Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by zxcvbn4038 1087 days ago
I think you have that backwards - Elon never wanted Twitter, he just wanted to see his name in some headlines and make people run around pulling their hair for a bit. However he messed up and put himself in a position where he had to buy Twitter for far more then it was worth and he was held to it. All the top people he fired day one were more then happy to parachute away - was the best thing for them. There is no way he will ever make back that 44 billion on Twitter, he’ll be lucky if he can pay the interest payments on it with what Twitter generates. More then likely all the people who went into Twitter with him will get deals on his other ventures and get their money back that way.
1 comments
ideamotor 1087 days ago
I’m not following all that. Someone made an offer, the board legally had to sell as it was in the interest of the owners (the shareholders). What else matters? If it’s deemed to be in the interest of shareholders for Reddit to sell off every sub to a corporate, they’ll do that too.
link
xp84 1086 days ago
You’re both kinda right — yes GP’s evaluation was (probably) why the Elon transaction happened, and also it would not have had to happen if the owners were a handful of private individuals who didn’t mind passing up a majorly overvalued offer like that.

Of course, anyone at all who cares about money would have been a fool not to force him to buy it once he screwed up by bluffing in a way that made him contractually obligated to execute the transaction! So in practice, since even super-rich people love getting more money and non-rich people really want to become rich, good luck in practice spinning a hypothetical where Twitter owners would have said no, especially considering what a dog the company was already in terms of making money.

link
ideamotor 1085 days ago
Yea. Owners can say no if and only they really are the owners. Being privately owned does not ensure good stewardship but it allows it. Case and point will be Reddit once it goes public. Every single person in tech should take a corporate law class and it should be required in undergrad.
link