Text messages exchanged between Elon Musk and the former CEO of Twitter have revealed the breakdown of their relationship before Musk took over the company.
These messages were disclosed in a court filing, showing that in April 2022, Elon Musk, the wealthiest person globally, was offered a position on Twitter’s board by its former CEO, Parag Agrawal. The Tesla founder then began soliciting opinions about Twitter from users via his own tweets.
Here’s how the events unfolded.
On March 27 of that year, Agrawal, a billionaire like Musk, reached out to the SpaceX CEO for a conversation, which they had that evening.
Four days later, they met with Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s co-founder, and soon after, Musk was announced as a new board member at Twitter.
Joe Rogan texted Musk: “Are you going to liberate Twitter from the censorship happy mob?”
Musk responded: “I will provide advice, which they may or may not choose to follow.”
On April 7, Musk texted Parag: “I have a ton of ideas, but Imk if I’m pushing too hard. I just want Twitter to be maximum amazing.”
“I want to hear all the ideas – and l’ll tell you which ones i’ll make progress on vs. not. And why,” the former CEO responded.
“And in this phase – just good to spend as much time with you. + have my Product and Eng team talk to you to ingest information on both sides.”
The conversation then shifted to their coding skills, with Musk telling Agrawal: “Frankly, I hate doing mgmt stuff. I kinda don’t think anyone should be the boss of anyone. But I love helping solve technical/product design problems.”
“You got it!” replied Agrawal, but it seems he misunderstood the message.
Musk then tweeted a list of the top 10 most followed accounts, stating: “Most of these ‘top’ accounts tweet rarely and post very little content.
“Is Twitter dying?”
Frustrated by Musk’s questioning of the platform, Agrawal texted him a candid message: “You are free to tweet ‘is Twitter dying?’ or anything else about Twitter – but it’s my responsibility to tell you that it’s not helping me make Twitter better in the current context.
“Next time we speak, l’d like to have you provide your perspective on the level of internal distraction right now and how it [is] hurting our ability to do work.
“I hope the AMA will help people get to know you, to understand why you believe in Twitter, and to trust you – and l’d like the company to get to a place where we are more resilient and don’t get distracted, but we aren’t there right now.”
Enraged, Musk shot back: “What did you get done this week?
“I’m not joining the board. This is a waste of time.
“Will make an offer to take Twitter private.”
Subsequently, he purchased Twitter for a staggering $44 billion and dismissed Agrawal.
Reacting on social media, one user commented: “Elon is savage.”
Another added: “‘What did you get done this week?’ is so hard.”
Clearly, the world’s richest man doesn’t appreciate being told what he can or cannot say.