A few days after Elon Musk became the microblogging site’s largest shareholder, it was announced that he will not become a part of board of Twitter. The recent development does not come as a surprise. If you look at the history of Musk, it won’t take you a minute to conclude that it is not the first time that Musk has been outfoxed.
Elon Musk will not join Twitter Board
Parag Agrawal, the CEO of Twitter took to Twitter to announce the decision and said, “Elon’s appointment to the board was to become officially effective 4/9, but Elon shared that same morning that he will no longer be joining the board.”
“I believe this is for the best. We have and will always value input from our shareholders whether they are on our Board or not. Elon is our biggest shareholder and we will remain open to his input.,” the CEO added.
Elon has decided not to join our board. I sent a brief note to the company, sharing with you all here. pic.twitter.com/lfrXACavvk
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) April 11, 2022
Why Musk has been outfoxed?
How is a company supposed to react if its employee or a prominent member is criticising it? Well, they will either cut down you to size or will throw you out. But, it is Twitter’s board and thus has some protocols to follow, especially when the member is the largest shareholder in the company.
Read more: Elon Musk welcomes you to ‘Doge-Twitter
The manipulation of information by Twitter is the biggest concern of its users. Musk is also a critic of its tweaking policies. As an example of controlling the discourse, Twitter has even banned the former President of the United States of America.
If you can not express what you feel then there is no use for freedom. Musk has been against the idea of any censorship on freedom of speech. Although he advocates for the absolute idea of expression, only time will tell how neutral the platform will be. He is all in all a businessman and in the past he has influenced the sentiment of investors by openly talking about the investment. It seems in the veil of the freedom of speech, he wanted to own his shares in the management of information.
This is why he decided to join Twitter and buy 9.2% of the shares of the company. Mind you, he invested only to gain power. However, it could not have worked in the best interest of the company. This led to Musk not being a part of the board.
A history of Musk’s boardroom coup
The billionaire entrepreneur has created an image for himself. Favourable media portrays him as an extraordinary entrepreneur who apparently invests in next-gen technologies. But, is it the truth? More than his wealth, his strong PR has made him famous for what is hailed as ultra-futuristic plans including an electric car industry called Tesla.
Read more: The bubble of Elon Musk has finally burst
Elon Musk is often described as the cofounder of the payment platform hailed as the pioneer of the digital payments industry PayPal. But, there is one small fun fact- PayPal is the successor of a company originally named Confinity that came into being in 1998. Interestingly, Confinity wasn’t founded by Elon Musk, rather it was the brainchild of Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, and Luke Nosek.
The first digital payments version of Confinity was launched in 1999. By that time, a remarkably similar platform called x.com had come into being. Musk served as the CEO of x.com. In 2000, the two digital payments firms got merged. However, combining the two firms did not turn out to be very successful. Elon Musk took over as the CEO in April 2000 and was fired in October 2000.
Later, Peter Thiel took over as the CEO of the merged company and the company got rechristened as PayPal in June 2001.
Musk’s falling net worth
Earlier as reported by TFI, in December 2021, Elon Musk’s net worth fell by $15.2 billion. Even as the richest US tech moguls registered a drop of several billion Dollars in collective wealth amid tumbling tech stocks and fears of inflation, Elon Musk’s net worth has fallen the most among tech billionaires. This effectively leaves Musk’s fortunes at $268.9 billion.
Let me tell you straight that Musk is not really the genius he is assumed to be. He is neither the founder of EV manufacturer Tesla nor was he the founder of Confinity- the precursor of digital payments pioneer PayPal. Musk’s only venture is SpaceX, which has been at the centre of several failures.
Now, he has been outfoxed by Twitter yet again.