Elon Musk Offers To Buy Twitter For $43 Billion | The Breakdown By My First Million

Okay, so you don't like to lose. If in this case you are not successful in, you know, the board does not accept your offer, you've said you won't go higher. Is there a plan B?

There is.

All right, we're live, breaking edition. Sean just texted us and said, we got to do this Elon thing. It sounds like you've got a lot of opinion, or you have a lot of opinions.

I got some opinions. I got some opinions for sure. Uh, first let's summarize what happened and then tell me how you— I guess like how you initially heard about it and how you reacted to it when, when you first heard.

So let's start from like, all right, so the weeks and months and years ago, Elon has always criticized Twitter, saying how he loves it. And I actually think he's one of the top 10 most followed accounts in the world. And of the top 10, he's one of the few that is actually actively posting as a normal person would. And he's criticized Twitter for doing some— for banning free speech, things like that, for basically being too liberal. He didn't ever say that word, but that's kind of what he's getting at.

Right.

And about 10 days ago or a week ago, he bought 9% of the company. And then he announced that he was going to join the board of directors. And the weekend after he announced that he was joining the board of directors, he started posting things like, let's turn Twitter's HQ into a homeless shelter. I actually lived next door to Twitter's headquarters in— at 9th and Market a couple of years ago. And it's basically like no one's there because the pandemic shut down that area of the city and it's full of homeless people. And he said, let's "Shut down Twitter HQ and turn it into a homeless shelter." He tweeted another thing.

He said, "Because nobody's going to work anyways." Yeah, because no one's going to work anyways. Employees don't go anyways.

So, it was two jabs that he took. And then also he said, "Should we create an edit button, yes or no?" And he tweeted basically 3 or 4 things like that. Then on Sunday— or sorry, on Sunday night, he was supposed to join the board on Monday, he said, "I'm not joining the board." And to a couple people, or people who are a little bit in the know of this kind of granular stuff, they said, "Well, the reason he's not joining the board is when you join the board of a company like this, you can't own more than 14%. And so by not joining the board, he can now buy the whole thing." And that happened on Monday. It's Thursday morning.

And by the way, first they were playing patty cake with each other. He's like, You know, the news comes out, then it's like the CEO of Twitter, Parag, is like, hey, um, so happy to have Elon Musk on our board. He's the best. Um, Jack Dorsey says, so glad to have Elon on our board. Elon says, so glad to be on the board, Jack. You know, they're, they're all playing patty cake. And then one day later or two days later, something like that, it becomes, he's actually not joining the board. And he basically goes hostile.

And now at 6:00 AM, 7:00 AM this morning, it was announced that he was going to buy Twitter right away when he bought 9% of the company. I think the stock jumped 10% the day he did it, but its current valuation was like $43 billion. And I think he offered to buy it at $53 billion, give or take. I forget the exact amount, but it was a nice premium. Not a huge premium, but a nice premium. And here we are now waiting for what's going to happen next. And by the way, I think Jack Dorsey— I do actually think he was somewhat genuine. I think the CEO of Twitter was not genuine. That guy doesn't even tweet. Like he's not even a user. Like, have you ever read his tweets? Like he just tweets like screenshots of PDFs.

He follows me. That's all I know. And so he's good in my books. Parag, you're the man. You have excellent taste in who you follow.

Well, that's— he might be the man, but he's not like a power user of Twitter. Like he's like, I think I know how to use Twitter better than he does. You know what I mean?

Yeah, for sure you do. Yeah. Like, okay, so he tweeted on January 20th, then February 16th, then March 3rd. You know, before that, November 30th. So, you know, these guys tweeting bimonthly.

Yeah. So like, whereas Elon actually gets it.

Yeah.

So anyway, that's where we are now. What's your take?

So I think there's a couple of different things. First, I want to just say, baller move. I've— baller move. I've been on the record of saying I think Elon can be kind of cringy with stuff he says in public. I think he's an amazing inventor. I think he's a— Amazing, visionary, and a force of nature for sure. But I think he's kind of cringy in the way he kind of— for somebody who's like, trying to be kind of like an engineer's engineer, he sure does do a lot of stuff to like make himself seem cool. And like try to be cool. And it just comes across tryhardy to me. But this was not, not just the move. I'm going to read you— have you read the letter?

Yes, I have it up.

The letter is badass. So badass. He, he created an offer.

Dude, that's so funny that we both like gravity. I was good. That's exactly what I was going to bring up was the writing is—

the writing is amazing. I'm just going to read it word for word. So he goes, yeah. So this is part of his like SEC filing. He goes, I invested in Twitter as I believe its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe. And I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy. However, Since making my investment, I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company. As a result, I'm willing to buy 100% of Twitter at $54.20 per share in cash, a 54% premium over the day I began investing, 38% over what I, you know, the day it was announced. My offer is my best and final offer. If it is not accepted, I will not— I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder. Twitter has extraordinary potential, period. I will unlock it. So that was the start. And then there's one final thing. He goes, best and final, and he just bullet points.

