EMERGENCY POD: ELON BUYING TWITTER - Our Reaction and Explanation (Hilarious)

Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) and Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) react to Elon Musk's attempted hostile takeover of Twitter. They analyze why he's doing it, whether they think he'll be successful, and more. ----- Links: * Elon's letter: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001494730/000110465922045641/tm2212748d1_sc13da.htm * Punk6529 Twitter: https://twitter.com/punk6529?s=20&t=_z6Y7oL3z9JfPiYx0AqImw * Video of Elon's plan B: https://twitter.com/heydave7/status/1514675952802017282 * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter. ----- Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. ----- Additional episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Okay, so you don't like to lose. If in this case you are not successful in, you know, the board does not accept your offer. You've said you won't go higher. Is there a plan B?

• 0:15Speaker 00

  There is.

• 0:28Sam Parr?

  All right, we're live breaking addition. Sean just texted us and said, we gotta do this Elon thing. It sounds like you've got a lot of opinion or you have a lot of opinions.

• 0:39Shaan Puri?

  I got some opinions. I got some opinions for sure. First, let's summarize what happened and then tell me how you, I guess, like how you initially heard about it and how you reacted to it when you first heard.

• 0:50Sam Parr?

  So let's start from like, all right. So the weeks and months and years ago, Elon has always criticized Twitter, saying how he loves it. And I actually think he's one of the top 10 most followed accounts in the world. And of the top 10, he's one of the few that is actually actively posting as a normal person would. And he's criticized Twitter for doing some, for banning free speech, things like that, for basically being too liberal. He didn't ever say that word, but that's kind of what he's getting at.

• 1:19Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 1:20Sam Parr?

  And about 10 days ago or a week ago, he bought 9% of the company. And then he said, announced that he was going to join the board of directors. And the weekend after he announced that he was joining the board of directors, he started posting things like, let's turn Twitter's HQ into a homeless shelter. I actually lived next door to Twitter's headquarters in, at Ninth and Market a couple of years ago. And it's basically like, no one's there because the pandemic shut down that area of the city and it's full of homeless people. And he said, let's shut down Twitter HQ and turn it into a homeless shelter. He tweeted another thing.

• 1:58Shaan Puri?

  Because nobody's going to work anyways.

• 2:01Sam Parr?

  Yeah, because no one go to work anyways.

• 2:02Shaan Puri?

  Employees don't go anyways.

• 2:04Sam Parr?

  So he took, it was two jabs that he took. And then also he said, should we create an edit button? Button yes or no, and he tweeted basically three or four things like that. Then on Sunday, or sorry, last, on Sunday night, he was supposed to join the board on Monday. He said, I'm not joining the board. And to a couple of people or people who are a little bit in the know of this kind of granular stuff, they said, well, the reason he's not joining the board is when you join the board of a company like this, you can't own more than 14%. And so by not joining the board, he can now buy the whole thing. And that happened on Monday. It's Thursday morning.

• 2:42Shaan Puri?

  First, they were playing patty cake with each other. He's like, you know, the news comes out, then it's like the CEO of Twitter, Parag is like, hey, so happy to have Elon Musk on our board. He's the best. Jack Dorsey says, so glad to have Elon on our board. Elon says, so glad to be on the board, Jack. You know, they're all playing patty cake. And then one day later, or two days later, something like that, it becomes, he's actually not joining the board. And he basically goes hostile.

• 3:10Sam Parr?

  And now at 6:00 AM, 7:00 AM this morning, it was announced that he was going to buy Twitter. Right away when he bought 9% of the company, I think the stock jumped 10% the day he did it. But its current valuation was like 43 billion, and I think he offered to buy it at 53 billion, billion, give or take. I forget the exact amount, but it was a nice premium, not a huge premium, but a nice premium. And here we are now, waiting for what's going to happen next. And by the way, I think Jack Dorsey, I do actually think he was somewhat genuine. I think the CEO of Twitter was not genuine. That guy doesn't even tweet, like he's not even a user. Like, have you ever read his tweets? Like, he just tweets like screenshots of PDFs.

• 3:53Shaan Puri?

  He follows me, that's all I know. And so he's good in my books. Parag, you're the man. You have excellent taste in who you follow.

• 4:00Sam Parr?

  Well, that's, he might be the man, but he's not like a power user of Twitter. Like, he's like, I think I know how to use Twitter better than he does. You know what I mean?

• 4:08Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, for sure you do. Yeah, like, so he tweeted on January 20th, then February 16th, then March 3rd, you know, before that, November 30th. So, you know, this guy's tweeting bimonthly.

• 4:20Sam Parr?

  Yeah, so, like, whereas Elon actually gets it.

• 4:25Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 4:26Sam Parr?

  So, anyway, that's where we are now. What's your take?

• 4:29Shaan Puri?

  So I think there's a couple of different takes. First, I want to just say.

• 4:33Shaan Puri?

  Baller move. I've

• 4:35Sam Parr?

  Baller move.

• 4:35Shaan Puri?

  I've been on the record of saying, I think Elon can be kinda cringey with the stuff he says in public. I think he's an amazing inventor. I think he's a, he's a amazing, uh, you know, visionary and, you know, a force of nature for sure. But I think he's kinda cringey in the way he kind of, uh, for somebody who's like, you know, trying to be kind of like an engineer's engineer, uh, he sure does do a lot of stuff to like, make himself seem cool and like try to be cool. And it just comes across tryhardy to me. But this was not, not just the move. I'm gonna read you, have you read the letter?

• 5:08Sam Parr?

  Yes, I have it up.

• 5:09Shaan Puri?

  The letter is badass. So

• 5:12Sam Parr?

  It's badass.

• 5:12Shaan Puri?

  He, he created an offer.

• 5:14Sam Parr?

  Dude, that's so funny that we both like, go gravity. I was gonna, that's exactly what I was gonna bring up was the writing.

