Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO (2011)
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Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO (2011)
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Re: Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO (2011)
#2Not to make everything about him, but this peacetime/wartime lens of viewing the world is interesting to think about in light of Elon Musk taking over Twitter. You can make a case that part of Twitter's big problem in the last decade or so is that their company has been operating in sort of a relaxed peacetime mode when they really needed to be operating in a wartime frame of mind due to their lack of profitability. Elon's real challenge might be successfully dragging a kicking and screaming company into a focused wartime frame.
Re: Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO (2011)
#3Not to make everything about him, but this peacetime/wartime lens of viewing the world is interesting to think about in light of Elon Musk taking over Twitter. You can make a case that part of Twitter's big problem in the last decade or so is that their company has been operating in sort of a relaxed peacetime mode when they really needed to be operating in a wartime frame of mind due to their lack of profitability.…
I think this is certainly true. But my understanding of Twitter - and this may be flawed - was that it was always a mission driven company over a profit driven one. Elon said he wanted to continue that tradition, but with the debt load Twitter is literally in an existential crisis.
So this begs the question, can Twitter be successful being “twitter”? My guess is no, Musk can make a lot of money going after video or micropayments, or X or whatever (well this has yet to be seen, My gut says Twitter is in a worse position then anyone realizes when you combine all the factors, but some people work best backed into a corner, and he’s backed by investors with deep pockets) but the free speech public square open forum has to be a passion project. There’s too many constraints otherwise.
Ship of Theseus adjacent, when does Twitter stop being “twitter”?
Re: Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO (2011)
#4A "wartime" business person is a hilarious idea. Gotta feel manly somehow, I guess!
Re: Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO (2011)
#5Not to make everything about him, but this peacetime/wartime lens of viewing the world is interesting to think about in light of Elon Musk taking over Twitter. You can make a case that part of Twitter's big problem in the last decade or so is that their company has been operating in sort of a relaxed peacetime mode when they really needed to be operating in a wartime frame of mind due to their lack of profitability.…
I think this is certainly true. But my understanding of Twitter - and this may be flawed - was that it was always a mission driven company over a profit driven one. Elon said he wanted to continue that tradition, but with the debt load Twitter is literally in an existential crisis. So this begs the question, can Twitter be successful being “twitter”? My guess is no, Musk can make a lot of money going after video or m…
> Ship of Theseus adjacent, when does Twitter stop being “twitter”?
When the users that people are interested in - politicians, news organizations, certain brand accounts, celebrities - go away. The problem for Twitter is that politicians and celebrities don't really want to hang around on a platform where they have to deal with abusive content all the time.
Re: Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO (2011)
#6Not to make everything about him, but this peacetime/wartime lens of viewing the world is interesting to think about in light of Elon Musk taking over Twitter. You can make a case that part of Twitter's big problem in the last decade or so is that their company has been operating in sort of a relaxed peacetime mode when they really needed to be operating in a wartime frame of mind due to their lack of profitability.…
It is more public now but Elon has always operated this way. A book about paypal: The Founders, describes their constant war to survive and he obviously thrives in that environment.
Which is why the Elon Twitter doomsayers are not likely to be right in the end. He has a method and it is rough and certain type of employee that fits his operating style.
Twitter culture just the complete opposite which is why there is such an internal war.
Re: Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO (2011)
#7Could we add (2011) to the title?
This is from before Ben's 2014 book "The Hard Thing About Hard Things" which popularized the concept. I was expecting the link to be e.g. a new essay from Ben / a recent analysis of the concept.
Re: Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO (2011)
#8A "wartime" business person is a hilarious idea. Gotta feel manly somehow, I guess!
Yes. A few billion dollars wartime CEO.
Re: Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO (2011)
#9Could we add (2011) to the title? This is from before Ben's 2014 book "The Hard Thing About Hard Things" which popularized the concept. I was expecting the link to be e.g. a new essay from Ben / a recent analysis of the concept.
Done. And thanks for motivating why you would find it useful. Makes sense to me.
Re: Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO (2011)
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this is certainly true. But my understanding of Twitter - and this may be flawed - was that it was always a mission driven company over a profit driven one. Elon said he wanted to continue that tradition, but with the debt load Twitter is literally in an existential crisis. So this begs the question, can Twitter be successful being “twitter”? My guess is no, Musk can make a lot of money going after video or m…
> Ship of Theseus adjacent, when does Twitter stop being “twitter”? When the users that people are interested in - politicians, news organizations, certain brand accounts, celebrities - go away. The problem for Twitter is that politicians and celebrities don't really want to hang around on a platform where they have to deal with abusive content all the time.
> The problem for Twitter is that politicians and celebrities don't really want to hang around on a platform where they have to deal with abusive content all the time.
Maybe. At a certain point, that's probably true, but are we close to that?
Sometimes you have to look at what people do, not what they say.
It costs a celebrity nothing to say nice things about seeking peace and love and opposing hatred and wanting to fight all of the "hate speech" and "cyber-bullying" they see. In fact, they gain social capital for saying these things, so if you're a celebrity, you're effectively "leaving money on the table" by not talking in a certain way about certain topics.
But it costs a celebrity a lot to actually leave a platform where they have some world-shaping influence. My guess is that most celebrities would figuratively crawl through a field of broken glass to get their fix of attention and kudos from their supporters.