A, this is, this is the goal. This is really cool.

This is where he put his nuts on the table. He goes, I am not playing the back and forth game. B, I have moved straight to the end. I am not playing the back and forth game and moved straight to the end. It is a high price and your shareholders will love it.

That's the best line. Your shareholders will love it.

Yeah. If the deal does not work, given I have— I do not have confidence in management, Parag. Sad Parag face. Nor do I believe I can drive the necessary change in the public market. I will need to reconsider my position as a shareholder. This is not a threat.

Which it is. He says it's not a threat. It is entirely a threat.

Yeah. Biggest, biggest threat I've ever seen.

It's like saying this is not a threat is like saying, like, I'm not trying to be racist, but— or like, it's like, dude, what you're about to say is I'm gonna be racist, right?

Don't take this the wrong way.

Yeah, you're gonna be— you're about to be really freaking rude.

You're about to get offended. Um, he says, this is not a threat. It is simply a good— not a good investment without changes that need to be made, and those changes won't happen without taking the company private. But just the best line of all these is, I have moved straight to the end. That's my new shit, dude. I have moved straight to the end. That is my new shit. Sean's new shit is I have moved straight to the end. I'm just going to be using that left and right. Negotiations, uh, tomorrow's Milk Road is going to start with I have moved straight to the end. Uh, you know, when I talk to my wife tonight and she wants to, you know, cuddle and kiss— no, I have moved straight to the end. If I go, if I go in line somewhere, I'm gonna stand at the end of the line. I'm gonna say I have moved straight to the end. That is my new shit. What a line.

It's good, man. How about the fact that he's— so this was basically— when he says send via text, is that literally— does he mean that this is an email that was sent in text format and then there's voice format? Or is he saying this was a text message, you think?

Yeah, I don't know what that part was. It's like, it's like the file— there's like a screenshot of it. It says like, oh, it's almost like he's like, hey Siri, send this to the SEC. Send this to Jack in my address book. It's like, which Jack do you mean? Yeah, I don't know what that part was. It sounded like that part was— I think he sent a message either to Jack or Brett Taylor, the chairman or whatever, and said—

Taylor, the guy from Salesforce? Brett Taylor?

Yeah. Oh, dude, I think he's the chairman of the board. And so I think he sent it— I think he sent it to him. I think it was to him. And it was saying, here's my offer letter. This will be public tomorrow. So I think he was giving a heads up to whoever.

I do not think this is going to go through.

And why do you think that?

I think that— I— okay, so, uh, there's this app called Blind. It's a very inside baseball app. Like, typically only, uh, the— you basically have to have an email at a large, prominent tech company to use it. So I don't even have— I mean, maybe HubSpot has the ability to use it, but, um, it's like Apple.

She uses this all the time at Twitch.

It's awesome. So like Amazon, Apple, Twitter.

It's just people talking shit, whining. Gossiping, but you do it anonymously, and they— you have to be an employee at the company to be on there, so you know these are not just randos.

And they'll like— it's— they, they basically will complain about stuff that they should be made fun of, like, "I only make $450,000 a year. How is that— how am I able to survive in SF?" Or, "What is everyone making right now? My salary is blank. Post your salary below." Whatever. And I got some screenshots from the Twitter blind, and the people who use blind, I do think, are not the representative of the normal employees, but they basically said that like 50/50 thought it was a good idea and 50 thought it was a bad idea. So but the reason I don't think it's going to go through is I do think that management and a large vocal subset of the Twitter employees are going to throw a fit enough that it would make this hard to go through.

But it's not the employees who get to decide. I mean, what do you mean?

Though I said the management, I think management could, could, could cause such a—

I don't know what they could do. This is, it's, it's a, I think this is like a, I don't know the exact mechanics of these takeovers. So, you know, there's people much smarter than me about this stuff, but this is something that basically the, the board has to decide. And it's like a share, the shareholders, if I'm a Twitter shareholder, the stock hasn't like, stocks have been basically a poor performer for like a decade. I used to own this like 10 years ago. And, um, you know, the stock prices, you know, has not been like this up into the right curve. And you're getting a whatever— what is a premium versus today? So today's price is— it's now $45. He offered $54. So that's what, like a 20-something percent premium? Don't do public math. But yeah, but you know, would you take that premium? And also what he's— I think one thing he said was he would try to retain as many private shareholders as possible, meaning you wouldn't have to sell to be in favor of the vote of this going through. You could like, you know, keep your shares or whatever.

