Flipping the Bird: Elon vs Twitter | Maximum Amazing | 1

0:00When Elon Musk bought Twitter for$44 billion in 2022, it was a seismic event. But nearly three years later, it feels like the purchase might have changed the world forever. This is Business Wars Flipping the Bird, a behind-the-scenes look at the Twitter sale and its immediate impact on the way we communicate.

0:35This was not the place where you'd expect to find the CEO of one of the biggest tech companies on the planet. Sure, it was in San Jose, California, the heart of Silicon Valley. and Brett Taylor looked the part with his confident smile and receding hairline. Brett was the co-CEO of Salesforce, and before that he was an ex-Google and Facebook employee and a graduate of Stanford. But on this evening, March 31st, 2022, Brett found himself in an unexpected location, waiting for an unexpected guest. San Jose is the heart of the tech industry, filled with sterile corporate architecture, palm trees, and strip malls.

1:20Deals often get done in glass panel conference rooms or in classic Silicon Valley restaurants like Buck's or Madera's. But not today. Brett whipped out his phone and fired off a text to two business associates. This wins for the weirdest place I've had a meeting recently. I think they were looking for an Airbnb near the airport. There are tractors and donkeys. He threw in an emoji of a man shrugging. Besides proximity to a landing strip, it's likely the privacy of this rustic Airbnb was a major selling point. It was far from the prying eyes of tech reporters, who'd salivated the chance to be in the room for this meeting.

2:05Brett Taylor was at this particular Airbnb, surrounded by tractors and donkeys, not in his role as the co-CEO of Salesforce. He was there in his role as the chair of the board of the social media company Twitter. He and Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal needed somewhere safe to meet with one of tech's most notorious power players. Less than a minute after Brett sent his text, he received a response from their guest. Ha ha, awesome. Maybe Airbnb's algorithm thinks you love tractors and donkeys. Who doesn't? Brett didn't respond to that. Later, he received another text. On my way. They're in about 15 minutes.

2:52Brett spotted something in the distance and typed out a reply. And abandon trucks in case we want to start a catering business after we meet. Brett was keeping things light and chummy, as if all of this was friendly. Sounds like a post-apocalyptic movie set. Brett had to agree. Agreeing was probably in his best interest at the time, because the man Brett was texting had been quietly buying Twitter stock and was now one of the company's largest shareholders. The man they were waiting to meet was Elon Musk. Never mind that the way Musk had accumulated his Twitter stock might have violated securities law.

3:38He had issued Brett and the rest of the board an ultimatum. Give him a board seat, or he'd either buy Twitter or start a rival company. And that was why Brett and Parag were meeting with him at this Airbnb to hammer out a deal for Elon Musk to join the board and keep Twitter out of his grasp. As Brett watched the donkeys graze, he must have been asking himself a question, one a lot of people would soon be asking. What exactly was Elon's plan for Twitter? When news broke a few days later that Elon had become Twitter's largest shareholder and was set to join its board, perhaps no one was more surprised than the regular employees inside Twitter.

4:31I remember it being in Slack at that point, and there was a lot of discussion there. There were a lot of people who were not happy about the idea. Jim Redmond, a systems engineer in the San Francisco office, would find out about Elon's new stake in Twitter like most employees at the company. He found out on Twitter. Jim was willing to wait and see what kind of impact Elon would have. I didn't see him as a genius who could do no wrong. I didn't see him necessarily as a smoke blower. I saw him as an interesting guy. I didn't really see him as a monster or as a hero. No one knew whether Elon was going to save Twitter or destroy it.

5:13And no one, not the employees inside Twitter HQ, not the board, not the CEO, not even Elon Musk himself, could possibly predict how Elon's takeover of Twitter was going to play out. because the drama that started at this Airbnb in what Elon joked looked like a post-apocalyptic movie set would unfold over the next 12 months across boardrooms, courtrooms, and group chats. And it would put careers, fortunes, reputations, lives, and even the future of Twitter itself in jeopardy.

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8:07From Wondery, I'm David Brown, the host of Business Wars, And this is Flipping the Bird, Elon vs. Twitter. I must confess I've made a mess of what should be a small success, but I digress, at least I've tried my very best, I guess. Put me on a pedestal and I'll only disappoint you. Tell me I'm exceptional, I promise to exploit you.

8:37On March 21st, 2006, Twitter founder and CEO Jack Dorsey sent a seemingly innocuous message out into the digital ether. Just setting up my Twitter. At first glance, Twitter seemed more like a curiosity than a serious social media platform. But by 2022, Twitter had become one of the most influential social media platforms in the world, and Elon Musk, one of its most avid users. For Elon, Twitter became his personal playground, a place to push the buttons of the entire world all at once, with seemingly little regard for the consequences. Elon had cemented his reputation as a volatile tech wunderkind who could push his companies to solve overwhelming challenges.

9:27Reusable rocket ships at SpaceX and sexy-looking electric cars at Tesla. He became the world's richest man. Then, Elon Musk turned a seeming obsession with Twitter into a crusade. And a costly investment. But what is he trying to accomplish with his takeover of Twitter? This is our six-part series on Elon Musk's up-and-down high-stakes battle to take over Twitter. This is Episode 1. Maximum Amazing.