• 5:20Shaan Puri?

  Is, and the writing's amazing. I'm just gonna read it word for word. So he goes,

• 5:24Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 5:24Shaan Puri?

  Uh, so this is part of his like SEC filing. He goes, I invested in Twitter as I believe it's potential to be the, the platform for free speech around the globe. And I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy. However, since making my investment, I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company. As a result, I'm willing to buy 100% of Twitter at 5240, uh, 5420 per share in cash, a 54% premium over the day I began investing, 38% uh, over what I, you know, the day it was announced. My offer is my best and final offer. If it is not accepted, I will not re, I would need to reconsider my

• 6:04Shaan Puri?

  position as a shareholder. Twitter has extraordinary potential, period. I will unlock it. So that was the start. And then there's one final thing he goes, best and final. And he, this bullet points, A.

• 6:15Sam Parr?

  This is, this is the goal. This is a really goal.

• 6:17Shaan Puri?

  This is where he, to put his nuts on the table. He goes, I am not playing the back and forth game. B, I have moved straight to the end.

• 6:26Shaan Puri?

  I'm not playing the back and forth game.

• 6:27Sam Parr?

  And

• 6:27Shaan Puri?

  Moved straight to the end. It is a high price and your shareholders will love it.

• 6:32Sam Parr?

  That's the best line. Your shareholders will love it.

• 6:35Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. If the deal does not work, given I have, I do not have confidence in management. Parag, sad Parag face. Nor do I believe I can drive the necessary change in the public market. I will need to reconsider my position as a shareholder.

• 6:46Sam Parr?

  Which is, which it is, he says it's not a threat. It is entirely a, it's a, it's a threat.

• 6:52Shaan Puri?

  Biggest, biggest threat I've ever seen.

• 6:54Sam Parr?

  It's like saying this is not a threat. It's like saying, like, I'm not trying to be racist, but, or like, it's like, dude, what you're about to say is gonna be racist.

• 7:02Shaan Puri?

  Right. Don't take this the wrong way.

• 7:04Sam Parr?

  Yeah. You're gonna be, you're about to be really freaking rude.

• 7:07Shaan Puri?

  You're about to get offended. Um, he says, this is not a threat. It is simply a good, not a good investment without changes that need to be made. And those changes won't happen without taking the company private. But this, the best line of all these is, I have moved straight to the end. That's my new shit, dude. I have moved straight to the end. That is my new shit. Sean's new shit is, I have moved straight to the end. I'm just gonna be using that left and right. Negotiations, uh, tomorrow's milk road is gonna start with, I have moved straight to the end. Uh, you know, when I talk to my wife tonight and she wants to, you know, cuddle and kiss, no, I have moved straight to the end. If I go, if I go in line somewhere, I'm gonna stand at the end of the line.

• 7:51Shaan Puri?

  I'm gonna say, I have moved straight to the end. That is my new shit. What a line.

• 7:55Sam Parr?

  It's good, man. How about the fact that he's, so this was basically, when he says send via text, is that literally, does he mean that this is an email that was sent in text format? And then there's voice format? Or is he saying this was a text message, you think?

• 8:11Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. I don't know what that part was. It's like, it's like, there's like a screenshot of it. It says like, oh, it's almost like he's like, hey Siri, send this to the SEC. Send this to Jack in my address book. It's like, which Jack do you mean?

• 8:25Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 8:25Shaan Puri?

  So I don't know what that part was. It's, it sounded like that part was, I think he sent a message either to Jack or Brett Taylor, the, the chairman or whatever.

• 8:32Sam Parr?

  Is Brett Taylor the guy from Salesforce?

• 8:35Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 8:35Sam Parr?

  Brett Taylor?

• 8:36Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 8:36Sam Parr?

  Oh, dude, that guy's a baller.

• 8:38Shaan Puri?

  The chairman of the board.

• 8:39Sam Parr?

  Oh my gosh.

• 8:40Shaan Puri?

  And so I think he sent, I think he sent it to, I think it was to him and it was saying, uh, here's my offer letter. This will be public tomorrow. So I think he, you know, was giving a heads up to whoever.

• 8:49Sam Parr?

  I do not think this is gonna go through.

• 8:52Shaan Puri?

  And why do you think that?

• 8:54Sam Parr?

  I think that I, okay, so there's this app called Blind. It's very inside baseball app, like typically only, uh, the, the, you basically have to have an email at a large prominent tech company to use it. So I don't even have, I mean, maybe HubSpot has the ability to use it, but, um, it's like

• 9:14Shaan Puri?

  I used to use this all the time at Twitch.

• 9:16Sam Parr?

  It's awesome. So like Amazon, Apple,

• 9:18Shaan Puri?

  People talking shit, whining, gossiping, but you do it anonymously and they, you have to be an employee at the company to be on there. So you know, these are not just randos.

• 9:27Sam Parr?

  And they'll like, it's, they, they basically will complain about stuff that they should be made fun of. Like, I only make $450,000 a year. How is that? How am I able to survive in SF? Or what is everyone making right now? My salary is blank. Post your salary below, whatever. And I got some screenshots from the Twitter Blind and the people who use Blind, I do think are not the representative of the normal employees, but they basically said that, uh, like 50/50 thought it was a good idea and 50 thought it was a bad idea. Um, so, but the reason I don't think it's going to go through is I do think that management and a large vocal subset of the Twitter employees are going to throw a fit enough that it would make this hard to go through.

• 10:11Shaan Puri?

  But it's not the employees who get to decide. I mean, what do you mean?

• 10:15Sam Parr?

  No, I said the management. I think management could, could, could cause such

• 10:19Shaan Puri?

