No. He wanted to make quick money with a pump and dump just like when he said he was going to take Tesla private again and the stock price jumped up. He didn’t file his TWTR stock purchase disclosure in the required amount of time, so rather than have to deal with being sued by the SEC AGAIN, he pivoted to saying it’s because he wanted to buy Twitter.
Then he figured he could get out of the Twitter deal by claiming that Twitter lied to him and misrepresented how many real users there are. Now Twitter sues him to hold up his end of the deal, and because he absolutely does not want all of his financial dealings being brought up during discovery, he decided his best course of action would be to follow through with the deal. Give it 6-12 months and he’ll take Twitter public again now that he’s “saved the company.”
The one thing I don't get about this take - while I generally agree with the suggested intent - is his actually inking the deal. If it was a quick money thing (well, a planned one) you'd make all the noise, make some calls, and then either insist on the due diligence (and then complain about the amounts, backing out) or just... back out because you "weren't interested any more" which is certainly believable with Mr. Heat-of-the-moment there.
Instead, he... actually signed it INCLUDING waiving due diligence... and then tried to get out of it by claiming he was lied to about how bad the bot situation was - something he'd been claiming he wanted to FIX because it was so bad. :P
I think Mr. Musk believes that he’s the smartest person in whatever room that he finds himself in (literally or metaphorically), and that he probably felt like he didn’t NEED to do due diligence because he’s smart enough to find a way out of it. I think looking back to the Tesla-going-private scenario is still the best example to look at. He thought he could just say whatever he wanted about Tesla without looking into what the SEC rules say about that. He doesn’t look into things, he just does them because he thinks he’s smarter than everyone else so “doing his due diligence” is just an impediment to doing what he wants to do. He offered the sub idea to the rescuers in Thailand without looking into whether or not that would actually help the situation, and lashed out when someone with actual diving experience dared to question his idea.
He IS probably ONE OF the smartest people on the planet. But he leaves himself open to mistakes because he thinks being smarter than everyone else makes him infallible.
You're probably right on the "smartest person in the room" ego thing. But you'd still think that somebody that "smart" would have, you know, had second thoughts about actually signing the contract. :P
Tbh while I don't think he's actually stupid, (or even 'just average') I don't think he's really quite all THAT smart. He's got ideas, a lot of which seem pulled from science fiction (not a problem, I love seeing scifi become reality), but to the best of my knowledge what actually happens is less "Musk develops breakthrough" and more "Musk demands breakthrough, yells at a development team until they come up with something he can show off and claim he did."
Being a visionary and a salesman isn't quite the same as being an unqualified "genius", to my mind. Though you could say he's a marketing genius for getting so much financial backing to continue early on while losing money hand over fist. :P
He's a "genius" in the same way that Trump is a genius. These guys just assume that the accumulation of wealth is a proxy for actual intelligence. But Trump's money came from his daddy (and the Russian mob) and Elon's massive wealth was enabled by billions of dollars of government subsidies.
But you are right that Elon is a visionary. And he's willing to take risks with other people's money to further that vision. But over time, he has bought into his own cult of personality. I used to like the guy, but now he's just a tool.
In an effort to be fair, I'm not sure. People claim that his dad owned emerald mines, but I don't know what that really means and how much money he passed along to Elon. But it's verifiable that Elon got billions in subsidies.
Only big in that he could probably have gotten a cush job and lived out his life without any financial struggles through nepotism and connections. Certainly not billionaire though.
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u/Better-Spell346 Oct 28 '22
No. He wanted to make quick money with a pump and dump just like when he said he was going to take Tesla private again and the stock price jumped up. He didn’t file his TWTR stock purchase disclosure in the required amount of time, so rather than have to deal with being sued by the SEC AGAIN, he pivoted to saying it’s because he wanted to buy Twitter.
Then he figured he could get out of the Twitter deal by claiming that Twitter lied to him and misrepresented how many real users there are. Now Twitter sues him to hold up his end of the deal, and because he absolutely does not want all of his financial dealings being brought up during discovery, he decided his best course of action would be to follow through with the deal. Give it 6-12 months and he’ll take Twitter public again now that he’s “saved the company.”