this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
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Enough Musk Spam
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I think he's this narcissistic and impulsive but he's always had some sort of buffer between his worst impulses and reality.
He was a VC bro that was able to sell a few unicorn ideas to employees and investors (which is no small feat). His investors at his other companies were able to help build competent teams around him and prevent him from pinballing between bad ideas and keep him relatively focused on their investment and ideas that would work.
As Musk's weath grew, so did his power. His need for investors (and the need to listen to them) diminished. Also weath and power attract an entourage who are willing to do/say anything to stay on Elon's good side.
Elon only only purchased Twitter because he was compulsively tweeting.
He signed a no due diligence contact because no one around him was there to say "that's a really fucking stupid idea, there's no rush to buy Twitter, take all the time you need." But he signed a terms sheet that no homeowner should sign before purchasing a much less a multi-billion dollar acquisition. For reference, an acquisition of a small company with an annual revenue of less than $1M annually takes 3-6 months to go through due diligence, multi-billion dollar acquisitions can take years. That's a seriously compulsive decision.
If he sold his stake after saying he was going to buy them, Twitter was going to sue his ass off for doing a pump and dump and intentionally destroying stock value. That would also open an SEC investigation. Both of those would show the public how fucking stupid Elon is in a court of law. That's simply not okay for a narcissist. They must feed their ego.
Now at Twitter, he doesn't have a large backing of investors that he has to listen to like in a normal VC situation, AND he thinks he's actually smarter than everyone around him and we can see the emperor has no clothes.
After being a lucky VC that got forced out of his initial investments right before the DotCom bubble burst Elon's main value was as a marketer.
At Tesla he was able to sell investors and employees a vision of a gas-free future. At SpaceX he sold his vision of exploring the stars.
Who is clamouring for the next great social media platform?
Who's asking for the next 'everything' app?
Who's asking a private company to be more involved in their day to day lives?
Users certainly aren't.
Tl;Dr: Elon was a lucky VC, who's main value was as a marketer and not as an ops/engineering specialist.