  I don't know what they could do. This is, it's, it's a, I think this is like, I don't know the exact mechanics of these takeovers. So, you know, there's people much smarter than me about this stuff, but this is something that basically the, the board has to decide. And it's like a share, the shareholders, if I'm a Twitter shareholder, this stock hasn't like, stocks have been basically a poor performer for like a decade. I used to own this like 10 years ago and, um, you know, the stock prices, you know, has not been like this up into the right curve. And you're getting a whatever, what is a premium versus today? So today's price is, it's now 45, he offered 54. So that's what I like a 20 something percent premium. Don't do public math, but, um,

• 11:01Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but

• 11:03Shaan Puri?

  Would you take that premium? And and also what he's I think one thing he said was he would try to retain as many private shareholders as possible, meaning you wouldn't have to sell to be in favor of the vote of of this going through. You could like, you know, keep your shares or whatever.

• 11:17Sam Parr?

  I think that um, I just think that there's like some like I've read enough like finance books that there's all these crazy things like the poison pill, which frankly, I don't even understand a lot of this. So there's all these like weird like, you know, art of war type of things that you can do, I think. I don't think it's as easy as well. I'm the top bidder. I think there's all these weird things. But anyway, the thing here's the thing about Twitter. Do you know what? All right. So Twitter's market cap as of today, it's 34 billion. Of course, we're like at a nice pullback right now for tech. So it's probably 30% higher a year ago, but whatever. Right now it's 34 billion. You know what Snapchat is?

• 11:50Shaan Puri?

  Uh, 50.

• 11:52Sam Parr?

  About 55. And here's the thing about Twitter is I believe they have way more users. And it's the center of culture right now. Maybe not the center, but it is a center of culture at the moment. And their ad platform is dog shit. It's the worst ad platform all the big dogs. So if they could figure this out, they should be worth way more. The thing is, I don't think Elon gives a shit about ads. I think he's gonna try and figure out a way how to make money other than ads, but Twitter's ad platform is really bad. So I do think that this company, Twitter, is way undervalued and way under monetized and they they don't ever innovate. Although lately they've done some cool stuff. But it's been like, you know, 10 years, 10 years, I think.

• 12:33Shaan Puri?

  Right. Yeah. And by the way, here's here's a couple of takes on the on the situation. So

• 12:41Shaan Puri?

  Cuban, Mark Cuban came out and he was like, I think, he goes, I think Elon is effing with the SEC. He goes, his filing with the SEC allows him to say he wants to take a company private for 5420, which is like, you know, before he used to SEC fined him like crazy because he said, I'm considering taking Tesla private for 420 funding secured. And so he got to now do it the official way and just put a five in front of the 420. He had bought the shares a couple of months ago. This is gonna this this news of him buying and now of the potential takeover that drives shares up. Let's say they don't accept his offer. Well, then he's he already said, I'm gonna sell my shares if you don't take my offer.

• 13:21Shaan Puri?

  So he's just gonna make a huge profit off of off of these shares, right? Like, he's gonna make, you know, like, I don't know, whatever. Like, I think he bought the shares for 3 billion. Uh, if he, if he sells it, you know, for, for, you know, like whatever 20, 30% gain, he might make up close to a billion dollars off of just effing with Twitter and he gets all the fame. Remember we were talking about our friend who, uh, our friend, uh, Alex, who, uh, from Morning Brew, who's gonna, who's talking about buying puppet golf courses. And we were like, this is the optimal spot. You said the announcement, you got all the praise. You don't have to actually do it.

• 13:55Sam Parr?

  Yeah, like the check.

• 13:56Shaan Puri?

  Get the picture with the check and, uh, and post it on IG. You, you don't, don't actually give yourself all the headache and the work of actually running and owning that business. Uh, so Elon is at, that's perfect spot right now. So that's, that's one take on it. Um, other takes, uh, so you know, some people, you know, like crypto Twitter, basically. So there's this, uh, do you follow this account punk6529?

• 14:17Sam Parr?

  No, I, I think I know who he is. I'm actually going to click follow now. What is it punk? What?

• 14:20Shaan Puri?

  So punk6529. So this guy's one of the like best Twitter accounts to follow. He's sort of like posts these kind of like thought leader-y things about crypto.

• 14:30Sam Parr?

  Yeah, I know this guy. He's great.

• 14:32Shaan Puri?

  And he's great. And he's, I think in a very short amount of time, like a couple of months, he's built, you know, he's got 320,000 followers now because he's just had like really good takes on things. Um, uh, uh, things like this. And he, he said, uh, what did he say? He goes,

• 14:47Shaan Puri?

  he said something like, you know, um, he's, he was basically like, you know, Twitter should be a protocol. It's a short messaging protocol. And it doesn't need to be owned by a single company, nor does it, he, he says, if you're excited about Elon taking over Twitter or upset about Elon taking over Twitter, well, both of these are the exact same problem. Our global short messaging internet protocol should be completely unaffected by who's the CEO of some random company in California. In that same spirit, let's talk about, you know, what, what a future, you know, protocol like this could be. And I think that's one of the like, that's not like what's going to happen here, but I think, I think it is like, no one company owns email, for example.

• 15:26Sam Parr?

  Right.

• 15:26Shaan Puri?

  But, but like, which is a protocol for sending messages that are long form. And, but one company does own Twitter protocol. And because of that, you know, You can't just choose like if this was a protocol, you could say, I want to use the client that has no algorithm. I want to use the one that has a really tight algorithm and shows me nothing, no, no right wing stuff. You would be able to have way more choice as a consumer and way more companies would be able to innovate and build on top of Twitter. If it was a protocol, not a single company. So kind of his family doesn't matter who's in charge.

• 15:57Sam Parr?

  I don't even think that's logistically possible at this point, though, or is it?

• 16:02Shaan Puri?

  Not really for Twitter. It's like, almost like it's easier for the next thing.

• 16:05Sam Parr?

  Yeah, right. That's what I mean.

• 16:06Shaan Puri?

