Mayfield received a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and completed the Management Development for Entrepreneurs (MDE) program at the UCLA Anderson School of Management.
He also served as marketing director of Levicom, one of the largest privately held telecom groups in Eastern Europe, where he also started an Internet service provider and a web design company.
[6][7][8] With the collapse of the dot-com bubble, the company, which had yet to earn any revenue,[9] saw its billion dollar valuation vanish overnight.
He then served as VP of marketing for Lucida Inc.,[11] a Fujitsu spinout,[citation needed] before co-founding Socialtext in 2002.
[12] In 2012, Mayfield sold his two companies within the same week, Socialtext to Bedford Funding/Peoplefluent and SlideShare to LinkedIn.