I think that I just think that there's like some— like I've read enough like finance books that there's all these crazy things like the poison pill, which frankly, I don't even understand a lot of this. But there's all these like weird, like, you know, art of war type of things that you can do. I think I don't think it's as easy as, well, I'm the top bidder. I think there's all these weird things. But anyway, the thing— here's the thing about Twitter. Do you know what? All right. So Twitter's market cap as of today, it's $34 billion. Of course, we're like at a nice pullback right now for tech. So it's probably 30% higher a year ago, but whatever. Uh, right now it's, um, $34 billion. You know what Snapchat is?

Uh, 50?

About 55. And here's the thing about Twitter is I believe they have way more users and it's the center of culture right now. Maybe not the center, but it is a center of culture at the moment. And their ad platform is dog shit. It's the worst ad platform of the big dogs. So if they could figure this out, they should be worth way more. The thing is, I don't think Elon gives a shit about ads. I think he's going to try and figure out a way how to make money other than ads. But Twitter's ad platform is really bad. So I do think that this company, Twitter, is way undervalued and way undermonetized. And they don't ever innovate, although lately they've done some cool stuff. But it's been like, you know, 10 years. 10 years, I think.

Right. Yeah. And by the way, here's, here's a couple of takes on the on the situation. So, um, Cuban, Mark Cuban came out and he was like, I think, uh, he goes, I think Elon is effing with the SEC. He goes, his filing with the SEC allows him to say he wants to take a company private for $54.20, which is like, you know, before he used to— SEC fined him like crazy because he said, I'm considering taking Tesla private for $4.20 funding secured. And so he got to now do it the official way. Just put a 5 in front of the 420. Um, he had bought the shares a couple months ago. This is gonna— this, this news of him buying and now of the potential takeover, that drives shares up. Let's say they don't accept his offer. Well, then he's— he already said, I'm gonna sell my shares if you don't take my offer. So he's just gonna make a huge profit off of, off of these shares, right? Like, he's gonna make, uh, you know, like, I don't know, whatever. Like, I think he bought the shares for $3 billion. If he sells it, you know, for, for, you know, like whatever, 20, 30% gain, he might make up close to $1 billion off of just effing with Twitter. And he gets all the fame. Remember we were talking about our friend who— our friend Alex, who from Morning Brew, who's going to— he was talking about buying puppet golf courses. And we were like, this is the optimal spot. You said the announcement, you got all the praise. You don't have to actually do it. Yeah, like, picture the check, get the picture with the check and post it on IG. Don't, don't actually give yourself all the headache and the work of actually running and owning that business. Uh, so Elon is at that perfect spot right now. So that's, that's one take on it. Um, other takes. Uh, so, you know, some people, you know, like crypto Twitter basically. So there's this, uh, do you follow this account? Punk6529?

No, but I think I know who he is. I'm actually going to click follow now. What is it? Punk? What?

So Punk6529. So this guy's one of the like best Twitter accounts to follow. He's sort of like, posts these kind of like thought-leadery things about crypto.

Yeah, I know this guy. He's great.

He's great. He's, I think, in a very short amount of time, like a couple of months, he's built, you know, he's got 320,000 followers now because he's just had like really good takes on things, on things like this. And he said, what did he say? He goes, he said something like, you know, he's basically like, you know, Twitter should be a protocol. It's a short messaging protocol. And it doesn't need to be owned by a single company, nor does it— he says, if you're excited about Elon taking over Twitter or upset about Elon taking over Twitter, well, both of these are the exact same problem. Our global short messaging internet protocol should be completely unaffected by who's the CEO of some random company in California. In that same spirit, let's talk about, you know, what, what a future, you know, protocol like this could be. And I think that's one of the, like, that's not like what's going to happen here, but I think, I think it is like No one company owns email, for example.

Right.

But, but which is a protocol for sending messages that are long form. And but one company does own the Twitter protocol. And because of that, you know, you can't just choose like if this was a protocol, you could say, I want to use the client that has no algorithm. I want to use the one that has a really tight algorithm and shows me nothing. No, no right-wing stuff. You would be able to have way more choice as a consumer and way more companies would be able to innovate and build on top of Twitter. If it was a protocol, not a single company. So kind of his point is like, it doesn't matter who's in charge.

I don't even think that's logistically possible at this point, though. Or is it?

Not really for Twitter. It's like almost like it's easier for the next thing.

Yeah, right. That's what I mean.

Jack, Jack Dorsey has said he's— there's a project called Blue Sky, which is the idea of like turning Twitter into a decentralized protocol. But like, who knows, like how realistic that is and how much of that is just like, you know, lip service. We're working on it and like, you know, check in in 5 years and see how it goes.