  Jack, Jack Dorsey has said he's, there's a project called Blue Sky, which is the idea of like turning Twitter into a decentralized protocol, but like, who knows like how realistic that is and how much of that is just like, you know, lip service. We're working on it and like, you know, check in in five years and see how it goes.

• 16:23Sam Parr?

  Let's talk about this angle here, which is actually maybe the most interesting, which is A, best troll ever. So like this guy is like a child and it's some of it's not funny. This one is very funny. But B, I actually think, and I think Paul Graham said something like this, this, I'm not convinced that this would be good for Twitter, but I think definitely there's a for sure possibility. That it could be good for Twitter, but I think there's a for sure certainty that this is horrible for Elon Musk. Consistently, the guy makes decisions that are funny and cool and leave people like shocked that they did that. But it's kind of like eating an entire orange, including the peel. It's really funny and hilarious that you actually did it and we're going to laugh about it forever.

• 17:08Sam Parr?

  But I'm shocked that I do a guy in college who ate an entire orange and an entire lemon one time in one sitting, including the peel. And I'm like, that's hilarious that you've done that. I have a story for now forever, but that's going to suck for you for a while. And so that's kind of like what this is like, this is going to be bad for Elon for a long time. This is not going to make his life more fun. This is going to make his life significantly worse, significantly harder. So much more pressure. This is not a smart move for his personal life.

• 17:36Shaan Puri?

  Well, the the point he's at right now is brilliant because what does this say about Elon? This says, number one, I'm super rich. I could just buy Twitter. How about that? Uh, somebody tweeted out, they go, Elon said, um, I, okay, you know, you don't want me on your board? Okay, I won't have a board seat. I'll have all the board seats. Right? So, so, so that's one piece, which is like, if you, in case you forgot, I'm way richer than all of you. Um, okay. Second thing is, why are you doing this, Elon? Are you just, you just want to own it, have more power? Like, think about when Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post or whatever. It's like, uh, what are these billionaires trying to do?

• 18:12Shaan Puri?

  They're trying to control us. Elon's is like, these tech companies are effing, effing it up, which that's already the, the, the way that a lot of people believe is that these tech companies have too much power, too much control. They're shaping the narrative. They're, they're not free speech. So he came out as, I'm doing this for free speech. It's like, ah, how are you going to argue against free speech, right? Like, you know, raise your hand if you're against free speech. And so he virtue signaled free speech on top of it. Uh, he did it in like a bold and baller way where it's like, gonna give him like way more attention and fame and a bunch of reasons why people will talk about him. And he's gonna make money from it, you know, just by like buying the shares beforehand, then creating all this ruckus and then like, you know, being able to sell out if he says, oh, well, I didn't get it, you know?

• 18:54Shaan Puri?

  Um, so, so I think, and he can kind of be the underdog of like, yeah, you know, they, the, the powers that be wouldn't let me do what I wanted to do. I was gonna make this shit awesome. But, uh, you know, they, they, they wouldn't let me do it. They tried to, they tried to squash me.

• 19:06Sam Parr?

  Dude, how about the fact that we just did an episode where we recapped the milk road where, uh, you, uh, where Peter Thiel had this like outlandish headline where, which it might be true. Uh, no, I, I actually don't think it's, I think he was joking a little bit where he said Warren Buffett's a sociopath. And he went to lists about all the reasons why Warren Buffett, who's-

• 19:25Shaan Puri?

  Called him, hold on, he called him the sociopathic grandpa in Omaha.

• 19:29Sam Parr?

  Yes, who but like Warren Buffett, his stereotype, and it's probably actually not true, is that he's this nice old man who's just all shucks, I just happen to do it, whatever. And Peter Thiel is this evil guy who causes like old grandpa a sociopath. And then you've got Elon, who does the craziest shit on earth. Imagine these guys when they're 25, 30 years old, and they had a little something, but maybe not like that much. And what type of fun would it have been to be in the same room with these fucking shitheads? Who are, who are, it's like the perfect combination of like capable enough to pull it off, crazy enough to think it's funny. And it's just all this perfect combination. I can't imagine being around these guys when they were younger.

• 20:12Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. Ben, pull this tweet up. So he's at Elon right now, as we're talking, he's at Ted. And

• 20:19Sam Parr?

  Uh, you know who's there? Uh,

• 20:20Shaan Puri?

  Our boys.

• 20:21Sam Parr?

  Our boys. Yeah.

• 20:23Shaan Puri?

  Andrew Jack. So he's at Ted right now. He was there to talk about whatever SpaceX, Tesla, whatever.

• 20:30Sam Parr?

  Dude, F that.

• 20:31Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, of course, you know, uh, it's a, it's a 30 minute talk about Twitter. And so Ben, can you pull this link up in the, in the screen share? We should watch this. This is Elon Musk talking about his plan B. If the deal doesn't go through for Twitter. So I haven't watched this video because this just got tweeted out just now. So I want to hear, I want to live react to whatever he says here. 30 second clip.

• 20:53Sam Parr?

  Do you, while Ben's finding that clip, pull it up, Ben. But while Ben's finding that clip, do you think, so like, I don't buy like that nice stuff, but like, let's say like, I see a car that I like, and it's like $50,000. And I'm like, yeah, I'm just gonna buy it. And I'll figure out how to insure it. And I'll figure out where I'm gonna store it after I'm buying it. Like, it's kind of a big deal because it's like a $50,000 thing, but like, it's not gonna kill me. Do you think that Elon is thinking about it like I would think about like a $50,000 car? Or is this like, um, like how well, how thought out do you think this is?

• 21:26Shaan Puri?

  Well, let's, let's look at this. Elon net worth right now is $265 billion, I think.

• 21:32Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but he can't, I don't think that that, I don't, I don't think that like that's entire, that is true in a sense of a net worth, but he definitely has a lot of debt because he's got to sell. I mean, it's not like that liquid, I would think.

