Soon after buying Twitter for $44 billion (£38.3 billion), Elon Musk dissolved the board of directors, including Chief Executive Officer Parag Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal, and General Counsel Sean Edgett. According to multiple reports, Musk has been planning to rework the company’s content moderation policies and ban users who had previously violated the platform’s policies. Similarly, there are speculations that the firm may start charging USD 20 per month to be verified. However, no official confirmation of the plan has been made by Musk or his team.
Even though he hasn’t named the new leader of one of the biggest social media platforms yet, the multibillionaire has been working closely with Indian-born techie Sriram Krishnan, who is helping Musk restructure the microblogging platform.
On Monday, Krishnan tweeted: “Now that the word is out: I’m helping out @elonmusk with Twitter with some other great people. “I (and a16z) believe this is a hugely important company that can have a great impact on the world, and Elon is the person to make it happen.”
Who is Sriram Krishnan?
Born in Chennai, the Indian American is currently a partner at the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Also called a16z, the firm had invested in Musk’s buyout of the social media platform.
An investor, technologist, and engineer, Krishnan has a keen interest in the intersection of consumer tech and crypto. As per his LinkedIn profile, Krishnan earned his BTech in Information Technology from SRM Engineering College, Anna University, in 2005. He then moved to the US at the age of 21 and started his career with Windows Azure at Microsoft.
In the past, he has led product and engineering teams at Twitter, Meta, and Microsoft. In his capacity, he has worked as an investor and advisor with companies, including Notion, Coda, Cameo, SpaceX, CRED, Scale.ai, and Khatabook. According to his website, his interests include writing, storytelling, memo collection, and professional wrestling, among others.
Along with his wife Aarthi Ramamurthy, Krishnan hosts a podcast and YouTube channel known as “The Good Time Show with Aarthi and Sriram,” where he has hosted some well-known personalities such as Mark Zuckerberg, Naomi Osaka, Calvin Harris, and others. He hosted Musk on his show in February 2021 after having met him earlier during a visit to the SpaceX headquarters in California.
Krishnan is expected to visit Chennai this month. Tweeting about his homecoming, Krishnan wrote I will be back home in Chennai for a few days next month.” If anyone here is interested in a meet-up (especially students!), let us know. Meanwhile, SRM Engineering College has been gearing up to host the alma mater. “We are very closely working with him, and our management is planning something. “We will be honouring him,” said an SRM official.