Let's talk about this angle here, which is actually maybe the most interesting, which is a best troll ever. So like, this guy's like a child and it's some of it's not funny. This one is very funny. But B, I actually think and I think Paul Graham said something like this. This I'm not convinced that this would be good for Twitter, but I think definitely there's a for sure possibility that it could be good for Twitter. But I think there's a for sure certainty that this is horrible for Elon Musk. Consistently the guy makes decisions that are funny and cool and leave people like shocked that they did that. But it's kind of like eating an entire orange, including the peel. It's really funny and hilarious that you actually did it and we're going to laugh about it forever. But I'm shocked that I knew a guy in college who ate an entire orange and an entire lemon one time in one sitting, including the peel. And I'm like, that's hilarious that you've done that. I have a story now forever. But that's going to suck for you for a while. And so that's kind of like what this is like. This is going to be bad for Elon for a long time. This is not going to make his life more fun. This is going to make his life significantly worse, significantly harder. So much more pressure. This is not a smart move for his personal life.

Well, the point he's at right now is brilliant because what does this say about Elon? This says, number one, I'm super rich. I could just buy Twitter. How about that? Somebody tweeted out, they go, Elon said, okay, you know, you don't want me on your board? Okay, I won't have a board seat. I'll have all the board seats.

Right?

So, so, so that's one piece, which is like, if you— in case you forgot, I'm way richer than all of you. Okay, second thing is, why are you doing this, Elon? Are you just— you just want to own it, have more power? Like, think about when Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post or whatever. It's like, uh, what are these billionaires trying to do? They're trying to control us. Elon's is like, these tech companies are effing, effing it up, which that's already the, the way that a lot of people believe is that these tech companies have too much power, too much control. They're shaping the narrative. They're, they're not free speech. So he came out as, I'm doing this for free speech. It's like, ah, how are you gonna argue against free speech, right? Like, you know, raise your hand if you're against free speech. And so he virtue signaled free speech on top of it. He did it in like a bold and baller way where it's like, gonna give him like way more attention and fame and a bunch of reasons why people will talk about him. And he's gonna make money from it, you know, just by like buying the shares beforehand, then creating all this ruckus and then like, you know, being able to sell out if he says, oh, well, I didn't get it, you know. So I think, and he can kind of be the underdog of like, yeah, you know, they, the powers that be wouldn't let me do what I wanted to do. I was gonna make this shit awesome. But, you know, they wouldn't let me do it. They tried to— they tried to squash me.

Dude, how about the fact that we just did an episode where we recapped the Milk Road, where you— where Peter Thiel had this, like, outlandish headline where— which it might be true. No, I actually don't think it's— I think he was joking a little bit where he said Warren Buffett's a sociopath. And he went to list about all the reasons why Warren Buffett, who called him—

hold on. He called him the sociopathic grandpa in Omaha.

Yes. Who? But like Warren Buffett. His stereotype, and it's probably actually not true, is that he's this nice old man who's just, "Aw shucks, I just happened to do it," whatever. And Peter Thiel is this evil guy who calls this like old grandpa a sociopath. And then you've got Elon who does the craziest shit on Earth. Imagine these guys when they're 25, 30 years old and they had a little something, but maybe not like that much. And what type of fun would it have been to be in the same room with these fucking shitheads who are who are— it's like the perfect combination of like capable enough to pull it off, crazy enough to think it's funny. And, uh, it's just all this perfect combination. I can't imagine being around these guys when they were younger.

Yeah, exactly. Ben, pull this tweet up. So he's at TED— Elon right now as we're talking, he's at TED.

And, uh, you know who's there? Uh, is our boys, our boys.

Yeah. Andrew Jack. So he's at TED right now. He was there to talk about whatever, SpaceX, Tesla, whatever, dude. But of course, yeah, of course. You know, uh, It's a, it's a 30-minute talk about Twitter. And so Ben, can you pull this link up in, uh, in the screen share? We should watch this. This is Elon Musk talking about his plan B if the deal doesn't go through for Twitter. So I, I haven't watched this video 'cause this ha— this just got tweeted out just now. So I want to hear, I wanna live react to whatever he says here. 30 seconds.

Do you, do you, while Ben's finding that clip, pull it up, Ben. But while Ben's finding that clip, do you think so? Like, I don't buy like that nice stuff, but like, let's say like I see a car that I like and it's like $50,000 and I'm like, yeah, I'm just going to buy it and I'll figure out how to insure it and I'll figure out where I'm going to store it after I'm buying it. Like, it's kind of a big deal because it's like a $50,000 thing, but like, it's not going to kill me. Do you think that Elon is thinking about it like I would think about like a $50,000 car? Or is this like, like how well, how thought out do you think this is?

