Navin Chaddha

"I believe that company building is a marathon, not a sprint, and that crisis can be an opportunity for the bold," says Navin Chaddha, the managing partner of Mayfield. A former streaming media entrepreneur, he has appeared on the Forbes Midas List of top tech investors 18 times, with investments that include HashiCorp, Lyft and Poshmark.

Growing Up in Delhi, India

"I grew up in India, graduated from IIT Delhi, came to the US in '92 to Stanford University to pursue grad school," he said on The CodeBreaker Mindset podcast. He earned a B.Tech in electrical engineering at IIT Delhi in New Delhi, India, and an MS in electrical engineering at Stanford, where in 1993 and 1994 he worked with his professor, Anoop Gupta, on sending video over the internet.

Leaving the PhD for VXtreme

He was close to finishing his PhD and hoped to become a professor when investors began asking whether his group could build a video version of the Netscape browser. "I call my parents, I call my friends, I have to take leave of absence from the PhD program and they tell me, you're crazy," he recalled on CodeBreaker. After 60 to 90 days of thinking it over he made the leap, and VXtreme started in January 1996.

In 1997 a partnership with Microsoft turned into a pitch to Bill Gates. "When I went to this meeting with Bill Gates, I met a 100X entrepreneur," he said at a Silicon Catalyst fireside chat. Microsoft bought VXtreme in July 1997, and its technology became the foundation of Windows Media. He also co-founded iBeam Broadcasting, a content delivery network for video, and worked as an executive at Microsoft before leaving in 1999.

Selling Vitamins in a Downturn

"My first two companies as an entrepreneur were quick successes. My third company, however, Rivio, got caught in the downturn in 2001," he said on Mayfield's Chat with Champions podcast. Rivio sold back-office software to small businesses as an online service, and its burn rate was built for the 1999 belief that a company could reach an IPO in two or three years. Small businesses had more pressing problems, and he concluded that Rivio's software "wasn't a painkiller, it was more a vitamin." CPA.com acquired Rivio in 2001, and he ran the combined company until early 2003.

"My biggest learning from Rivio was to ensure startups provide painkillers and not vitamins, and control their burn rate till they get the product/market fit," he said.

Leading Mayfield

He joined Mobius Venture Capital in 2003 as an entrepreneur in residence to start a fourth company, and instead became a venture capitalist in 2004. "My switch to an entrepreneur to a venture capitalist happened by accident," he said. At Mayfield, the Menlo Park, California firm he now leads, he has invested in more than 60 companies, 18 of which have gone public, according to his Mayfield profile.

In 2023 Mayfield raised $955 million across two funds, bringing its assets under management to $3 billion, and the firm now invests in AI founders from inception through Series B. Its current AI portfolio includes Hang Ten Systems, which builds and modernizes software for large companies with small AI-assisted engineering teams. Former Infosys chief executive Vishal Sikka founded the company, and Mayfield led its first seed round in 2026.

Personal Life

"Early on in my life, I used to be a cricket fanatic, and I am still a cricket fanatic today," he said on Chat with Champions. He captained his school cricket team and credits it with teaching him about teams and culture, which he links to a line he repeats about company building: "People make products, products don't make people."