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So he just wanted to blow away 30 billion of his own money? He felt he had too much money but he did not want to give the money to the needy or anything woke li

So he just wanted to blow away 30 billion of his own money? He felt he had too much money but he did not want to give the money to the needy or anything woke like that he just wanted to waste it in an extravagant gesture? I think the answer is different. He wanted it to succeed he was sure it would succeed, but like many people blinded by previous success and personality worship he thought it would be easy and a bunch of half baked simple solutions would be sufficient. Fire most of your employees and increase fees for most of your users. Seems very simple, right? Guess not.

janalsncm 3y ago
Very little of what made Twitter successful was its engineering. Thats what he didn’t understand. It’s a social network. Network effects are the most important. People will use a second rate network if all of their friends are on it.
permo-w 3y ago
what's $30bn to someone with $260bn? that's like the average person buying a mac, or maybe a cheap car, except less important because Elon Musk doesn't need the other 7/8 of his wealth to survive on I sincerely do not think Elon Musk is that stupid. you don't build Tesla, Paypal and SpaceX with the kinds of decisions that have been made at Twitter, and I think it's quite silly to take the basic assumption that no one ever buys a company to deliberately destroy them. why wouldn't that happen?
- janalsncm 3y ago
  You do realize he didn’t have hundreds of billions laying around, right? He had to take out loans to raise the cash. He used his best asset (Tesla stock) as collateral as well as promises of future Twitter profits. Having stocks as a part of your valuation means it’s not easy to spend a lot quickly. It would be like if you had $100 but spending $20 means you only have $65 left.
  - permo-w 3y ago
    none of this is relevant. so what he has to take 2 extra steps to access the wealth? it's still there, and it's not like he has to sit down and do it himself

janalsncm 3y ago

Very little of what made Twitter successful was its engineering. Thats what he didn’t understand. It’s a social network. Network effects are the most important. People will use a second rate network if all of their friends are on it.

permo-w 3y ago

what's $30bn to someone with $260bn? that's like the average person buying a mac, or maybe a cheap car, except less important because Elon Musk doesn't need the other 7/8 of his wealth to survive on I sincerely do not think Elon Musk is that stupid. you don't build Tesla, Paypal and SpaceX with the kinds of decisions that have been made at Twitter, and I think it's quite silly to take the basic assumption that no one ever buys a company to deliberately destroy them. why wouldn't that happen?

janalsncm 3y ago
You do realize he didn’t have hundreds of billions laying around, right? He had to take out loans to raise the cash. He used his best asset (Tesla stock) as collateral as well as promises of future Twitter profits. Having stocks as a part of your valuation means it’s not easy to spend a lot quickly. It would be like if you had $100 but spending $20 means you only have $65 left.
- permo-w 3y ago
  none of this is relevant. so what he has to take 2 extra steps to access the wealth? it's still there, and it's not like he has to sit down and do it himself