• 21:44Shaan Puri?

  So even if you, we don't know all the details, and we don't know, we don't know all of his personal financial situation, but let's just take the high level numbers for a second. Uh, that's I think, you know, like whatever, roughly 20% of his net worth that he would be putting into this.

• 21:59Sam Parr?

  So that's a lot.

• 22:00Shaan Puri?

  You're worth $10 million is you buying a $2 million asset, right?

• 22:05Sam Parr?

  The difference is, is that you only have 8 million if you're worth 10 million left, which is a lot, but like you're not going to go and buy a bunch more $2 million things. With Elon, you still have 70 or 50 or billion.

• 22:17Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, yeah, you have whatever, like 200 billion to fall back on.

• 22:22Sam Parr?

  Yeah, whatever it is.

• 22:23Shaan Puri?

  We have this clip. I want to see what he says. I don't know if this is going to be good because it just happened just now, but Ben, let's play this and I want to hear it.

• 22:29Speaker 00

  The truth matters to me a lot. Really like sort of pathologically, it matters to me. Okay, so, so you don't like to lose. If in this case you are not successful in, you know, the board does not accept your offer, you've said you won't go higher. Is there a plan B?

• 22:51Speaker 00

  There is.

• 22:56Speaker 00

  I think, I think we would like to hear a little bit about plan B.

• 23:04Speaker 00

  For, for another time, I think. Another time? Yeah. All right.

• 23:11Speaker 00

  I, that's a nice tease. All right. So.

• 23:18Sam Parr?

  That's great, man.

• 23:19Shaan Puri?

  Nice. Well played. Well played in that, in that case. I don't know what the plan B could be, right? Like launching his own, launching his own thing, I think is probably.

• 23:28Sam Parr?

  I don't think, I don't think that would, that's a good plan B.

• 23:32Sam Parr?

  Twitter is, is, is, you know, it's really hard. You know, like how many people say they're, they're going to create a social media product and how many people try and how many have worked? So a lot try, everyone tries when they first start and there's like three.

• 23:45Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 23:46Sam Parr?

  Right? Tik Tok, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram and you know what I mean? There's three.

• 23:54Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I do think it would be very, very hard. This would be much better is to buy the existing asset, but.

• 23:59Sam Parr?

  How's Trump's things doing? What's it? Do you know what the? I mean, it's like horrible, right?

• 24:04Shaan Puri?

  I downloaded it because I was like, I gotta see what's going on on this thing, but I haven't spent too much time on it. It was like crashing like crazy like the first day. So.

• 24:11Sam Parr?

  Yeah, so I.

• 24:12Shaan Puri?

  Social.

• 24:13Sam Parr?

  I don't think building it is.

• 24:14Shaan Puri?

  Maybe that's the plan B. Maybe he's gonna be like, hey, everybody. Truth social. That's where we're going, right? Because then you get the Trump stands and the Elon stands together. Together, that's a lot of people who are like devoted followers of those two. The problem is they hate each other.

• 24:30Sam Parr?

  And also Elon doesn't care about making conservatives happy. He cares about trolling. So if you only have your own audience on there, it wouldn't be very fun.

• 24:42Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 24:43Sam Parr?

  You know what I mean? He doesn't like getting people cheering. He like, he likes pissing people off or ruffling feathers. And the thing about the truth, I, you know what I think that's rooted in? I think that's rooted in his father lying to him. And so Elon's dad, so listen.

• 24:59Shaan Puri?

  You went, you went there. Daddy issues. It all comes back to daddy issues.

• 25:03Sam Parr?

  Everything, I think, not everything. I think that most things in life are genetics and then the other half is things that happen to you from ages like zero to four. And I, that's really, I've been someone.

• 25:16Shaan Puri?

  Four is young. What was he lied to between?

• 25:18Sam Parr?

  Maybe 10.

• 25:19Shaan Puri?

  How would we even know?

• 25:20Sam Parr?

  Maybe 10. But I do think like things happen when you're two and three, like, like it actually impacts you, but let's go up to 10. And I think that like he's had a troubled relationship with his dad and his dad just wasn't around. And I have a feeling there's a world where his dad was like, I promise I'll be at this game. I promise I'll do this or like, you know, like, you know, I'm working on this huge business deal. It turns out he's like unemployed and he, or he doesn't show up to the game. I think that there's like something like that that has happened that he's like obsessive compulsive about the truth. I actually do believe him when he says truth.

• 25:51Shaan Puri?

  Hmm. Hmm. What did his dad, wait, sorry. What did his dad line him up?

• 25:56Sam Parr?

  I'm just made that up. I don't know, but I know that his dad, his dad, his dad.

• 26:00Shaan Puri?

  Came in strong.

• 26:02Sam Parr?

  Well, no, what, his dad wasn't around like his dad like was, uh, he left his mom and like he wasn't very present in his life. And I think he was kind of rude to his family. And I'm just guessing like there's a world where like, he's like a, just one was kind of an asshole and was kind of messing around. Uh, and just not doing what he said.

• 26:19Shaan Puri?

  For sure, the things that you value come from your experiences, like, you know, people who value authenticity is because they've dealt with inauthenticity. People who value, you know, family is typically because they've had either great experiences of the family or uh, terrible experiences of the family that they want to rectify it, right? So you definitely are shaped by that. So if he's telling us, you know, I'm sort of like, what, I don't even, he said in that, like a maniacally or whatever he said, like, you know, maniacal about the truth.

• 26:44Sam Parr?

  I think he said, I think he said, he said obsessive, I think, I think he says like, or he said something like to its point, it's almost a problem that he, he goes, I don't care about the truth.

• 26:53Shaan Puri?

  And like, you know, okay, some percentages of that is just again virtue signaling, but you know, let's take him at his word for it.

• 27:00Shaan Puri?

