He previously led product teams at Microsoft, Twitter, Yahoo!, Facebook, and Snap. In addition to his work as an investor and technologist, he and his wife rose to additional prominence in 2021 as podcast hosts.[1][4][5][6][7][8]WME represents the "tech power couple" of Krishnan and Aarthi Ramamurthy in film and television projects.[9]
In 2022, Krishnan announced that he was working with Elon Musk on the rebuilding of Twitter following Musk's acquisition of the company.[10] A 2022 Fortune report published rumors that Krishnan would be selected as the next CEO of Twitter.[11]
Early life and education
Krishan was born in Chennai, India,[1] in a middle-income Tamil family. His life changed in the late 1990s when he managed to persuade his father to buy him a computer. As he still did not have internet access, Krishan would buy coding books and practice coding basics every night. This prompted him to pursue a career in information technology.[12]
In 2007, he began working at Microsoft where he served as a program manager for Visual Studio. At Facebook, Krishnan built the Facebook Audience Network, a competitive platform to Google's ad technologies.[14][15][16] At Twitter, he led product and core user experience, driving a 20% annual user growth rate and launching a redesigned home page and events experience.[17][18][19]
Andreessen Horowitz
Krishnan was appointed a general partner of American venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz ("a16z") in February 2021.[20] He was anticipated to serve consumer and social markets, however he has also theorized on the impact of "deep tech" on society.[21][22][23]
In 2023 he was appointed to lead the firm's London office, its first non-US location.[2] The office is expected to serve Web3 investments as well as AI and other fields.[2][24]
Social media and AI
In 2022, various news media reported that Krishnan was assisting Elon Musk in the revamp of Twitter following Musk's takeover of the company.[10][25][26] Additional reports named Krishnan as the leading candidate for the role of CEO of the newly private company.[11][27][28]
Krishnan penned a 2023 New York Times opinion column regarding social media, AI, and related fields. He predicted a rise in the number and diversity of online spaces due to decentralization and platforms like Farcaster, Bluesky and Mastodon.[29]
The Aarthi and Sriram Show and other media
In early 2021, Krishnan and his wife, Aarthi Ramamurthy, launched a Clubhouse talk show that "focuses on organic conversations on anything from startups to venture capitalism and cryptocurrencies."[30] An early appearance by Elon Musk on the Good Time Show was described as the first show that "broke Clubhouse"[31] by rapidly exceeding the limit of 5,000 simultaneous users. The desire to interact with a larger community led to a variety of later innovations to allow streaming and replaying of Clubhouse chats. On that episode, Elon Musk grilled Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev regarding the GameStoptrading controversy.[32] As of December 2021, the show had over 187,000 subscribers, plus 735,000 subscribers between Krishnan and Ramamurthy's personal Clubhouse accounts.[33][1] Other guests have included Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Diane von Fürstenberg, Tony Hawk, MrBeast,[4][30] and A.R. Rahman.[33][34]
In 2022, the Good Time Show moved to YouTube.[35] It then evolved to a podcasting format under the name The Aarthi and Sriram Show, with both audio and video content.[7]The Hollywood Reporter reported that the podcast had received more than 1 million downloads by early 2023.[7]
Personal life
Krishnan is married to Aarthi Ramamurthy, co-host of The Aarthi and Sriram Show (formerly the Good Time Show) and a serial entrepreneur. They met in college in 2003 through a Yahoo! chat room related to a coding project and began dating in 2006 and eloped in 2010.[1] They live in San Francisco.[36]