Everything promises to create a glorious 2022 if Elon Musk does not buy Twitter.

In April 2022, things went surprisingly well for Elon Musk. Tesla shares have increased 15-fold in five years, making them worth more than the next nine auto companies combined. SpaceX in the first quarter of 2022 launched twice as many rockets into orbit as all other companies and countries combined. Starlink satellites have just succeeded in creating a privately owned Internet network, providing connectivity to 500,000 subscribers in 40 countries worldwide.

Everything promises to create a glorious 2022 if Musk just sits there and doesn’t change anything. But, of course, such a personality is not in Musk’s nature.

Shivon Zilis, manager of Neuralink (Musk’s company that researches implantable brain-computer interfaces) and mother of his two undeclared children, noticed that in early April, he fell into The state of “itching” like a person addicted to playing a game to the point of winning but still unable to unplug. “You don’t have to be at war all the time,” she told Musk that month. “Or are you more comfortable in a war mood?”

“It’s part of my default settings,” Musk replied to his girlfriend.

This period of incredible success coincided fatefully with him exercising some stock options that were about to expire, leaving him with about $10 billion in cash. “I don’t want to leave it in the bank,” Musk said. “So I asked myself which product I liked and it was an easy question to answer: Twitter.” That January, he secretly told his personal business manager, Jared Birchall, to start buying Twitter stock.

The way Musk rushed to buy Twitter and change the company’s name to X was a precursor to the way he runs the company today: Impulsively and disrespectfully.

More than two decades ago, he founded a company called X.com, which he wanted to turn into an “everything app” that could handle all of his financial transactions and social connections. person. When it merged with the payment service PayPal co-founded by Peter Thiel, Musk fought fiercely to keep X.com as the name of the merged company. His new colleagues objected. PayPal has become a trusted brand, with a friendly interface similar to Twitter, while the name polite. Musk was ousted and he remains steadfast to this day. “If you just want to be a niche player, PayPal is a better name,” he said. “But if you want to take over the world financial system, X is a more suitable name.”

At the time he started buying shares, Musk looked at Twitter, which he also found too relevant and valuable, as a way to execute his original idea. “Twitter could have become X.com, it should have,” he said in April of that year.

At that time, a new factor emerged: Musk’s growing concern about the dangers of what he called a “mind-awakening virus” that he believed was infecting the United States.

Musk’s psychology was partly triggered by the decision to transition his oldest child, Xavier, then 16 years old. “Hey, I’m transgender and my name is now Jenna,” the girl texted Elon’s brother’s wife. “Don’t tell my dad.” When Musk found out, he was generally an optimistic person, but Jenna later cut all ties with him.

He partly blamed it on the ideology he felt Jenna had instilled at Crossroads, the progressive school she attended in Los Angeles. He feels Twitter has been infected by a similar mindset aimed at suppressing right-wing and anti-government voices.

FIRE-BREATHING DRAGON

One night after the news that he bought Twitter shares was announced, Musk called Parag Agrawal, a software engineer who had just taken over as Twitter CEO from Jack Dorsey. They decided to secretly meet for dinner on March 31, along with Twitter board chairman Bret Taylor.

Musk found Agrawal to be a likeable person. “He’s a really nice guy,” Musk said. But that’s the problem. If you ask Musk what traits a CEO needs, he won’t mention being a really nice guy. One of his maxims is that managers should not aim to be liked. “What Twitter needs is a fire-breathing dragon,” he said after that meeting, “and Parag is not that.”

Musk is not yet thinking about taking over Twitter himself. At their meeting, Agrawal invited him to join Twitter’s board and he agreed. For a few short days, everything seemed to be going smoothly.

Luke Nosek and Ken Howery, Musk’s close friends and PayPal co-founders, walk around the mezzanine workspace of the Tesla factory and headquarters in Austin, Texas, on the afternoon of April 6, one day later announced that he would join Twitter’s board of directors. They have begun to be wary. “It’s probably a recipe for trouble,” Musk cheerfully admitted as he sat down at a conference table overlooking the assembly line. “It’s clear that the prisoners are running the asylum,” he said of Twitter employees.

Musk then came up with a few ideas. “What if we charged people a small fee, say two dollars a month, to have their accounts verified?” he asked. He said having users’ credit cards would eliminate bots, provide a new revenue stream, and facilitate his goal of turning Twitter into a payments platform, like he envisions for X.com. , where people can deposit money, give advice, and pay for stories, music, and videos. Because Howery and Nosek had worked with Musk at PayPal, they liked the idea. “That could fulfill my original vision of X.com and PayPal,” Musk said with a cheerful smile.

Musk’s brother Kimbal told him over lunch the next day that it would be better to start a new social media platform based on blockchain. Musk was intrigued and fell into a “giddy” state. After lunch, Musk sent Kimbal a few messages to pitch the idea of ​​“a blockchain social media system that does both payments and short text messages like Twitter.”

He then flew to Larry Ellison’s Hawaiian island, Lanai. He initially planned the trip as a date with Australian actress Natasha Bassett. But instead of using it as a nice little vacation, he spent four days there figuring out what to do with Twitter.

