really have him, for his entrepreneurial story, overnight success. What I said, 30 years to be here where he is. Never gave up patience.
45:45
One of one. Jensen, just incredible. The story, much like yourself. So Naveen, is there a book, article or video that you would recommend to listeners?
45:58
Yeah, I think, like to me, actually, I’ll give two, if that’s okay. On building iconic companies, I would really ask people to get a summary or read or do an audio thing on build to last, which is, how do you create these build to last companies, not build to flip. And then you know longevity is going to be high. We are running a marathon, not a sprint. On the personal front, you know people should read outlive, because if it’s a marathon, not a sprint, you can’t get burnt out. Health is very important, wellness, presence of mind outlive. So those are the two personal outlive. Business built to last. These are golden books.
46:50
Naveen, tell us one of Your habits or behaviors that’s a secret weapon for you.
46:57
Growth Mindset people first, I’m an eternal optimist, and now this one I need to be careful about. I believe in karma, and I believe there’s a divine power. If you do good deeds, somebody will take care of you. That last one is the most important, because I’m a God fearing person. Hindu philosophy says, do your karma, leave the rest to God, and don’t count the fruits. Very few people know that about me. I do idol worship twice a day because there’s somebody above us who’s watching on everything we are doing as humans. Again, my philosophy, because I believe in Hindu philosophy, other people might believe in other philosophies, other religions and other things, it keeps me grounded.
47:58
Well, I think that’s a great place to close out. He is Naveen Chadha. The firm is Mayfield. Naveen, this is a huge privilege and a pleasure. It’s an interview I’ve looked forward to for many years, and just so appreciate you know your willingness to give back to the community. So thank you.
48:16
Thank you for considering me for this, and I hope I’ll add some value to your listeners, and anything I can do for you, for your listening community, I’ll make time. Thank you. Naveen, appreciate it.
48:35
All right, that’ll wrap up today’s interview. If you enjoyed the episode or a previous one, let the guest know about it. Share your thoughts on social or shoot them an email. Let them know what particularly resonated with you. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that some of the smartest folks in venture are willing to take the time and share their insights with us. If you feel the same, a compliment goes a long way. Okay, that’s a wrap for today until next time, remember to over, prepare, choose carefully and invest confidently. Thanks so much for listening.
