Great the new UX is “dirty laundry room”
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If this is going to turn into an extended vendetta for being forced to buy at 3x defensible market value, it will turn into a corporate version of the trump years. Exhausting domination of news cycle by grievance-redressal governance.
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Retaliations, purity tests, difficulty filling top roles, neglect or destruction over creative developments, aggressive harvesting of the few low-hanging revenue opps to make up for acquisition losses.
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I think he’ll sincerely rationalize it as cleaning house for a fresh start, but it will end up scorched earth. Like… this managerial onboarding might be terrible or mediocre. But this public humiliation of I’m guessing dozens in HR = scorched earth/dozens of roles to backfill
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After the layoffs and voluntary exits due to this extreme, open, public hostility and vendetta-humiliation kickoff to new role, 2 kinds of people will want to work at twitter. Millers and Scaramuccis.
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He’s not dumb. He realizes people need positives too. Not just John Wick spectacle. And from running 2 govt-supported businesses knows that corp governance is more constrained $-wise than public. He’ll provide a show. Crowd pleaser “bread” features, plus a “Twitter Day” circus.
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There is HUGE difference from Tesla and SpaceX. Those are missionary businesses where he had a huge goodwill tailwind, and fiercely loyal people invested in historic missions to the point of taking below-market pay to work there. Here, huge toxicity headwind on Day 1.
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And because this is effectively a monarchy and the product is somewhere between a stadium and a royal court rather than a public square, there will be no tribunes or other real public representatives. The council he’s announced is similar to Meta’s or like NYT’s “public editor”
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I’ve been a pretty staunch Tesla and SpaceX admirer and remain so. Still hold $tsla (my best performing individual stock) and would buy spacex tomorrow if it went public. His leadership style plus initial conditions plus tailwinds work for those businesses.
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Sadly the twitter situation does not inspire confidence. It’s bleak af whether I look at it as a stockholder (I hold some $twtr too, and on net my Elon portfolio is down significantly since this misadventure began so I’m already losing) or a heavy user (already uglier)
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I briefly (couple of years) consulted for a senior Tesla exec (not Elon) so had a ringside view of both strengths and weaknesses. Contrary to what detractors think, there’s a there there. A real and opinionated management playbook that works under non-trivial conditions.
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Unlike Trump, who he bears more than a passing resemblance to, Elon’s businesses are not bullshit exercises in charismatic branding and litigation. There’s engineering and managerial substance. A way that not only works but works better than average tech management playbooks.
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But I’ve also observed enough managerial cultures close up to have some confidence in my sense of where particular playbooks fit or don’t. Half my shtick as a management consultant is stealing practices from one company to recommend to another. Tesla playbook doesn’t fit Twitter.
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As an aside, having also consulted for Amazon, Elon’s nemesis biz, I have to say… I tend to recommend Amazon ideas a bit more than Tesla ideas, but the 2 together are like 75% of my material… both are what I call 4th Gen mgmt, most of the economy is 3rd.
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I wouldn’t recommend the Tesla playbook for twitter even under the *most auspicious* initial conditions, let alone this politicized, toxic, litigious shitshow.
So what *would* I recommend? To say a non-hostile Elon regime or a different new leader?
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I have held, since won’t, that Twitter is in fact “too big to nail.” It’s a far faster opportunity space than most businesses which is why all previous leaders have struggled. It looks deceptively simple.
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* far vaster, not faster… I’m not paying $20 for edit button. That better be some of the free bread in this circus
I think you need a big product bet that comes from deep thinking about future of social software. More bluesky than a vague WeChat clone X.
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But this is wishful thinking. You need starter goodwill. Tailwinds. A core user base that trusts your intentions rather than scanning for exits. An ability to attract the strongest social product thinkers rather than Scaramucci incompetents or Miller type ideological hacks.
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If you try to place a big product bet without those conditions, it’s an uphill battle. Like take Tesla autopilot. Ambitious product that attracted some of the best talent (Karpathy etc) when Tesla was riding high. Still struggling to the point some (not me) call it a fraud.
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Fixing twitter the company = leveling up Twitter the product = at least as hard as full-self-driving technologically.
Like many, I think Elon underestimates the challenge. He hasn’t yet learned to respect the product challenge here, which may be why he’s focused on vendettas.
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So tldr… this has a snowflake’s chance in hell of ending well. The best outcome I can think of is Elon treads water long enough to claim a couple of face-saving small wins and then divests the thing to people who actually care enough about twitter to want to run it.
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The median case: extended tribal war of attrition between current employees who stay and “Elon’s people.” Same as Trump’s people vs “deep state.” Nothing will get done except earth-scorching.
Worst case: rapid implosion, Yahoo style.
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PS: take the current exodus threat more seriously than previous pseudoflouncathons. Users are responding to loss of trust in platform management, not vibe shifts or culture war ptsd. Stop loss is hard if half your users suddenly feel unwelcome. This is exit, not waldenponding.
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