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Sriram Krishnan
General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz
Sriram Krishnan is an Indian-American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and podcaster, currently serving as a General Partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). He specializes in investing in the crypto and Web3 sectors and has a notable background in product leadership across major tech companies.
Career Overview
Krishnan's career began at Microsoft in 2007, where he worked as a program manager. He later held significant roles at Facebook, Snap, and Twitter, where he was instrumental in product development and user growth. At Twitter, he led the consumer product team, contributing to a substantial increase in daily active users during his tenure from 2017 to 2019. His work at Facebook included creating the Facebook Audience Network, which became a major revenue stream for the company.123
In February 2021, he joined Andreessen Horowitz as a General Partner, focusing on consumer and social markets, and has since been involved in various investments in early-stage companies such as Figma, Scale.ai, and Canva.123
Podcasting and Media
Krishnan co-hosts a podcast titled The Aarthi and Sriram Show with his wife, Aarthi Ramamurthy. The podcast covers a range of topics from technology to venture capitalism and has garnered significant attention, including high-profile guests like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.23
Personal Background
Born in Chennai, India, Krishnan pursued a Bachelor of Technology in Information Technology from Anna University. He later moved to the United States, where he has built a prominent career in the tech industry. He resides in San Francisco with his family.12
Krishnan is also known for his active presence on social media, where he shares insights on technology and entrepreneurship, and he has contributed opinion pieces on topics related to social media and AI.24
Highlights
At Kearny Jackson, we meet so many founders every week. And I try to understand how these founders can "execute" quickly.
⚡️ What is execution velocity? I explain in the link below. 🔥 Shared a rough mental framework I use to assess founders 🛠️ Applies to pre-seed and seed-stage startups 📲 In lieu of product, how to assess execution 4️⃣ Defines 4 levels of execution, including the holy grail 😅 On judging ppl: “biased for action” or “biased for thought.”
I recently got asked to explain execution velocity in the early stages of startup building, so I’m sharing the rough framework I use to assess founders as a pre-seed/seed investor.
This is also how I judge whether someone is “biased for action” or “biased for thought.” I get along well with the former and not the latter, but that’s a story for another day. [Edit: I get along well with the former and not the latter]
Level 1 - Speed of communicating
Whether by text or email. Quick turnarounds, “acknowledged receipt” types of folks. Not being speedy is not necessarily a bad sign; it can also mean they’re busy or don’t care about you or your email. Usually “closes the loop” and, most importantly, tries to leave no email unresponded.
Level 2 - Speed of rewriting deck or memo
Founders who pitch one version of the deck and share an updated version after the pitch the same day with slides that address the questions asked during the pitch. Or founders that iterate on positioning and strategy quickly based on input and ship a new version of a deck within days. Some founders use a static deck when presenting (i.e. the same deck for weeks on end), but some are more dynamic and change/pivot/edit when new information or tactics come to light.
Level 3 - Speed of talking to or onboarding design partners
Founders who not only speak to 50-70 potential prospects within a short time frame but also ones who onboard X design partners very quickly. I’ve seen some founders pitch an idea in week one and sign up four design partners in week two. That’s pretty impressive regardless of what is being built and shows they can execute.
Level 4 - Speed of shipping new code, new features, new products, or new pivots
This is the holy grail. This is what every early-stage investor means by execution velocity. In the world of early-stage startups, the big fish don’t eat the small fish. The fast ones eat the slow ones. And how quickly you ship code represents how efficient or productive you can be in a resource-constraint environment.
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All investors would preferably want to see how founders execute with code, but (A) founders don’t always have product during the seed/pre-seed rounds, eg. figma designs, mock-ups, ideas, etc (B) so investors have to rely on other signals to decipher whether you can execute on 4 so levels 123 above will hopefully inform them on that.
