In the heady days of 1969, Mayfield I was launched with $3.5 million. Since then, Mayfield Fund has invested in over 300 ventures, 90 of which have gone public, and swelled to over $1.5 billion in capital under management. According to the company, Mayfield seeks to invest in information technology and healthcare technology enterprises with the potential to achieve $200 million in market capitalization within five years. Mayfield had several hits in 1999. Qtera Corp., an optical networking company, was sold to Nortel Networks for $3.25 billion in December. Vantive Corp. was sold to PeopleSoft for over $400 million in October. Mayfield's portfolio also included seven IPOs in 1999 (Calico Commerce, Netcentives, Redback, Tibco, Latitude, Vixel and Tularik). The company also launched its tenth venture capital fund in 1999, a $450 million fund to be managed by general partner Robin Vasan.

Investment strategy: no partner, no value

While Mayfield provides ventures with financing at seed through third round, it prefers to focus on early stage financing, where, in the words of firm literature, Mayfield's "experience and resources can make a strong contribution." This emphasis reflects Mayfield's insistence on its role as a partner in the entrepreneurial process. Kevin Fong, a partner, explained to Forbes, "If you don't think you can get the best service or the best value-added from Mayfield or an angel or whatever, then you should find someone else. If you're just finding someone who is willing to give money, and they'll never add anything else, you are making a big mistake. A VC is a key partner. If we're not a partner, we have no value."

Portfolio: IT, health technologies

Mayfield's portfolio has two main categories: information technology and healthcare technology. The portfolio is then further broken down into sub-categories. For IT, there's communications, computers and peripherals, e-commerce, enterprise software, Internet infrastructure, semiconductors. In healthcare, the three categories are biopharmaceuticals, healthcare services, medical devices. Some IT investments of note are TimesTen Performance Software, Netcentives, The Motley Fool and VarsityBooks.com. In healthcare, the portfolio includes Radiant Research, Woodside Biomedical and Millenium Pharmaceuticals.

Mayfield GPs: a Stanford-heavy crew

Thirteen general partners lead the Mayfield Fund team, and Stanford degrees abound. Kevin Fong, one of the firm's more ubiquitous partners, joined Mayfield in 1988, and has made investments in over 20 start-ups, notably Crescendo Communications and Legato Systems. Fong received an MBA and an MS in electrical engineering from Stanford. On the heathcare tech side, Wende Hutton focuses on early-stage medical device and services start-ups. Her investments include Heartstream, Inc., Micro Therapeutics; and MatureWell, Inc. Hutton is a graduate of Stanford and Harvard Business School. One of the firm's most notable IT specialists is Yogen K. Dalal, a Stanford Ph.D. in electrical engineering and founding member of Claris Corp. and Metaphor Computer Systems. Dalal, a techie of the highest degree, was recently dubbed "The Smart VC at Mayfield" by Red Herring for not letting his zest for technology blind his evaluation of a company's fundamental business issues. Dalal told Red Herring that his favorite first question to ask entrepreneurs is, "What is a typical day in the life of your customer?" He went on to explain, "The reason I ask that is because if you don't understand what your customer does at 8:00 in the morning, 4:00 in the afternoon, or 8:00 at night, you don't know how your product fits into their life."