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Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

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Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#321

Post by sudosysgen »

paganel wrote: post #293
SamBam wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It still confuses me that being part-owner of an old dot-com payment company, part-owner of a mid-sized car company (by number of cars sold), and part-owner of a (very good) rocket company make a person richer than anyone has ever been in the history of the planet, but that's probably because I just haven't looked into it enough.

That "mid-sized car company" has revolutionised an ~120-year industry while still managing to remain at the forefront, that's why its valuation is so high (even though I also do believe it's over-valued). I'm not saying this as a Tesla-lover nor as a fan of Musk, in fact, as a lover of gasoline engines and of cars in general I see this as a tragedy (I regard EVs as refrigerators with some wheels attached), but it is…

There is no revolution to speak of. Tesla is an evolution in the high-end EV market. In the mid-range market Tesla was late to the punch and faces stiff competition, and in the low-end market they aren't an entity to speak of.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#322

Post by adventured »

SamBam wrote: post #266
ben_w wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, why would you think that? His wealth is mostly owning 20% of Tesla, plus some extra few billions from owning significant fractions of SpaceX, The Boring Company, and Neuralink. Presumably there’s some cash in there as well, but on his scale a hundred million is a rounding error.

It still confuses me that being part-owner of an old dot-com payment company, part-owner of a mid-sized car company (by number of cars sold), and part-owner of a (very good) rocket company make a person richer than anyone has ever been in the history of the planet, but that's probably because I just haven't looked into it enough.

Well for one thing you're downplaying several massive, global businesses.

PayPal is a $25b sales, $4b operating income giant in the financial sector (payments / payment processing specifically). They have an $83b market cap and have sales equivalent to Germany's largest bank. Musk doesn't own a meaningful part of PayPal, it plays no role in his present wealth (other than he sold his ownership stake in PayPal to fund the early days of Tesla & SpaceX).

Tesla is very obviously overvalued by a lot (by $400b-$600b at least), there's no rational argument against that. However being a major owner of BMW, which is perhaps what Tesla is best compared to in size and profitability now, is still a rather dramatic financial position to have (obviously). If we (when the market does) adjust Tesla to a more rational valuation, Musk would be a lot less rich, but still among the ~20-30 richest on the planet. Owning 16% of a segment-leading, tech-leading, growing car company that generates $12-$14b in operating income, is a very good business to be sitting on.

SpaceX is a lot more than a very good rocket company. Their connectivity business will likely be worth tens of billions of dollars in the future. No other entity on Earth can presently match what they've accomplished in rocketry and satellites, that includes China, the US Government, Russia, or their corporate peers. The connectivity network they're building is exceptional and very, very difficult (and expensive) for others to compete with. The value of their ability to deploy zillions of satellites rapidly, will increase dramatically as more uses are figured out for such constellations (the US Government in particular).

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#323

Post by kevinmchugh »

0xy wrote: post #244
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does a "head of consumer product" do? Has Twitter's platform/offering changed all that much in 7 years?

Presumably he presided over the only new features added to Twitter, which is more censorship and "adding context" to tweets that have a certain political slant. In any case, it's clear he did almost nothing.

Twitter's launched a Snapchat competitor, a Substack/Patreon competitor, and a Clubhouse competitor, plus Twitter Blue.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#324

Post by dotnet00 »

SemanticStrengh wrote: post #308
paganel wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That "mid-sized car company" has revolutionised an ~120-year industry while still managing to remain at the forefront, that's why its valuation is so high (even though I also do believe it's over-valued). I'm not saying this as a Tesla-lover nor as a fan of Musk, in fact, as a lover of gasoline engines and of cars in general I see this as a tragedy (I regard EVs as refrigerators with some wheels attached), but it is…

Where is the revolution? There are competitive cars vs tesla for electric. Even if tesla have an edge, it's evolutionary, not at all revolutionary.

I assume revolutionary in that other companies have only really started taking EVs seriously due to the success of Tesla.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#325

Post by paganel »

SemanticStrengh wrote: post #308
paganel wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That "mid-sized car company" has revolutionised an ~120-year industry while still managing to remain at the forefront, that's why its valuation is so high (even though I also do believe it's over-valued). I'm not saying this as a Tesla-lover nor as a fan of Musk, in fact, as a lover of gasoline engines and of cars in general I see this as a tragedy (I regard EVs as refrigerators with some wheels attached), but it is…

Where is the revolution? There are competitive cars vs tesla for electric. Even if tesla have an edge, it's evolutionary, not at all revolutionary.

> There are competitive cars vs tesla for electric

It is my belief that those "competitive cars" wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been for Tesla.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#326

Post by [deleted] »

lesstenseflow wrote: post #270
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Fired while on paternity leave" hurts a hell of a lot less when you're a mega millionaire who will be able to walk into a leadership position anywhere he likes, but it still sucks.

When does getting fired not suck?

[deleted]

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#327

Post by duxup »

TameAntelope wrote: post #129
Traster wrote: post #84

So there's two options right - the first is that Parag is for some reason making big strategic decisions about the direction of the company despite the fact that we all know he'll be gone if the deal closes. Or he's making big strategic changes at the behest of the acquirers before the deal closes. Neither of these things seem particularly kosher moves to make. The question is how to figure out which one it is. It wo…

You're discounting the very real possibility that Parag is operating as if the deal will not go through, and is making large strategic decisions in anticipation of that being the case. For Parag, I don't see it "burning his reputation" at all, considering either a) he's right and will face the tall task of helming a Twitter that continues to disappoint its investors or b) he's wrong and it won't be his problem when E…

I worked at a big company that was being acquired. The bigger acquiring company needed our company to sell off some divisions to avoid regulatory issues. So we were in this "going to be acquired.. one day" phase for like 18 months.

In the meantime our company actually had to tell the a subsidiary of bigger acquiring company.... to sort of shove off on a partnership we had with them.

This subsidiary was crap and they were not holding up their end of the partnership. It was reiterated many times that "while we will likely be acquired by their parent company our job is to operate in the interest of our current stockholders and that best interest is to no longer work with ".

No word if the acquiring company ever responded negatively. By all accounts they understood (and really had a bigger picture in mind).

That situation seemed pretty logical to me.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#328

Post by yuvadam »

jmyeet wrote: post #258

The two execs fired were: - Kayvon Beykpour, Head of Consumer Product (3 years, 11 months) [1]; and - Bruce Falck, Revenue Product Lead (5 years at Twitter, 3 years and 11 months in this position) [2] Kinda weird that both people were just shy of serving 4 years in their current roles. When I see moves like this my immediate thought is always, it's to save or make money. For example, there could be an options pool in…

Is it common to have huge vesting cliffs at senior management level at those time frames?

This isn't some junior developer waiting for their 1 year cliff, even in that scenario options usually vest on a monthly basis after that.

Re: Twitter CEO fires two top executives, freezes hiring

#330

Post by peppertree »

kadenwolff wrote: post #40

Interesting that he co-founded Periscope and they also just removed any mention of Periscope from their TOS. Maybe just an artifact of them considering removing him, or it has no meaning. Just found the timing notable.

Periscope was one the main reasons they killed Vine.
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