  You know, let's be clear, what does he think is happening? So, you know, like, um, what is untrue? You know, like there's like free speech, cool. People are going to be able to say anything. Those not, those are not necessarily going to be true. Right? Um, it's just this belief. There's a belief that, you know, the answer to, to bad speech is, is more speech, not censorship. So, you know, I, I get that. Um, but I'm not sure really what his ideas are, right? Like if you, if you look at the list of ideas, I forgot what, um, I saw this screenshot of Elon's, uh, Elon's Twitter. Uh, ideas. Let me see if I can find this real quick.

• 27:38Sam Parr?

  I don't even, I think that like, I, I'm not well versed in like the political scene of Twitter and like, I understand why people want free speech. Obviously I know the Donald Trump example, and that's just like an example everyone hangs on. I don't know tons of other examples. One of them being, uh, this Hunter Biden story, which I don't even remember what the story was, but I know the New York Observer, which is a conservative paper in New York. They said Hunter Biden. I think it involved prostitutes. I think it involved drug addict, being a drug addict, things like that. They published it. Twitter suspended them and turns out a year and a half or two years later, it was true. And New York Times wrote a very similar story saying the same things happened. They posted it and they weren't banned. And I think that there's a handful of examples like that that people are pissed off about.

• 28:22Sam Parr?

  But I'm not sure if it's like rampant other than, I mean, but you one could argue it is rampant if the most popular, if the president can't use Twitter.

• 28:31Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, I think that's probably like the strongest, uh, the strongest like, you know, example. Hold on. Uh, okay. So I'm just going to read this out loud real quick. Uh, because all right, here, let me, uh, yeah, let me read it. So then here's a list of what Elon has tweeted since, um, you know, since he kind of announced that he, what he was going to do and before he, uh, left the left the board, he goes, the first one tweet was vote to remove the W from Twitter. So just Twitter and his poll options were yes, and of course.

• 29:04Sam Parr?

  God, that's so stupid. That's, that's, that's kind of a cringe joke.

• 29:08Shaan Puri?

  Exactly. Uh, turn proposal number two, turn HQ into a homeless shelter. Number three, eliminate ad revenue. Number four, just say that Twitter is dying. Number five, overhaul the blue checkmark policy.

• 29:20Sam Parr?

  Number six. With that, totally.

• 29:22Shaan Puri?

  He said he was gonna, uh, smoke weed at the next board meeting.

• 29:25Sam Parr?

  Oh, my God.

• 29:25Shaan Puri?

  He posted a meme of him smoking weed at Joe Rogan, uh, at the next board meeting. Uh, the next one, an edit button. Next idea, and they just put this in quotes, free speech. There was no idea of how or why or what, you know, like just free speech. And the last one was open source Twitter algorithm. So like, you know, so the people were like, you know, Elon's gonna save, um, you know, it's gonna save Twitter. It's like, well, if you. If you pay attention to the, uh, the ideas that he had, uh, were not the most earth shattering ideas between Twitter, homeless shelter, you know, quote unquote, free speech, but you know, what were these ideas?

• 30:03Sam Parr?

  Our friend Nikita, who, uh, seems like he knows what he's talking about with some consumer apps was like, I, you know, maybe I like Elon, maybe I don't, but running a car company and creating PayPal and a solar business is a lot different than like the kind of art that it takes to create a consumer tech product like Twitter. And I totally agree with that, you know, like, think about this, like, when someone's like, well, we're going to create this thing that you can only write 140 characters, nine out of 10 normal people would be like, what? F that. Let's make it so I can write as much as I want, or let's just make it so anyone can edit it and do all this other stuff. And they're like, no, no, no, we're going to do this weird thing. It's kind of like Vine, like you only have four seconds to make a video, four seconds, no one, no one can do that.

• 30:45Sam Parr?

  It's like, no, it's actually, and it creates a whole art out of it. You know what I mean? And so I, I think Twitter will, or Elon could potentially be a little bit too rational and logical to create the magic of, uh, of Twitter.

• 30:57Shaan Puri?

  So I have the complete opposite take. I think if the guy can land a rocket, re-land a rocket on its butt in the middle of the ocean and he can make electric cars that are awesome, pretty sure he could like, you know, figure out this social media thing. Now, the problem is he's still doing those other things.

• 31:12Sam Parr?

  But dude, it's like fucking Albert Einstein ain't going to create YouTube. You know what I mean? Like he's not going to like-

• 31:17Shaan Puri?

  He doesn't need to create it. He doesn't need to create it. He's just, he's a, he's a, he's a leader and he's a first principles thinker, you know, like, do, who do I have more faith in? Parag or Elon? I have more faith in Elon than I do for Parag.

• 31:28Sam Parr?

  Well, yeah, but that guy ain't running, that guy's running it. He ain't in a big net. He just making sure those trains show up on time. He's not building the train.

• 31:35Shaan Puri?

  Well, that's the problem, right? Like, you know, that's why it's plateaued. That's what user growth was like 300 million monthly active users, like whatever, five years ago, and now it's like 340. It's like, it hasn't grown, uh, much at all, plus, you know, other problems of like hate and scams and all this stuff. So my take is, is that this is the ultimate example of social media ruining everything. So like- Think about in your and my day, like, um, I know for me, how much time and productivity from like useful, awesome activities I could be doing. Um, just checking Twitter, I'm on Tik Tok and whatever, you know, social media is this like distraction time suck. It's like, damn, this guy's trying to make us multi-planetary and like self-driving cars and like get us off of fossil fuels. And he's getting distracted by social media. He's just doing it at the biggest scale, like not just using social media.

• 32:20Shaan Puri?

  He's like, I'm gonna buy it and then I'm gonna have to fix it. And it's like, dude, no, no, no, just, just do the thing where you help us like go to Mars and have self-driving cars that are electric. Like, those are the useful things. Solving social media is like just another distraction, just done at Elon scale.

