Earlier this year I asked "what is Elon Musk up to?" In the same blog I professed to being a Musk fanboy. I no longer am one. Rather than quietly deleting the gushing, I have left it up and posted this to explain what has changed my mind.
I don't mind admitting that I get hot under the collar by fake buyers and their tendencies to mess around with the lives of my clients. As Musk's play for Twitter, and then his attempts to repudiate the agreement unfolded, he uncovered his true nature. It is not pretty.
I take comfort in not standing alone as Elon Musk's support varies across industries, people who have experienced him first hand, and political beliefs.
Musk fanboy here
I am a great fan of Musk, and I follow his exploits closely. He is an engineering genius, a considered risk taker, a leader from the trenches. He has the most amazing foresight at times. Everybody knows this.
The “Boijie from Pretoria” rags to riches story is a bit thin on accuracy, but still, he is kinda one of ours.
It appears he will take us to Mars, certainly back to the Moon, and I look forward to being part of the Starlink network when it becomes available in South Africa in 2024. Or 2025. Or whenever.
Before the current geo-political tensions arose, I thought the Tesla share price was a little under par. The Chinese domestic economy in particular, and the global economy in general may change that.
But I’m not sure that I am comfortable with an engineer and businessman having an influence on a powerful social engineering platform like Twitter. When the engineer is wrapped up in narcissist tendencies… well, have we learned nothing in recent years?
So far he has committed about 1% of his net worth on Twitter. He is the biggest shareholder, and not shy to flaunt the fact, and make calls for changes to Twitter policy. He tweets and people respond. It must be nice.
Fanboy no longer
I thought I was a close follower of Musk, but in reality I just followed him on Twitter and drank from his bowl of Kool Aid. Those tweets are all his own self-aggrandising writing.
He is not an engineering genius. Far from it. He was not a founder of Paypal or Tesla. His name as a founder for both were agreed by settlement contract.
The “Boijie from Pretoria” rags to riches story is a fabrication. Right place, right time mixed with a healthy dose of scheming and manoeuvring.
Spacex will not take us to Mars, perhaps not even back to the Moon. The idea is a science-fiction fantasy.
Starlink will collapse under its failure to scale. The numbers don't work.
Tesla may well lose its Chinese factory to China which is not restricted to seizing ports in Africa and the Indian sub-continent of countries unable to repay their loans.
Elon Musk is habitually dishonest. He needed his foot held to a fire to force him to perform to the contract he initiated. That performance was not before he had screwed up the lives of many people. He will be fighting off those lawsuits for a while.
He will be found wanting.
Elon Musk's support varies
There are entire Youtube channels dedicated to either deifying the man or vilifying him. That makes it difficult to get a true version of truth, rather than "alternative truth".
However, when agreements, court motions, indictments, and sworn testimony become part of the public record with all their footnotes and cross-references, things become a lot clearer.
I watched the whole Twitter - X Holdings merger with the benefit of the experience of managing hundreds of similar (regrettably much smaller) mergers over more than 30 years. All the plays have at various times been unpacked before.
At first I thought Musk had a plan for using Twitter with something like the IOTA Foundation to tame the subscription monster with a micro-payment solution. That is an opportunity which would pay back on the Twitter purchase in short order.
Then Putin's war and the steady drop of the trading price of Tesla and Twitter particularly, and stock markets generally. His infamous remark about waiting out the 3rd world war for a better price on Twitter was the first nail in his coffin for me.
He made an unsolicited offer to buy Twitter, having secretly (and illegally) acquired more than 9% of Twitter's stock. He then threatened to dump all his shares if his "best and final" offer was not accepted.
Twitter's management acted in the best interests of their shareholders, and they accepted the offer. One binding and enforceable agreement in play, which he insisted should not be subject to a due diligence.
When he tried to get out of the deal the board insisted he perform to the agreement and actually pay $54-20 for each share. That was exactly what the board of any company is required to do: act in the best interests of the shareholders.
I followed each of his objections about bots and fake accounts and weak code and poor policy. Any one of those contentions, if true, would have been uncovered during a due diligence, and he could have walked away. But Elon Musk opted to dispense with his right to conduct a due diligence.
He was always going to buy the company, like it or not.
But the unveiling of Elon Musk through the process will always be the arrow in in his heel. From now onwards.
Other Elon Musk and Twitter content
Elon Musk’s support varies
29 November 2022
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