Well, let's, let's look at this. So Elon net worth right now is $270 $65 billion, I think.

Yeah, but he can't— I don't think that— I don't, I don't think that like that's entire— that is true in a sense of a net worth, but he definitely has a lot of debt because he's got to sell. I mean, it's not like that liquid, I would think.

So even if we don't know all the details and we don't know, we don't know all of his personal financial situation, but let's just take the high-level numbers for a second. That's, I think, you know, like whatever, roughly 20% of his net worth that he would be putting into this. So that's a lot. You're worth $10 million is you buying a $2 million asset, right?

The difference is, is that you only have $8 million if you're worth $10 million left, which is a lot. But like, you're not going to go and buy a bunch more $2 million things. With Elon, you still have $70 or $50 billion.

Yeah, yeah. You have whatever, like $200 billion to fall back on.

Yeah, whatever it is.

We have this clip. I want to see what he says. I don't know if this is going to be good because it just happened just now. But Ben, let's play this and I want to hear it. But the truth matters to me a lot. Really, like, sort of pathologically, it matters to me.

OK, so you don't like to lose. If in this case you are not successful in— you know, the board does not accept your offer, you've said you won't go higher— is there a plan B?

There is.

I think we would like to hear a little bit about plan B.

For another time, I think.

Another time.

Yeah.

All right. That's a nice tease. All right. So—

That's great, man. Nice.

Well played. Well played in that case. I don't know if Plan B could be, right, like launching his own launching his own thing, I think is probably—

I don't think, I don't think that would, that's a good plan B. Twitter is, is, is, you know, it's really hard. You know, like how many people say they're, they're gonna create a social media product and how many people try and how many have worked? So a lot try, everyone tries when they first start and there's like 3, right? Right. TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. And, and you know what I mean? There's 3.

Yeah, I do think it would be very, very hard. This would be much better to buy the existing asset.

But how's Trump's things doing? What's it— do you know what the— I mean, it's like horrible, right?

I downloaded it because I was like, I got to see what's going on on this thing. But I haven't spent too much time on it. It was like crashing like crazy, like the first day.

So yeah, so I—

Truth Social.

I don't think building it is possible.

Maybe that's the plan B. Maybe he's going to be like, hey, everybody, Truth Social, that's where we're going. 'Cause then you get the Trump stans and the Elon stans together. Together, that's a lot of people who are like devoted followers of those two. The problem is they hate each other.

And also, Elon doesn't care about making conservatives happy. He cares about trolling. So if you only have your own audience on there, it wouldn't be very fun. Right. You know what I mean? He doesn't like getting people cheering. He like, he likes pissing people off or ruffling feathers. And the thing about the truth, I, you know what I think that's rooted in? I think that's rooted in his father lying to him. And so Elon's dad.

So listen, you went, you went there. Daddy issues. Is it? It all comes back to daddy issues.

Everything. I think not everything. I think that most things in life are genetics. And then the other half is things that happen to you from ages like 0 to 4. And I— that's really—

I mean, someone who was young, what was he lied to between— maybe 10, how would we even know?

Maybe 10. But I do think like things happen when you're 2 and 3, like, like it actually impacts you. But let's go up to 10. Um, and I think that like he's had a troubled relationship with his dad and his dad just wasn't around. And I have a feeling there's a world where his dad was like, I promise I'll be at this game, I promise I'll do this, or like, you know, like, you know, I'm working on this huge business deal. It turns out he's like unemployed and he— or he doesn't show up to the game. I think that there's like something like that that has happened, that he's like obsessive compulsive about the truth. I actually do believe him when he says truth.

Hmm.

Hmm.

What did his dad— wait, sorry, what did his dad lie to him about?

I've just made that up. I don't know. But I know that his dad— his dad—

his dad was strong.

Well, no, his dad wasn't around. Like, his dad left. Like, was, uh, he left his mom and like he wasn't very present in his life. And I think he was kind of rude to his family. And I'm just guessing, like, there's a world where, like, he's like a— just one was kind of an asshole and was kind of messing around and just not doing what he should.

For sure, the things that you value come from your experiences. Like, you know, people who value authenticity because they've dealt with inauthenticity, people who value, you know, family is typically because they've had either great experiences with family or terrible experiences with family that they want to rectify, right? So you definitely are shaped by that. So if he's telling us You know, I'm sort of like what he said in that, like, I'm maniacally or whatever he said, like, you know, maniacal about the truth.

I think he said obsessive. I think, I think he says like, or he said something like to its point, it's almost a problem that he goes, I care about the truth.