• 32:35Sam Parr?

  If he dies in the next five years, would you be surprised?

• 32:38Shaan Puri?

  I would not be surprised.

• 32:41Sam Parr?

  I would not be surprised either. Do you think that would be the way that that would, that's, does this story have to end that way?

• 32:47Shaan Puri?

  Like, no, I don't think he's gonna die that, I don't think he's gonna die, like, I would, you know, low probability, but I do think that, um, it would turn him into like the greatest cult hero ever.

• 32:58Sam Parr?

  Well, it's kind of like, uh, you know, everyone talks about Tupac and I've got Tupac in my background here. I love Tupac. You know, he died when he was 25. He was only 25 and people talk about this guy being like, yeah, a lot of people don't know that. He was 25, Biggie was 24. Okay. And so people are like, oh, they're the best rappers ever. And I'm like, well, they didn't really have that long of a career. So like Jay-Z and Eminem, they've done it for like, you know, 20 years now. So they definitely have, and, and, and, but the reason we say he's the best ever is because he died young and it was like, oh, all the potential. So in some way, I'm like, that's, Elon could do the same. He should go out on top, maybe, and then we'll remember him as being the best.

• 33:34Shaan Puri?

  I mean, would you want to die and be the Tupac of newsletters or what?

• 33:37Sam Parr?

  No, I wouldn't want to, no, but I'm not Elon. You know, there's two things I know in this world, like the, you know, there's crazy guys in the world like Elon, and the second thing is I'm not one of them. That's, that's what I know is, is there's weirdos like him and I ain't it.

• 33:51Shaan Puri?

  We should end it on that.

• 33:53Ben?

  Just to reiterate your angle, Sam, you're of the opinion that Elon has daddy issues and you hope he dies. Is that correct?

• 34:01Sam Parr?

  Um, I, to the first point, 100% he has daddy, daddy issues. Yeah. Show me a successful person and I'm going to show you a fucked up dad for sure. Without a doubt. Okay. The second thing, do I, do I hope he dies? 100% no. Do I think it will be an even better part of the story? Yes. Unless he has some like, um, what's the guy's name? Uh, the rich guy who, uh, created the airplane that, uh, Leo had a movie. Howard Hughes. Unless he has some kind of weird Howard Hughes thing where it becomes even more, uh, or JD Salinger where he just disappears and it becomes even more of this like mystery. Then yeah, I'm on board with that. But if he just gets old and he just begins like peeing himself and dies, I'm like, ah, fuck. Like you can't, he can't go out that way.

• 34:46Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Yeah. That's actually a better question, which was what's the right way for Elon to go? You know, like heart attack, nah, just, you know, he was overworked and stressed. Nah, that's, that's for, that's for the common man.

• 34:56Sam Parr?

  Well, dying on Mars, like crashing.

• 34:58Shaan Puri?

  Exactly.

• 34:58Sam Parr?

  That's, that's a great way.

• 34:59Shaan Puri?

  He's gotta be the guy who goes to Mars, die, dies in the process, taking, taking man farther than they've ever gone before. That's gotta be the way he goes.

• 35:07Sam Parr?

  Or he just disappears. Or he just disappears and just like, no one knows where he is. And he just, he's, he lives in a, a, a trailer in rural Texas.

• 35:16Shaan Puri?

  And he has to, when he goes out, he has to say he's Satoshi Nakamoto also. He has to just, he's the smartest move he could do, right? If I'm his PR team, I'm like, listen, Elon, before you go, we need to claim the Satoshi thing. That's just the cherry on top of your legacy is if you were Satoshi. There's no way to disprove it if you're going to go anyways. So, um, so that's the last little, little thing he should do on his to do list, on the bucket list before he, before he kicks it.

• 35:44Sam Parr?

  Dude, this is awesome. All right. That was a.

• 35:46Shaan Puri?

  Not where I thought we would end it with him dying.

• 35:48Sam Parr?

  That's a, that's a good impromptu episode, I think. Ben, what do you think?

• 35:52Ben?

  Loved it. I loved it. I um, I think, I think it's a bad investment, but I think Elon's having fun. If you had as much money as he had, why would you not spend your time just having fun? I think he's having fun.

• 36:03Sam Parr?

  I don't think he's having fun. I don't think he's having fun.

• 36:06Ben?

  You think he's doing it as an investment? You think this is a strategy?

• 36:08Sam Parr?

  I think that he's kind of playing the role of a court jester where he's laughing on the outside and it appears to be fun and everyone's laughing with him, but also he's crying on the inside. I think, I do, I do not think that his life is enjoyable in any sense of the word.

• 36:30Ben?

  I don't either, but I think he's getting enjoyment from this probably.

• 36:34Sam Parr?

  Yeah, like it's like a, I think it's a, but I think it's our version of like, when you tweet something funny or I tweet something funny, I also am like, hee hee hee, like giggity, like I'm like, I'm like quack my family guy. Like giggity, that's hilarious, but like it doesn't, it's not like I'm happy like three days later from that and feel like content.

• 36:52Shaan Puri?

  Right, right, right. Yeah, you're saying he doesn't come across like a content, happy person.

• 36:57Sam Parr?

  Hell no.

• 36:57Shaan Puri?

  And he's said in many interviews, the, to that extent, you know, things like, you wouldn't want to be me. That's not what, you know, a very happy, content person says. Okay, great.

• 37:06Sam Parr?

  Or I will find death as a relief.

• 37:08Shaan Puri?

  Right. So, so those are pretty, you know, as strong as it gets. You don't have to read between the lines there. But to Ben's point, I do think that he gets off on being, you know, the class clown. The guy who gives the middle finger to the, to the, to the system, but he's, he's taking F you money and he's saying F you. So, you know, he's, he is enjoying, I think, the stunt aspect of it. And I don't think he's doing it as a economic investment.

