At the 2025 Fortune Most Powerful Women International Summit in Riyadh — a landmark event marking Fortune’s first women’s leadership gathering in the Middle East — Aarthi Ramamurthy unveiled a significant career pivot: the launch of Schema Ventures, a $20 million solo GP fund focused on backing early-stage founders building infrastructure and developer tools.
The Summit marked a historic milestone as Fortune’s first women’s leadership gathering in the Middle East, reflecting Saudi Arabia’s rapid transformation and commitment to empowering women as part of Vision 2030. The event drew over 150 influential women from 35 countries, including CEOs, policymakers, and Saudi leaders such as H.H. Princess Haifa Mohammed Al Saud (Vice Minister of Tourism) and Adwa Al-Arifi (Assistant Minister for Sport Affairs).
The firm’s LPs, including Marc Andreessen, Garry Tan (CEO of Y Combinator), Elad Gil, Charlie Songhurst, Gokul Rajaram, Leo Polovets, and Lachy Groom, lend not just credibility but a network effect that early-stage founders crave. Schema has also won support from Y Combinator’s fund-of-funds, signalling strong institutional confidence.
Ramamurthy’s ability to attract such a high-calibre group of investors is especially notable in today’s venture landscape, where solo GP funds are gaining momentum but still face significant fundraising challenges.
From tech leader to media maven
Ramamurthy, whose experience includes product leadership roles at Meta, Netflix, and Microsoft, is no stranger to shaping the future of technology. Born in Chennai, India, Ramamurthy studied computer science before moving to the US to join Microsoft as a software engineer. She later founded Lumoid, a Y Combinator-backed startup that let consumers try out gadgets before buying, a concept that bridged hardware accessibility and user experience. Her global perspective and firsthand startup experience uniquely position her to empathise with and support founders.
But in recent years, she’s carved out a parallel identity as a media personality and community builder. Since 2020, she has co-hosted The Good Time Show with her husband Sriram Krishnan, a former Andreessen Horowitz GP who now advises the White House on AI policy. The show, originally born on Clubhouse, has hosted influential guests such as Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, making it a viral platform for candid conversations on tech and innovation.
The show’s evolution from Clubhouse to a broader podcast platform has helped cement Ramamurthy’s reputation as a connector and thought leader, giving her unique access to established and emerging tech voices.
The Schema thesis: Infrastructure and collaboration
With Schema Ventures, Ramamurthy shifts from interviewing builders to backing them. Her fund focuses on early-stage startups, particularly those working in developer tools and back-end infrastructure software, where her product experience gives her a sharp edge. Schema isn’t about taking massive lead positions, but about writing what Ramamurthy calls “collaborative checks”, investments that signal partnership and value beyond capital.
Schema Ventures has already begun placing strategic early bets. Its portfolio includes:
- Cosmic Robotics – A company building robotics to automate solar panel maintenance, improving efficiency in clean energy.
- Confido Health – A startup focused on streamlining back-office healthcare operations, an often-overlooked bottleneck in the industry.
- Powerhouse – Software designed to improve workflow management for law firms, modernising legal operations.
Schema Ventures represents more than a career milestone. Ramamurthy joins a rare class of solo GPs and is among the very few women of colour leading their own venture firm. Her fund is a vehicle for investment and a statement about who to fund the future and how.
Her launch at the Riyadh Summit coincides with a surge in women’s participation in Saudi Arabia’s tech sector, now at 28% — surpassing the European average of 19% — and the fact that women now own 45% of the Kingdom’s SMEs, a direct result of Vision 2030 reforms. Despite these gains, women-led VC firms globally still receive just 3% of total venture funding, highlighting the significance of Schema’s debut.
Our thoughts about Schema Ventures
With Schema Ventures, Aarthi Ramamurthy is shifting her role from tech builder and talk show host to investor and ecosystem enabler. Backed by Silicon Valley’s most trusted names, she’s using her platform, insights, and networks to bet on the next generation of infrastructure-first companies with the same curiosity and passion that fueled The Good Time Show.
Her presence at the Summit, alongside leaders like Lubna Olayan and former UK Prime Minister Theresa May (who spoke on ethical leadership in a fractured world), underscores the global momentum for women’s leadership and the importance of cross-border collaboration.
Aarthi Ramamurthy took to LinkedIn to state: “I grew up an outsider. I moved to San Francisco, built two startups, and shipped products at Microsoft, Netflix, and Meta. My story – figuring it out without a roadmap – is the blueprint for Schema. Schema backs exceptional outsiders: early-stage founders building from lived experience, not from pedigree or proximity. Sometimes there’s no pitch deck yet, no co-founder, no capital — just conviction and technical insight. That’s where we come in. We focus on the earliest stages of company building, and we lean in where we have real expertise.”