10:13Water gently lapped the pristine sands of a beach in Hawaii. It was November 10th, 2020, and the COVID-19 pandemic had been raging around the world for nearly a year. But here, life seemed to carry on as usual. Jack Dorsey, clad in a weathered St. Louis Cardinals hat, skimpy white shorts, and his trademark scraggly beard, took a stroll with a shirtless Sean Penn. Jack had made a habit of being seen in exotic locations, while most of the world was subject to quarantine and isolation. He took work from home to an extreme, as only a multi-billionaire could. A couple of months earlier, he had been spotted on a yacht in the Hamptons with Jay-Z and Beyonce.

10:59The pandemic had been an unmitigated global catastrophe. And yet for Jack Dorsey and much of the tech world, business had never been so good. People were stuck at home spending time on social media, watching shows on Netflix, ordering groceries online. Twitter saw massive traffic gains during COVID. To keep growing, they'd need more people. Lots more. So while other businesses were shutting down, Twitter and the rest of the tech world went on a hiring spree. Twitter's staff size increased 53 % between 2019 and 2022. It was during this time that Jim Redmond joined Twitter. A systems engineer, he landed his dream job.

11:50I was excited because Twitter's huge. It's planet-scale networking. It's planet-scale services. It's millions of people at once and billions of users, or billions of accounts at least. So it's exciting to work on something that big and that has that much of an impact. And Jim's job was particularly important, incident management. So Queen Elizabeth dies, or there's a player who collapses on the field at a football game. When something big like that happens, there's always a huge spike of traffic, and we have to be able to handle it in a timely fashion that has minimal impact on end users. It's tricky, but it's never a dull moment.

12:29It was an exciting time to be at the company, and the increased traffic during the pandemic's lockdown gave fuel to Jack Dorsey's business ambitions. Our goal is to more than double our total annual revenue to over$7.5 billion in 2023. We're confident we can hit these goals, and we're confident they will make us even stronger and more valuable to you and people around the world. But even as Jack was touting a bright future for Twitter on investor calls, there were worries that the pandemic boom was simply papering over some major cracks in the business. I mean, in COVID, a lot of people were at home, just like me, looking for something to do.

13:11Eric Fraunhofer had been working at Twitter since 2014. They were spending time on Twitter, buying things on Amazon. You know, from a short-term perspective, it seemed like a pretty good bet that things were going to continue growing like they were. But Eric had seen the warning signs from early in his tenure at the company. When I joined, Twitter wasn't profitable at all. We were burning through cash. And as the pandemic slowly wound down, Twitter's traffic slowed down with it. I think what happens is, you know, COVID starts to end, things get back to normal. People are spending their time elsewhere.

13:47Jack's pledge to double business had always been optimistic. Now, it looked hopelessly so. In the end, the growth didn't match the returns. Layoffs felt inevitable to me. None of this slowed Jack's glamorous world tour. But that started to look a lot less like someone who had it all figured out, and a lot more like someone who was not paying attention. On the day in January 2021, when Donald Trump was banned from Twitter, Jack was on a secluded island in French Polynesia, looking like Tom Hanks in Castaway, beard and all. It always felt like Jack was off doing something else. The day-to-day work was being taken care of by the other people involved.

14:35I think over the years, Jack lost interest in running Twitter, and he was more interested in crypto. If some of Twitter's employees had gotten the impression that their boss was quiet quitting, well, Jack finally made it official. Breaking news this hour, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has announced he's stepping down. In a statement put out by Twitter this morning, Dorsey was quoted as saying that he had decided to leave Twitter because he believed the company is, quote, ready to move on from the company's founders, but he didn't provide any additional detail on why he decided to resign. To replace Jack, there was no traditional CEO search to fill the job.

15:16No outside candidates were seriously considered. Instead, the board picked the chief technology officer, Parag Agrawal. He's the antithesis of Jack Dorsey, right? Jack Dorsey is kind of the billionaire. He has all of these famous friends. Ed Ludlow, a journalist for Bloomberg, extensively covered the succession drama. And at the time, Agrawal was a relative unknown. You know, he's listed on the company's websites and management, but he's ultra-focused on his role and what Twitter's doing technologically speaking. Parag was 37 when he assumed the top job at Twitter. He had joined the company in 2011 and worked his way up the corporate ladder.

15:59Publicly, Parag projected a much different persona than his predecessor. While Jack was off traipsing around the globe with models and celebrities, Parag was every bit the family man. His social media presence was warm, open, and filled with photos of his wife and young son. Jack didn't publicly discuss his reasons for leaving, but in his public resignation letter, he said his belief in Parag was bone deep. To Jim, the systems manager who worked in incident management, Parag seemed to lack some of the key skills that a leader needs. He was definitely learning on the job. There was no question about that.

16:41He was not the best, most reassuring speaker because he had spent such a long time as an engineer that he hadn't really built up those public speaking kind of soft skills. So it was not, it wasn't always inspiring to hear from Parag.

