141–150 of 348 posts
If Musk acquires Twitter, I will likely be deleting my account. Am I the only one? Would his acquisition spell the beginning of the end for Twitter?
The downvotes in response to my question seems to imply a lot of people think a Musk acquisition would be a good thing. Maybe list some of the reasons why?
If Musk acquires Twitter, I will likely be deleting my account. Am I the only one? Would his acquisition spell the beginning of the end for Twitter?
The downvotes in response to my question seems to imply a lot of people think a Musk acquisition would be a good thing. Maybe list some of the reasons why?
I’m in the “fortunate” position to not have strong feelings about Musk either way. I may delete my Twitter account if he takes the company private, but that will be more of protest against billionaires owning platforms that I think should be non-profit organisations because of their public impact. That being said, I’m not sure how that is even relevant to most people here on HN as my “protest” is not really matter.
I think Twitter might be opening itself up to a competitor if Musk does something stupid with it. But Twitter is probably already pretty open to disruption as it is exactly for the reason big money sees wasted potential in it. “Owning” the space for public discourse is sort of twitters thing, but it’s much less good at it than LinkedIn is at owning corporate discourse as an example.
But it all sort of depends on what Musk does with it, doesn’t it? Maybe he will make it better.
The Elephant in the room is what is being provided. Elon is already at the limits of his hours on a daily basis to devote to things with SpaceX, Boring Company, Tesla, etc. Picture it this way, Twitter is your startup and Elon proposes to buy you out. Would you not question how much time we would devote as part of the buyout talks?
It’s not relevant. Is anyone expecting him to be the CEO? Far more likely he’s going to appoint competent operators to run Twitter. Whether this is a good outcome for the shareholders is the only germane point up for discussion IMO.
He doesn't need to spend much time with his companies to damage them.
The Elephant in the room is what is being provided. Elon is already at the limits of his hours on a daily basis to devote to things with SpaceX, Boring Company, Tesla, etc. Picture it this way, Twitter is your startup and Elon proposes to buy you out. Would you not question how much time we would devote as part of the buyout talks?
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It’s much worse than that. I had previously assumed Musk knew what he was doing and was fooling around on Twitter in an effort to (unethically) crush short sellers. Now it appears like he’s an utterly inept businessman who took the first verbal sign of interest, rushed it to Twitter as though the deal was complete, and then blew up the deal in a hissy fit. I still think what he’s done at SpaceX and Tesla is admirable…
He's not an inept businessman. He's someone with aspergers who takes someone at face value at all times. If someone says something is the case he believes them. He doesn't handle being deceived well nor does he know when it's happening. And actually he's not a "businessman" at all. He's an engineer at heart. "Businessman" would require strong social skills, not something someone with aspergers has good ability at.
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Really hard to imagine the richest and most accomplished dude on the planet not being able to secure funding. Somehow people still think he’s just a showman. At some point in time, accomplishments can’t be explained away
> Really hard to imagine the richest and most accomplished dude on the planet not being able to secure funding. You don’t have to imagine. It literally already happened once when he claimed he had funding secured to take Tesla private. As such, if you can’t imagine him not having funding secured this time, you’re severely lacking in imagination.
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It’s much worse than that. I had previously assumed Musk knew what he was doing and was fooling around on Twitter in an effort to (unethically) crush short sellers. Now it appears like he’s an utterly inept businessman who took the first verbal sign of interest, rushed it to Twitter as though the deal was complete, and then blew up the deal in a hissy fit. I still think what he’s done at SpaceX and Tesla is admirable…
He's not an inept businessman. He's someone with aspergers who takes someone at face value at all times. If someone says something is the case he believes them. He doesn't handle being deceived well nor does he know when it's happening. And actually he's not a "businessman" at all. He's an engineer at heart. "Businessman" would require strong social skills, not something someone with aspergers has good ability at.
He has not built anything.
The Elephant in the room is what is being provided. Elon is already at the limits of his hours on a daily basis to devote to things with SpaceX, Boring Company, Tesla, etc. Picture it this way, Twitter is your startup and Elon proposes to buy you out. Would you not question how much time we would devote as part of the buyout talks?
It’s not relevant. Is anyone expecting him to be the CEO? Far more likely he’s going to appoint competent operators to run Twitter. Whether this is a good outcome for the shareholders is the only germane point up for discussion IMO.
The article quotes a shareholder rallying behind Musk's offer as justifying his support for Mr Musk's personal involvement.
The article includes quotes from shareholders such as “He has an established track record at Tesla,” and “He is the catalyst to deliver strong operating performance at Twitter.”
I'm not aware of a single instance where shareholders were excited by the prospects of the new owner delegating managent to a random unknown employee.
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The problem with lending to him is most of his assets are TSLA shares. It's arguably absurdly overvalued as an automaker, and any effort to liquidate his position would be expensive since it would drive the price down. Someone did it, but I'm sure some people passed. As someone else pointed out, TWTR isn't a great purchase, either. Its ad revenue isn't great, so if he defaults on the loan, the lender is stuck with an…
They did it at a 5x multiple. They can cover the loan as long as Tesla stays above 203.
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Accomplished? He's got money and hired some smart people. And tech media is more than happy to ignore all the stupid shit he's done and tried.
> He's got money and hired some smart people. Definitely not a fan of his but hiring smart people and enabling them is an accomplishment. As wealthy as he is, he didn’t inherit all of what he has today. He’s definitely done more than many people who come from wealth.