How Earon Mask decided to acquire Twitter under the white sun in the biography of Earon Mask



Twitter was acquired by Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, on October 27, 2022, and the name was changed to 'X', and the previous system was changed significantly, causing confusion. it is continuing. The Wall Street Journal has published a portion of Musk's biography ``Elon Musk'' by Walter Isaacson, which will be published on September 12th, and describes the circumstances behind the announcement of the acquisition of Twitter.

The Real Story of Elon Musk's Twitter Takeover - WSJ

https://www.wsj.com/tech/elon-musk-twitter-x-takeover-walter-isaacson-5f553fa

In 1999, Musk started a company called X.com. X.com wanted to create a super app that would bring together all personal financial transactions and social networks. After that, when the company merged with the payment service PayPal in 2000, Mr. Mask insisted that the company name ``X.com'' be retained, but this was not accepted. PayPal was already a trusted brand, and X.com was a name that reminded people of a porn site.

Musk was kicked out of PayPal in the wake of this conflict, but Musk said, ``If you just want to be a niche player, PayPal is fine, but if you want to swallow the global financial system, X.com is better.'' That's what he said.

In April 2022, 22 years after being kicked out of PayPal, Tesla's revenue for the first quarter of 2022 (January to March) reached $18.756 billion (approximately 2.4 trillion yen), the highest profit ever. (at that time) was recorded.

Tesla's revenue in the first quarter of 2022 is about 2.4 trillion yen, sales volume is over 300,000 units, up 67% from the same period last year-GIGAZINE



At the same time, SpaceX was also doing well, and the number of subscribers to Starlink, a satellite Internet business, exceeded 500,000. Mr. Mask had prepared $ 10 billion (about 1.4 trillion yen) in cash by exercising stock options. At the same time, starting around January 2022, Mr. Musk secretly told his personal business manager to start buying Twitter stock.

Isaacson said, ``Mr. Musk's forcible acquisition of Twitter and renaming it 'X' was a prelude to the impulsive and irreverent manner in which he would run Twitter.For Mr. Musk, Twitter became addictive. It's quite a playground. Twitter has some aspects of a schoolyard, with ridicule and bullying, but the smart kids get followers. Like Mr. Musk when he was a kid, he's the one who gets thrown down the stairs and gets knocked down. No, with Twitter, Mr. Musk can be the king of the schoolyard.'


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Mr. Isaacson also introduces an incident that caused Mr. Musk to become concerned about ideological bias on Twitter. It seems that Mr. Mask had an eldest son who was 16 years old at the time, but one day the eldest son came out to Mr. Mask's brother's wife, saying, ``I am transgender and have decided to live as a woman.'' Furthermore, after that, the eldest son became an avid Marxist. Mr. Musk was shocked by this and began to believe that his eldest son was indoctrinated with ideas at a preparatory school in Los Angeles, which led him to believe that Twitter is similarly ingrained with biased ideas. said Isaacson.

On the night that it became public that Musk was buying Twitter stock, he called Parag Agrawal, who replaced Twitter founder Jack Dorsey as CEO, and announced that he would be buying shares in Twitter in March 2022. On March 31st, the three of them had dinner with Twitter's director and chairman, Brett Taylor.

Mr. Musk said that Mr. Agrawal was ``a really nice person,'' but Mr. Musk argued that the characteristic necessary for a CEO is not to be a good person, and that managers should not aim to be liked. was doing. Isaacson said that even though Musk had a positive evaluation of Agrawal as a person, he may not have evaluated him as a manager.

At the time he had dinner with Mr. Agrawal and Chairman Taylor, Mr. Mask was not trying to acquire Twitter. Mr. Agrawal invited Mr. Mask as a Twitter executive, and Mr. Mask accepted this.

Afterwards, Musk told close friends and PayPal co-founders Luke Nosek and Ken Howery, ``Publishing open source algorithms on GitHub'' and ``Getting Twitter's certification mark for $2 a month (approximately ¥280). By charging small amounts such as Japanese yen (Japanese yen) and acquiring users' credit cards, he introduced an idea to eliminate bots and create a new source of income. It seems that the goal is to make it a social platform that includes.


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The next day, during a conversation during a lunch with his younger brother, restaurateur Kimbal Musk, Mr. Musk said, ``Twitter is a blockchain social media platform that incorporates a payment system using the virtual currency Dogecoin into Twitter. He came up with the idea of 'platform'. But that afternoon, he told his personal business manager, ``Twitter already has users. We need that booster to get X.com up and running again. This is the reality. Only 9% of shareholders own the company. 'There is no way to rebuild,' he said in an email.

After that, Musk went on a four-day vacation to a Hawaiian island owned by Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison , but the entire vacation was spent thinking about ``what to do with Twitter in the future.'' .

Mr. Musk, who was thinking about Twitter in Hawaii, realized that even if he became a member of Twitter's board, he would not be able to modify Twitter or make it X.com. 'Is Twitter dying?' and rarely posts content. Is Twitter dying?



About 90 minutes after posting the tweet, Agrawal told Musk, ``You're free to tweet, 'Is Twitter dying? It is my responsibility to tell them what not to do in order to do so.'' Of course, this was an understatement and a reminder that Musk has no right to badmouth Twitter.

Musk responded to Agrawal's email, saying, 'So what did you do this week?' He then sent a follow-up email stating, ``I will not participate in the board meeting. It is a waste of time. I am proposing that Twitter become a private company,'' and declined to serve as a director.

Mr. Agrawal was shocked by this email and contacted Mr. Musk asking if we could talk. Less than three minutes later, Taylor sent an email to Musk asking him to give him five minutes to understand the context. However, Mr. Mask replies, 'It will not work if you discuss with Mr. Agrawal and fix Twitter. Drastic measures are necessary.'



As for why Musk suddenly rebelled against Twitter's board of directors, Isaacson said, ``I didn't want to be on the board and be some kind of reasoner,'' Musk said. While introducing the testimony, he also stated, ``Mr. Musk was in a manic state and acted impulsively.''

After returning from Hawaii, Mr. Mask headed to Vancouver, Canada to meet his parents and grandparents. Mr. Mask's partner, Grimes , Claire Bushey, who acted together in Vancouver, said, 'I found Mr. Mask in stress mode.'

Mr. Mask returned to the hotel with Mr. Bushey and played ' Elden Ring ' without sleeping until 5:30 in the morning, but behind that, Mr. Taylor told Chairman Taylor, 'As a result of deliberating for several days, Twitter became a private company. 'I decided that I should do it,' he said in an email.

Then, on April 14, 2022, Mr. Musk tweeted, ``I have created a proposal.''



Mr. Mask, who had already acquired 9.2% of the stock at that time, acquired the remaining 91.8% for $ 43 billion (about 5.4 trillion yen) and announced his intention to acquire Twitter. In this way, Mr. Mask pushed forward towards Twitter.

Elon Musk proposes to acquire Twitter for over 5 trillion yen, will take shares private for freedom of speech - GIGAZINE

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