And like, you know, okay, some percentage of that is just again, virtue signaling, but you know, let's take him at his word for it. You know, let's be clear. What does he think is happening? So, you know, like, what is untrue, you know, like, it's like free speech, cool, people are going to be able to say anything, those not, those are not necessarily going to be true, right? It's just this belief, there's a belief that, you know, the answer to bad speech is more speech, not censorship. So, you know, I get that. But I'm not sure really what his ideas are, right? Like, if you, if you look at the list of ideas, I forgot what I saw this screenshot of Elon's, Elon's Twitter, uh, ideas. Let me see if I can find this real quick.

I don't even— I think that, like, I, I'm not well versed in, like, the political scene of Twitter. And, like, I understand why people want free speech. Obviously, I know the Donald Trump example, and that's just, like, an example everyone hangs on. I don't know tons of other examples, one of them being, uh, this Hunter Biden story, which I don't even remember what the story was. But I know the New York Observer, which is a conservative paper in New York, they said Hunter Biden— I think it involved prostitutes, I think it involved drug addict, being a drug addict, things like that. They published it, Twitter suspended them, and turns out a year and a half or 2 years later it was true. And New York Times wrote a very similar story saying the same things happened. They posted it and they weren't banned. And I think that there's a handful of examples like that that people are pissed off about, but I'm not sure if it's like rampant other than— I mean, but one could argue it is rampant. The most popular— if the president can't use Twitter.

Yeah, I think that's probably like the strongest, the strongest, like, you know, example. Hold on. Okay, so I'm just gonna read this out loud real quick. Because— all right, here, let me— yeah, let me read something. Here's a list of what Elon has tweeted since, you know, since he kind of announced that he— what he was going to do. And before he, uh, left the, left the board. He goes, the first one tweet was vote to remove the W from Twitter. So just Titter. And his poll options were yes.

And of course, God, that's so stupid. That's, that's what, that's kind of a cringe joke.

Exactly. Uh, turn proposal number 2, turn HQ into a homeless shelter. Number 3, eliminate ad revenue. Number 4, just say that Twitter is dying. Number 5, overhaul the blue checkmark policy.

Number 6, I'm on board with that. Totally on board.

He said he was gonna, uh, smoke weed at the next board meeting. Oh my God. He posted a meme of him smoking weed at Joe Rogan, uh, at the next board meeting. Uh, the next one, an edit button. Next idea. And they just put this in quotes, free speech. Like, like there was no idea of how or why or what, you know, like just free speech. And the last one was open source Twitter algorithm. So like, you know, so the people who were like, you know, Elon's gonna save, um, Elon's gonna save Twitter. It's like, well, if you, if you pay attention to the, the ideas that he had, they were not the most earth-shattering ideas between our Twitter, homeless shelter, you know, quote unquote free speech. But you know what, what were these ideas?

Our friend Nikita, who seems like he knows what he's talking about with some consumer apps, was like, I, you know, maybe I like Elon, maybe I don't, but running a car company and creating PayPal and a solar business is a lot different than like the kind of art that it takes to create a consumer tech product like Twitter. And I totally agree with that. You know, like, think about this. Like, when someone's like, well, we're going to create this thing that you can only write 140 characters, 9 out of 10 normal people would be like, what? F that. Let's make it so I can write as much as I want. Or let's just make it so anyone can edit it and do all this other stuff. And they're like, no, no, no, we're going to do this weird thing. It's kind of like Vine. Like, you only have 4 seconds to make a video. 4 seconds. No one— no one can do that. It's like, no, it's actually— and it creates a whole art out of it, you know what I mean? And so I think Twitter will— or Elon could potentially be a little bit too rational and logical to create the magic of Twitter.

So I have the complete opposite take. I think if the guy can land a rocket, re-land a rocket on its butt in the middle of the ocean and he can make electric cars that are awesome, pretty sure he could like, you know, figure out this social media thing. Now, the problem is he's still doing those other things.

Like fucking Albert Einstein ain't going to create YouTube, you know what I mean? Like, he's not going to create it. He doesn't need to create it.

He's He's a, he's a, he's a leader and he's a, um, a first principles thinker, you know, like do, who do I have more faith in? Parag or Elon? I have more faith in Elon than I do Parag.

Well, yeah, but that guy ain't running, that guy's running it. He ain't, he's the CEO. He's just making sure the, the trains show up on time. He's not building the train.

