Early-stage VC firm Mayfield announced AI Garage, a $100 million initiative aimed at ideation-stage founders building AI teammates as digital companions. And the firm has identified teammates as a $6 trillion opportunity that drives in the era of Collaborative Intelligence, where humans work with AI to transform how we work and live.
AI Garage is an early-stage effort that taps into the firm’s 40-year track record of working with entrepreneurs-in-residence (EIRs) to nurture founders at the ideation stage. The entry to AI Garage is free (with no equity for Mayfield at induction) and selective, providing individual guidance to founders and supporting them from ideation to incorporation.
The firm differentiates AI Teammates from copilots (simple assistants that offer suggestions like Amazon’s Rufus) and agents (task-oriented autonomous systems like Lyft’s refund handler). Teammates work with humans on complex tasks to achieve a shared goal, such as Evenup aiding lawyers in expediting the processing of personal injury claims or Neubird Hawkeye enabling site reliability engineers to respond quicker to site slowdowns.
The entrepreneur-in-residence (EIR) model involves founders spending time with dedicated partners at a venture capital firm hatching an idea. Mayfield has a long track record of successful partnerships, with one example being that of current Alphabet chairman and former Stanford University President Dr. John Hennessey, who used his sabbatical year in 1984 at Mayfield to found RISC semiconductor MIPS Technologies.
Another recent example is Rehan Jalil, founder of the current Mayfield portfolio company Securiti.ai, who worked as a Mayfield EIR twice while ideating on Elastica (acquired by Blue Coat Systems in 2015) and also on Securiti.ai. And the firm’s current Teammate investments include Balbix’s BIX (Security teams), DevRev (Support Rep), Docket (Sales Engineer), Neubird’s Hawkeye (Site Reliability Engineer), Outreach’s Cleo (Sales Development Rep), Qventus (Healthcare pro), Revefi (Data Engineer), Sema4 (Finance Manager), and two stealth startups (Chip Engineer and Security Analyst).
Founders who would want to be considered for AI Garage could be first-time or seasoned and need to be located in the Bay Area. The five initial personas being targeted at launch include teammates in financial services, IT services, healthcare & life sciences, marketing, and finance & accounting.
Some of the benefits include:
— Zero equity at induction into the AI Garage;
— A 6 month stipend during the idea exploration stage;
— Up to $5 million in capital per founding team;
— Pairing with a dedicated investor;
— Access to the whole founder amplification team that provides help with:
— Strategy and business plan creation
— Customer validation from Mayfield’s CXO network
— Brand and narrative creation
The AI Garage applications are open at mayfield.ai now and will close by October 15, 2024. And the selected applicants will hear back from Mayfield no later than December 1, 2024.
KEY QUOTES:
“AI is evolving from Assisted and Autonomous to Collaborative Intelligence that works alongside humans to elevate them to superhumans. As we gathered a family of founders building teammates, they told us there was value in a thought partner even before they had a specific idea, to support them to grow it into a fundable company. So we are returning to our EIR roots with AI Garage, an initiative designed for deep collaboration with a few founders.”
– Navin Chaddha, Managing Partner of Mayfield