16:59And while Twitter was in a state of transition under Parade, Elon Musk saw an opening to, in his words, save Twitter, the platform that allowed him to express these pearls of wisdom freely. I put the art in fart. Stop gendering memes. I mean, mimes. Just dropping some friends off at the pool. His tweets could be more than just off-color gags. One of his tweets, for example, a dumb joke about weed, got him in trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission. When he tweeted that he had the money to take Tesla private at the high price of$420 a share, they ended up investigating him for potentially manipulating Tesla's stock price.

17:45Elon clearly loved tweeting, but it was arguably hurting his reputation. If he was worried about that, he didn't show it. Instead of backing away from Twitter, he turned his hobby of tweeting to his growing number of followers into a business investment. In January 2022, Elon started quietly buying up Twitter stock, amassing more and more until he'd acquired 5 % of the shares, the threshold where he was technically required to notify the SEC of his stake. But Elon didn't file the paperwork. He kept his acquisition quiet until it was time to make his move. And that time was coming soon.

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21:31In March of 2022, Elon Musk got a series of texts from his ex-wife Tallulah Riley. Can you buy Twitter and then delete it, please? America is going insane. Tallulah is a B-list actress who has had roles in HBO's Westworld and in various made-for-TV movies. She and Elon had met in 2008 at a bar in London and married and divorced twice, most recently in 2016, but they still stayed in touch. That day in March, Tallulah was particularly outraged by one of Twitter's content moderation decisions. Rachel Levine, the first ever trans woman to be named Assistant Health Secretary of the United States, had been named by USA Today day as one of their Women of the Year.

22:18In response, the conservative website, The Babylon Bee, had named Levine their Man of the Year. Twitter suspended the bee's account, saying the tweet violated its policies on hate speech. Tallulah rage-texted Elon. The Babylon Bee suspension is crazy. It was a f***ing joke. Why has everyone become so puritanical? A couple of minutes later, she texted another ID to Musk. Or can you buy it and make it radically free speech? Musk replied a few minutes later. Maybe buy it and change it to properly support free speech. Elon hadn't gone public about how much Twitter stock he owned, and he didn't want to yet.

23:02The next day, he tweeted a poll to his followers. Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle? He quickly followed it up with more context. The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully. More than two million Twitter accounts voted in the poll. The result? An overwhelming no. They did not believe that Twitter rigorously followed the principle of free speech. Over the next few days, Elon shared his poll results. and a series of tweets critical of the platform. Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy.

23:50What should be done? Is a new platform needed? Am giving serious thought to this. Soon after, Elon's phone buzzed. It was a text from someone unexpected. Among the thousands of private text messages that later became part of lawsuits surrounding Elon's purchase of Twitter was this exchange between its founder and its would-be owner. Yes, a new platform is needed. It can't be a company. This is why I left. It was Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey. Elon asked Jack what this platform should look like. Jack had plenty of thoughts. A new version of Twitter should have no investors dictating policy, No advertisers controlling content.

24:37A pure flow of free speech around the globe. He made another surprising admission. One that the public had no idea about. I tried my hardest to get you on our board and the board said no. That's about the time I decided to leave, as hard as it was for me. I think the main reason is the board is just super risk averse and saw you as adding more risk, which I thought was completely stupid and backwards. But I only had one vote in 3 % of the company. We can discuss more.

25:12The time had come for Elon to show his cards. He revealed the size of his ownership stake to Twitter's board. 5 % of Twitter stock. And he presented them with three choices. He could buy the company, he could start a rival platform, or they could give him a seat on the board. It was that choice that led Twitter's board chair, Brett Taylor, and Twitter CEO, Parag Agrawal, to meet with Elon at that strange Airbnb near the San Jose airport in late March 2022.

25:51The board had decided it was best to pursue the path of least resistance. Instead of antagonizing Elon, now apparently a sizable shareholder in their company, they'd offer him a seat on the board. And Elon accepted.

26:11Later that night, Elon texted Brett and Parag. Great dinner. He added a smiley face at the end. But Elon wasn't content with simply getting a board seat. He had not stopped buying up more and more Twitter stock. The day after the meeting with Brett and Parag, he surpassed 9 % of the shares, which made him officially the company's largest shareholder. Four days after his meeting with Brett and Parag, and more than a week after he should have filed SEC paperwork, Elon finally made his ownership of Twitter stock public. New this morning, Elon Musk is taking a 9.2 % stake in Twitter. The Tesla CEO bought more than 73.5 million shares, according to a regulatory filing.

27:02Right away, Elon's phone blew up. Venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale was optimistic. Excited to see the stake in Twitter. Awesome. Hope you're able to influence it. I bet you the board doesn't even get a full reporting of the censorship decisions and little cabals going on there, but they should. The lefties on the board likely want plausible deniability. Podcaster Joe Rogan also texted his excitement. Are you going to liberate Twitter from the censorship-happy mob? Even Elon's doctor had something to say. Time for a latter-day Gutenberg to bring back free speech and buy Twitter. But there were plenty of people who were less thrilled, and some of them used Twitter as the forum to vent.