• 37:32Sam Parr?

  For sure.

• 37:32Shaan Puri?

  I think he's, he's doing it as a combination of maybe 20% stunt, publicity stunt, and maybe 80% mission, and maybe I'm wrong on those sliders, maybe it's more like 50 50 or, you know, 80 20 the other way. I'm not sure. I, I think it's 80% mission, 20% stunt, not an economic investment.

• 37:50Ben?

  But I do think it's a

• 37:50Shaan Puri?

  Economic as we say on the on this on the Micros Million Podcast.

• 37:54Ben?

  Uh, yeah, we're big on being post economic, uh, late, late stage capitalism. That's what we're known for. But I do think like you look at Jeff Bezos, who bought Washington Post. I don't know. He paid like a billion for Washington Post.

• 38:07Sam Parr?

  No, I think he paid $200 million, dude.

• 38:09Ben?

  200 million, okay. 200 million, nothing. But at the same time, he got nothing. Like, Washington Post gives you a voice, I guess, but like you don't even have full editorial control and like

• 38:20Sam Parr?

  Could if you wanted to, but

• 38:22Ben?

  He could if he wanted to.

• 38:23Shaan Puri?

  I think what he got is a little different. I think at the time that was seen as like cool power move. Like, we all know about that. So it did work in that sense. The second thing he got was something many rich guys have. Just vanity, you know, collectibles, items. Oh, yeah, I own this. I own the, you know, this farm. I own this basketball team. I own, I own these things you've heard of. That there is a sort of rich guy toy, toy chest thing.

• 38:49Ben?

  I agree. It's like owning a sports team. It's like a journalism sports team. But I think like from the functionality standpoint of like actually being able to have a voice, like buying Twitter is sort of the same thing, but he's getting the only voice that matters. Like, he's getting the only thing that can actually drive and change public opinion if he wanted to, to pull that move.

• 39:10Shaan Puri?

  How much is like CNN?

• 39:13Ben?

  Hmm, good question.

• 39:15Shaan Puri?

  What's the parent company?

• 39:17Sam Parr?

  Well, I think they just merged. Did they, uh, maybe between five and 10 billion, I would guess.

• 39:25Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 39:25Sam Parr?

  Look up news, look up

• 39:26Shaan Puri?

  A lot of bang for your buck.

• 39:28Sam Parr?

  But News Corp, which is the one, so basically Rupert Murdoch started Fox, which is, uh, he started this one company that recently, uh, had to separate because it was a monopoly on news. And those two companies became News Corp, which basically owns Fox News and Fox News affiliates. And then 21st Century Fox, which is like the movies and TV shows. And collectively, that value is like, I think 100?

• 39:54Shaan Puri?

  No, no, no. Uh,

• 39:56Sam Parr?

  Or 50?

• 39:57Shaan Puri?

  13 billion.

• 39:59Sam Parr?

  Uh, both of them combined? No.

• 40:02Shaan Puri?

  Maybe I don't have the second one.

• 40:03Sam Parr?

  What's News Corp? News Corp?

• 40:05Shaan Puri?

  News Corp Class A is 13 billion.

• 40:07Sam Parr?

  That's the least valuable or the less lesser of the two. What's the more valuable one? Fox 21st Century. I think that's what it's called.

• 40:15Shaan Puri?

  I don't know, dude. I think this is the one. Uh, Fox Corporation, Fox. Okay, I don't know if this is the right Fox, but Fox Corporation, thirty billion.

• 40:25Sam Parr?

  Yeah, that's it. That's it. So forty-three total.

• 40:29Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Yeah, this is the right one.

• 40:31Sam Parr?

  And they're way more popular than CNN. So, uh, yeah, CNN can't be that expensive, but who the fuck wants to own CNN?

• 40:39Shaan Puri?

  These dudes who want to own Washington Post and Twitter, right? Why not?

• 40:42Sam Parr?

  Dude, you know how many people watch CNN at any given point, like their real time viewers? It's like sometimes as low as tens of thousands of people. Like, it's not, it's, it's not a significant amount of people that are watching it at any given point.

• 40:54Shaan Puri?

  There's chicks on Twitch doing ASMR that have more viewership than CNN, like in the middle of the afternoon.

• 40:59Sam Parr?

  Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like CNN, like.

• 41:02Shaan Puri?

  Not really, but it's hilarious that I said that.

• 41:04Sam Parr?

  I mean, there, there, there's like cool shit, like Anderson Cooper's pretty cool, but like, it's just like fucking dentist. Like, you listen to it when you're at the dentist. Like, it's not like particularly fun.

• 41:15Shaan Puri?

  When you're trapped in a chair being tortured.

• 41:17Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's like shooting situations and like going to the dentist are like the only times that I've got like CNN on. Or when you go to like, do you ever go to the, do you ever get coffee in the morning in Fox or at McDonald's? They always have like Fox playing in the background. That's like the only time I like see the news.

• 41:32Shaan Puri?

  That's hilarious. Did you see the CNN Plus like fail?

• 41:35Sam Parr?

  Failed, yeah. Dude, what do you expect? You're like, you can't just like put a plus and then a paywall on like the shit that no one cares about and hope that they automatically do. Courts shut down their paywall today, too. It was the same thing. It's like you can't just call courts pro and expect to get more money because the main courts already sucks.

• 41:54Sam Parr?

  You know what I mean? Like you're just putting a bow on like.

• 41:56Shaan Puri?

  If you want to pay for it, though.

• 41:58Sam Parr?

  Yeah, like you can't put a bow on a pile of poo and it automatically isn't a pile of poo. But that's basically what a lot of these companies do and it's not the right move.

• 42:08Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, the plus thing is just like a dead giveaway. It's like, that's a tell.

• 42:11Sam Parr?

  A plus or pro?

• 42:15Sam Parr?

  Um, all right, that was good.