Musk stayed up all night thinking about the problems Twitter was having. When looking at the list of users with the most followers, they are no longer active. So at 3:32 a.m. Hawaii time, Musk tweeted: “Most of these ‘top’ accounts rarely tweet and post very little content. Is Twitter dead?”

About 90 minutes later, Twitter CEO Agrawal sent Musk a text message: “You have the right to tweet ‘Is Twitter dying?’ or anything else about Twitter, but it is my responsibility to tell “You said that doesn’t help me improve Twitter at this time.” It was certainly a passage with a lot of emotional restraint, carefully worded to avoid implying that Musk had no right to criticize this social network.

When Musk received the text message, it was after 5 a.m. in Hawaii, but he was still very enthusiastic. He responded with a harsh answer: “What did you do this week?”.

Musk then followed up with a fateful message: “I am no longer on the board. This is a waste of time. I make an offer to move Twitter into private company mode.”

Agrawal was shocked. “Can we talk?”, he asked sadly.

Within three minutes, Taylor, the Twitter board chairman, texted Musk with a similar request to talk. “Can you give me 5 minutes to figure it out?”, he asked Musk.

“Fixing Twitter by chatting with Parag won’t work,” Musk replied. “Drastic action is needed.”

REPURCHASE

Musk said that when he arrived in Hawaii, it became clear to him that he could not fix Twitter or turn it into X.com by joining the board. Musk was in a manic mood and acted impulsively.

As usual, his ideas fluctuated wildly according to his mood swings. Even as he was preparing to buy Twitter, he texted Kimbal about their idea of ​​starting a new social media company. “I think there needs to be a new social media company that is blockchain based and includes payments,” he wrote.

But that afternoon – Saturday, April 9 – he came up with the idea of ​​buying Twitter. “Twitter already has a user base. That booster is needed to launch X.com,” he sent a message to Birchall. “This is true,” Musk affirmed. “There is no way to fix the company as a 9% shareholder.”

Afterwards, Musk flew to Vancouver to meet his girlfriend Grimes. She pushed Musk to go there so she could introduce their son X to her parents and grandparents. But when it came time to drive to meet his parents, Grimes decided to leave Musk at the hotel. “I could tell he was in a stressed state,” she said.

Indeed it is. Late that afternoon, Musk texted Taylor his official decision. “After many days of consideration – this is clearly a serious matter – I have decided to move Twitter into private company mode,” he said.

That night, after Grimes returned to their hotel, Musj relieved himself by immersing himself in a new video game called “Elden Ring,” which he downloaded onto his laptop. “Instead of sleeping,” Grimes said, “he played games until 5:30 a.m.”

Moments after it ended, Musk sent out a tweet: “I made an offer.”

After that, Musk began looking for outside investors who could financially support this acquisition of Twitter. He asked Kimbal but was refused. Musk was more successful with Larry Ellison. “Yes, of course,” Ellison replied when Musk asked if he was interested in investing in the deal.

“About how many USD?” Musk asked.

“A billion,” Ellison said, “or whatever you suggest.”

Ellison hasn’t tweeted in a decade. In fact, the billionaire couldn’t even remember his Twitter password, so Musk had to personally reset it for him. But Ellison believes Twitter is important. “It’s a real-time news service and there’s really nothing else like it. If you agree that this is important for a democracy then I think it is worth investing in it.”

Another person eager to join the deal is Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Musk’s Morgan Stanley banker urged him to call Bankman-Fried, saying he “would do the technical integration of blockchain on social networks” and invest $5 billion in the deal.

Although he had discussed with Kimbal the idea of ​​building a social network on the blockchain, Musk felt that this approach would be too slow to support fast-paced Twitter posts. That’s why he didn’t want to meet Bankman-Fried. When his banker persistently repeated that Bankman-Fried “could make $5 billion,” Musk responded with a “dislike” button.

In the days that followed, Musk successfully gathered his finances and Twitter’s board approved the acquisition plan in late April. Instead of celebrating that night, Musk flew down to the launch site. Starbase fire in south Texas. There, he attended the regular nightly meeting on the Raptor engine redesign and, for more than an hour, struggled with how to deal with the unexplained methane leaks they were experiencing. The news on Twitter was a hot topic around the world, but SpaceX engineers knew he liked to focus on the task at hand and no one mentioned it. Musk then met Kimbal at a roadside coffee shop in Brownsville, which featured local musicians. They stayed there until 2 a.m., sitting at a table right in front of the stands, just listening to music.

The end of the Twitter deal is already planned. An orderly transition was scheduled for the opening of the stock market that morning. The money will be transferred, the stock will be delisted, and Musk will take control. That would allow Agrawal and his top Twitter lieutenants to receive severance pay and acquire their stock options.

At 4:12 p.m. one day in October 2022, once bankers had confirmed that the money had been transferred, Musk pulled the trigger to close the transaction. At that moment, his assistant delivered the dismissal letter to Agrawal and his three top officials. Six minutes later, Musk’s top security officer came down to the second-floor conference room to announce that everyone was forced to “exit” the building and their email access was cut off.

Cutting off emails immediately is part of the plan. Agrawal has prepared his resignation letter citing change of control. But when his Twitter email was cut off, it took him several minutes to get the document into his Gmail message. At that time, he was fired by Musk.

“He tried to resign,” Musk said.

Source: WSJ