Aarthi Ramamurthy

Aarthi Ramamurthy is an Indian-American entrepreneur, talk show host and Internet celebrity.[1] She founded two venture-backed companies, as well as launching the "Good Time Show" Clubhouse chat show with her husband, Sriram Krishnan.[2] She has featured guests including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Virgil Abloh, and Steve Ballmer.[3][4] She is represented by WME.[5]

Ramamurthy was the subject of a New York Times profile with Krishnan,[1] a Variety profile,[5] and an Economic Times profile.[6]

Aarthi Ramamurthy
Born
Chennai, India
Occupation(s)Clubhouse host, entrepreneur
SpouseSriram Krishnan

Early life and education

Ramamurthy was born in Chennai, India to a Tamil family, and had a "typical middle-class Indian upbringing."[1]

Career

Software engineering

In 2005, Ramamurthy was hired by S. Somasegar at Microsoft, moving to the company's Seattle headquarters in 2007. There, she led part of the Xbox Live team.[7] She later worked at Netflix, where she built the consumer SDK.[7] She also worked at Facebook as a software engineer, where she served as Director of Product leading creator monetization products such as Facebook Stars, subscription and tipping products, and later led Facebook Groups and community governance products.[1][7]

Entrepreneurship

Ramamurthy co-founded True & Co, a lingerie e-commerce company in 2012. The company provides a "big data" approach to fitting bras based on an interactive questionnaire.[8]

She then served as entrepreneur-in-residence at Battery Ventures.[9]

In 2013, she founded Lumoid, a rental/try-before-you-buy service for gadgets such as camera gear and headphones.[10] The company's goal was to allow consumers to test different brands before committing to a purchase.[11] For example, prior to the Apple Watch's launch, over 3,000 people committed to rent the device through Lumoid.[12] Best Buy partnered with Lumoid to power its gear rental program.[13]

The Good Time Show

In December 2020, Ramamurthy and her husband, Sriram Krishnan, launched the Good Time Show, which began as a Clubhouse talk show. They describe it as "focuse[d] on organic conversations on anything from startups to venture capitalism and cryptocurrencies."[14] An early appearance by Elon Musk on The Good Time Show was described as the first show that "broke Clubhouse"[15] 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 GameStop trading controversy.[16] As of July, 2021, the show had over 175,000 subscribers.[1] During Krishnan's interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Zuckerberg described augmented and virtual reality as the future of work, alluding to the then-unannounced Meta concept. Additional guests have included Tony Hawk, Diane von Furstenberg, Sonam Kapoor Ahuja,[2] Kanye West,[17] and MrBeast.[18]

In 2022, WME signed Ramamurthy and Krishnan for film and TV development projects, as well as other publishing and podcasting ventures.[5]

In 2022, the Good Time Show moved to YouTube.[19] Ramamurthy's departure was cited as a major blow to Clubhouse.[20]

Clubhouse

In 2021, Ramamurthy joined Clubhouse as Head of International,[21] launching 30 languages, creator programs in India and Brazil, and the first Indian app icon.[22]

Investing and other activities

Ramamurthy has made early-stage investments in technology and growth companies.[23] She has spoken on panels about diversity in technology and product leadership.[24]

Personal life

Ramamurthy is married to Sriram Krishnan, a venture capitalist and co-host of The Good Time Show. They met in college in 2003 through a Yahoo! chat room related to a coding project and began dating in 2006. They live in San Francisco.[25] She is a photographer.[26]

References
  1. Hawgood, Alex (30 July 2021). "These Clubhouse Hosts Are Keeping the Party Alive". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  2. "How Sriram Krishnan and Aarthi Ramamurthy Blew Up on Clubhouse". finance.yahoo.com. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  3. Newton, Casey (1 February 2021). "Elon Musk just showed how Clubhouse can succeed". The Verge. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  4. "'Developers, developers, developers!' Ballmer and Sinofsky talk Microsoft, memes, more in Clubhouse". GeekWire. 12 February 2021. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  5. Donnelly, Matt (3 January 2022). "WME Signs Tech Power Couple Sriram Krishnan and Aarthi Ramamurthy (EXCLUSIVE)". Variety. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  6. Vyas, Ruchir (2 June 2022). "Clubhouse's international head Aarthi Ramamurthy departs from the social audio app". The Economic Times. Retrieved 12 November 2022.
  7. "Why gear rental marketplace Lumoid shut down". TechCrunch. 10 December 2017. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  8. Dickinson, Boonsri. "Are You A C Cup? This Startup Has The Secret To Finding The Perfect Bra". Business Insider. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  9. "Battery Ventures Adds New EIR, Aarthi Ramamurthy | PitchBook". pitchbook.com. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  10. Staff, Total Retail. "Aarthi Ramamurthy, Founder and CEO, Lumoid". Total Retail. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  11. CNBC.com, Drew Casey, special to (20 December 2015). "Lumoid pioneers a 'try before you buy' model of buying gadgets". CNBC. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  12. Evangelista, Benny (7 April 2015). "3,000 in 'line' on Lumoid site waiting to rent an Apple Watch". SFGATE. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  13. Rey, Jason Del (12 June 2017). "Best Buy's new weapon against Amazon: A try-before-you-buy option". Vox. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  14. "Kanye West and Elon Musk are slated to appear on a Clubhouse talk show hosted by a Facebook employee and her VC husband". Business Insider México | Noticias pensadas para ti (in Spanish). Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  15. King, Hope (1 February 2021). "Elon Musk admits 'talking smack' about Lidar". Medium. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  16. LaPorte, Nicole (10 August 2021). "Inside the only late-night talk show that breaks news". Fast Company. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  17. Kay, Grace. "Kanye West and Elon Musk are slated to appear on a Clubhouse talk show hosted by a Facebook employee and her VC husband". Business Insider. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  18. "Clubhouse Surpasses 10 Million Users After Musk, Zuckerberg, Rogan, and MrBeast Join and Starts Drawing More Scrutiny". Voicebot.ai. 23 February 2021. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  19. "Clubhouse witnesses two senior management exits". Moneycontrol. Retrieved 26 June 2022.
  20. Bureau, ABP News (3 June 2022). "Aarthi Ramamurthy And Anu Atluru Leave Clubhouse. Everything You Should Know". news.abplive.com.
  21. SN, Vikas. "Clubhouse hires Facebook's Aarthi Ramamurthy as Head of International". The Economic Times. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  22. "Clubhouse adds 13 new languages; ropes in Anirudh Deshmukh as first Indian icon". Business Today. 3 November 2021. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  23. "Moment House Raises $12M In Series A Funding, With Investment From UTA Ventures, Halsey, Many Others". Pollstar. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  24. Schiller, Lauren (16 November 2017). "I've seen the future of tech, and she's female". Salon. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  25. "You Should Know: Aarthi Ramamurthy and Sriram Krishnan". Guest of a Guest. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  26. "Dusk, by Aarthi Ramamurthy". 14 July 2010. Retrieved 12 November 2022.
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