[mjevans]

Success might be difficult to define. If this produces the results that are desired by Elon and the investors then it's probably a success from their perspective. I worry if that's the case, it'll be like all the buy out, chop up, and liquidate value takeovers they made movies about.

[eru]

> I worry if that's the case, it'll be like all the buy out, chop up, and liquidate value takeovers they made movies about.

In general, if a company is worth more when chopped up than alive, it deserves to be chopped up.

[cmeacham98]

Elon Musk took on significant debt (i.e. interest payments) when he acquired Twitter, and Twitter was already losing money when he did.

It will take significantly more than just liquidating Twitter's assets for him to succeed, he essentially needs to turn Twitter into successful company.

[_djo_]

Twitter was doing pretty okay though, looking at revenue and profit trajectories. A fairly sharp layoff of around 20-25% might've been needed to trim back down from the pandemic hiring spree and the lack of the anticipated growth, but that should've been sufficient to restore profitability looking at their last reported numbers.

With Twitter Blue steadily and exclusively rolling out new features like edit functionality that might've begun contributing more to the bottom line in time too. It was still too new and too geographically limited to be certain.

None of this was necessary.

[justahuman74]

The debts are a choice though, he could just sell other assets if he didn't want that.

[cmeacham98]

So? We're in the timeline where he made that choice, so now he owes those debts and the interest on them. Yes, in theory he could have bought Twitter without going into debt, but he didn't.