Episode 1 | Building Trust with Your Inception Investor with guest Navin Chaddha (Managing Partner, Mayfield)

Feb 7, 2024

Navin Chaddha, Managing Partner at Mayfield, discusses the importance of trust between founders and investors, the elements of a fundable idea, challenges in AI investing, and building strong founder teams. He also emphasizes the value of inception-stage entrepreneurs with 'half-baked' ideas and the societal impact of responsible innovation.

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Introduction

00:00 • 3min

Prioritizing People-First Approach and Mission in Building Companies

03:19 • 11min

Navigating Success Metrics Post-Inception Investment in B2B SaaS

14:11 • 2min

Challenges in Investing in AI Startups

16:07 • 3min

Building the Dream Team for an AI Startup

18:54 • 2min

Navigating Investor Relationships for Early Stage Founders

20:35 • 18min

Selecting Long-Term Investors in AI

38:21 • 4min

Learning and Adapting in the AI Industry

42:33 • 4min

In the first episode of Fund/Build/Scale, Mayfield Managing Partner Navin Chaddha spoke about the need for founders to identify investors they can trust, how to pitch Mayfield's AI Start seed fund, and why he’s specifically looking for inception-stage entrepreneurs who have “half-baked” ideas.

Our conversation covered a lot of ground: Navin described the elements of a fundable idea, shared what excites (and unnerves) him about AI investing, and offered a framework for founder teams seeking solutions to orthogonal problems that create value for customers and align with market trends.

Here’s an episode rundown:

1:07: AI investing and entrepreneurship

7:56: fundraising, enterprise opportunities and success metrics

17:27 the biggest challenges facing AI investors

19:11: what strong founder teams look like

22:10: leveraging inception-stage investors

26:47: why idea-stage founders shouldn't worry about revenue

31:36: pitfalls/opportunities at the enterprise level

34:25: the "impedance mismatch" between startups + enterprise customers

38:22: societal change + responsible innovation

42:48: how he educates himself about emerging tech

Coming up in Episode 2:

I spoke with Rodrigo Liang, CEO and co-founder of SambaNova, about digging a moat, customer discovery, and product-led growth.

Please subscribe to Fund/Build/Scale on your favorite platform, and if you liked this episode, I hope you’ll give me a great rating.

For now, you can find the Fund/Build/Scale newsletter on Substack. The podcast theme was written and performed by Michael Tritter and Carlos Chairez. Michael also edited the podcast and provided additional music, and I’m deeply grateful.

Thanks for listening!

Links:

Fund/Build/Scale on Substack: https://fundbuildscale.substack.com
Mayfield: https://www.mayfield.com
Navin Chaddha on LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/navinchaddha/
Securiti: https://securiti.ai/
Cognitive plumbing: https://www.mayfield.com/cognitive-plumbing/
Impedance matching: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impedance_matching
Jensen Huang, founder and CEO, NVIDIA: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenhsunhuang/
Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO, Microsoft: https://www.linkedin.com/in/satyanadella/
Thomas Kurian, CEO Google Cloud: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-kurian-469b6219/
NVIDIA: https://www.nvidia.com
OpenAI: https://openai.com/
"Trough of disillusionment,” Gartner hype cycle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartner_hype_cycle
SambaNova Systems: https://sambanova.ai/
Podcast theme: "Artificio," by Michael Tritter and Carlos Chairez: https://laroda.bandcamp.com/track/artificio

Fund/Build/Scale is sponsored by Mayfield Fund and Securiti.