Well, that's the problem, right? Like, you know, that's why it's plateaued. That's what user growth was like 300 million monthly active users, like whatever, 5 years ago. Now it's like 340. It's like it hasn't grown. Much at all. Plus, you know, other problems of like hate and scams and other stuff. So my take is, is that this is the ultimate example of social media ruining everything. So like, think about in your and my day, like, um, I know for me how much time and productivity from like useful, awesome activities I could be doing. I'm just checking Twitter. I'm on TikTok. I'm whatever, you know, social media is this like distraction, time suck. It's like, damn, this guy's trying to make us multiplanetary and like self-driving cars and like get us off of fossil fuels. He's getting distracted by social media. He's just doing it at the biggest scale, like not just using social media. He's like, I'm gonna buy it. Then I'm gonna have to fix it. And it's like, dude, no, no, no. Just, just do the thing where you help us like go to Mars and have self-driving cars that are electric. Like those are the useful things. Solving social media is like just another distraction, just done at Elon scale.

If he dies in the next 5 years, would you be surprised?

I would not be surprised.

I would not be surprised either. Do you think that would be the way that that would— that's— does this story have to end that way?

Like, no, I don't think he's gonna die. That— I don't think he's gonna die. Like, I would, you know, low probability. But I do think that, um, it would turn him into like the greatest cult hero ever.

Well, it's kind of like, uh, you know, everyone talks about Tupac, and I've got Tupac in my background here. I love Tupac. You know, he died when he was 25. He was only 25. And people talk about this guy being like, well, yeah, a lot of people don't know that he was 25. Biggie was 24. Okay. And so people are like, oh, they're the best rappers ever. And I'm like, well, they didn't really have that long of a career. So like Jay-Z and Eminem, they've done it for like, you know, 20 years now. So they definitely have. And, and, but the reason we say he's the best ever is because he died young and it was like, oh, all the potential. So in some way I'm like, that's— Elon could do the same. He should go out on top maybe, and then we'll remember him as being the best.

I mean, would you want to die and be the Tupac of newsletters or what?

Fuck no, I wouldn't want to. No, but I'm not Elon. You know, there's two things I know in this world. Like, you know, there's crazy guys in the world like Elon. And the second thing is I'm not one of them. That's, that's what I know is there's weirdos like him and I ain't it.

We should end it on that.

Just to reiterate your angle, Sam, you're of the opinion that Elon has daddy issues and you hope he dies. Is that correct?

To the first point, 100%. He has daddy issues. Yeah. Show me a successful person. I'm going to show you a fucked up dad for sure. Without a doubt. Okay. The second thing, do I, do I hope he dies? 100%. No. Do I think it will be an even better part of the story? Yes. Unless he has some like, um, what's the guy's name? Uh, the rich guy who, uh, created the airplane that, uh, Leo had a movie. Howard Hughes. Unless he has some kind of weird Howard Hughes thing where it becomes even more, or J.D. Salinger, where he just disappears and it becomes even more of this, like, mystery, then yeah, I'm on board with that. But if he just gets old and he just begins, like, peeing himself and dies, I'm like, oh, fuck. Like, you can't— he can't go out that way.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's actually a better question, which was, what's the right way for Elon to go? You know, like, heart attack? Nah. Just he was overworked and stressed. Nah, that's That's for the common man.

Well, dying on Mars, like crashing.

Exactly.

That's a great way.

He's got to be the guy who goes to Mars, dies in the process, taking man farther than they've ever gone before. That's got to be the way he goes.

Or he just disappears. Or he just disappears and just like no one knows where he is. And he just, he lives in a trailer in rural Texas.

And he has to, when he goes out, he has to say he's Satoshi Nakamoto also. He has to just, he's smartest move he could do, right? If I'm his PR team, I'm like, listen, Elon, before you go, we need to claim the Satoshi thing. That's just the cherry on top of your legacy is if you were Satoshi and there's no way to disprove it if you're going to go anyways. So, so that's the last little, little thing he should do on his to-do list, on the bucket list before he kicks it.

Dude, this is awesome. All right.

That was not where I thought we would end it with him dying.

But that's a, that's a good impromptu episode, I think. Ben, what do you think?

Loved it. I loved it. I, I think, I think it's a bad investment. I think Elon's having fun. If you had as much money as he had, why would you not spend your time just having fun? I think he's having fun.

I don't think he's having fun. I don't think he's having fun.

I think he's doing it as an investment. You think this is a strategy?

I think that he's kind of playing the role of a court jester where he's laughing on the outside and it appears to be fun and everyone's laughing with him. But also, he's crying on the inside. I do not think that his life is enjoyable in any sense of the word.

I don't either, but I think he's getting enjoyment from this, probably.

Yeah. But I think it's our version of like, when you tweet something funny or I tweet something funny, I also am like, "Hee hee hee." Like, "Giggity." Like Quagmire in Family Guy. Like, "Giggity, that's hilarious." But like, it doesn't— it's not like I'm happy like 3 days later from that and feel like content.

Right, right, right. Yeah. You're saying he doesn't come across like a content, happy person. And hell no. Said in many interviews to that extent, you know, things like, "You wouldn't want to be me." That's not what, you know, a very happy, content person says. Okay, great.

Or, "I will find death as a relief." Right.

So those are pretty, you know, as strong as it gets. You don't have to read between the lines there. But to Ben's point, I do think that he gets off on being, you know, the class clown. The guy who gives the middle finger to the system, right? He's taking F-you money and he's saying F-you. So, you know, he is enjoying, I think, the stunt aspect of it. And I don't think he's doing it as an economic investment.

For sure.

I think he's doing it as a combination of maybe 20% stunt, publicity stunt, and maybe 80% mission. And maybe I'm wrong on those sliders. Maybe it's more like 50/50 or, you know, 80/20 the other way. I'm not sure. I think it's 80% mission, 20% stunt, not an economic investment. But I do think this is economic, as we say on the, on the Micros Million podcast.

Yeah, we're big on being post-economic, late-stage capitalism. That's what we're known for. But I do think, like, you look at Jeff Bezos, who bought Washington Post. I don't know, he paid like $1 billion for Washington Post.

No, I think he paid $200 million. $200 million.

Okay.

$200 million. Nothing. But at the same time, he got nothing. Like, Washington Post gives you a voice, I guess, but like, you don't even have full editorial control.

And like, could if you wanted to, but he could if he wanted to.

I think what he got is a little different. I think at the time that was seen as like cool power move. Like, we all know about that. So it did work in that sense. The second thing he got was something many rich guys have, just vanity, you know, collectibles, items. Oh yeah, I own this. I own, you know, this farm, I own this basketball team, I own, I own these things you've heard of. There is a sort of rich guy toy, toy chest thing.

I agree.

It's like owning a sports team. It's like a journalism sports team. But I think like from the functionality standpoint of like actually being able to have a voice, like buying Twitter is sort of the same thing, but he's getting the only voice that matters. Like he's getting the only thing that can actually drive and change public opinion if you wanted to pull that move.

How much is like CNN?

Hmm, good question.

What's the parent company?

Well, I think they just merged. Did they? Maybe between $5 and $10 billion, I would guess. Yeah, look up, look up a lot of bang for your buck. But News Corp, which is the one— so basically Rupert Murdoch started Fox, which is, uh, he started this one company that, uh, recently, uh, had to separate because it was a monopoly on news. And those two companies became News Corp, which basically owns Fox News and Fox News affiliates, and then 21st Century Fox, which is like the movies and TV shows. And collectively, that value is like, I think, $100—

no, no, no, uh, or $50— $13 billion.

Both of them combined?

No, maybe I don't have the second one.

What's News Corp?

News Corp Class A is $13 billion.

That's the least valuable or the lesser of the two. What's the more valuable one? Fox 21st Century. I think that's what it's called.

I don't know, dude. I think this is the one. Fox Corporation. Fox.

Okay.

I don't know if this is the right Fox, but Fox Corporation, $30 billion.

Yeah, that's it. That's it. So, uh, 43 total.

Yeah. Yeah, this is the right one.

And they're way more popular than CNN. So, uh, yeah, CNN can't be that expensive, but who the fuck wants to own CNN?

These dudes who want to own Washington Post and Twitter, right? Why not?

Dude, do you know how many people watch CNN, uh, at any given point? Like their real-time viewers? It's like sometimes as low as tens of thousands of people. Like it's not, it's, it's not a significant amount of people that are watching it at any given point.

There's chicks on Twitch doing ASMR that have more viewership than CNN, like in the middle of the afternoon.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Like CNN, like not really, but it's hilarious that I said that.

I mean, there's like cool shit, like Anderson Cooper is pretty cool, but like it's just like fucking dentist. Like you listen to it when you're at the dentist. Like it's not like a particularly—

when you're trapped in a chair being tortured.

Yeah, it's like shooting situations and like going to the dentist are like the only times that I've got like CNN on. Or when you go to like— do you ever go to the— do you ever get coffee in the morning at Fox or at McDonald's? They always have like Fox playing in the background. That's like the only time I like see the news.

That's hilarious. Did you see the CNN+ like fail?

It failed. Yeah, dude, what do you expect? You like— you can't just like put a plus and then a paywall on like the shit that no one cares about and hope that they automatically do. Quartz shut down their paywall today too. It was the same thing. It's like you can't just call Quartz Pro and expect to get more money because the main course already sucks. You know what I mean? Like, you're just putting a— if you want to pay for it though, yeah, like, you can't put a bow on a pile of poo and it automatically isn't a pile of poo. But that's basically what a lot of these companies do, and it's not the right move.

Yeah, the plus thing is just like a dead giveaway. It's like, that's a tell.

A plus or pro? Um, all right, that was good.