You got like moisturizer all over your face, are you moisturizing?

I am, my skin is so dry, I just got over having food poisoning, and I’m like, I dehydrate.

Hold on, let me get this off camera.

Look at this guy, you got makeup on?

It’s not makeup, it’s moisturizer, dipshit.

It’s just as bad.

The reason you look like the fucking Crypt Keeper and I look shvi and young and shvelt,

it’s because I do a little skincare routine, okay?

Give me a fucking break.

Look at him, he turned off his camera because he’s embarrassed by whatever he’s doing.

I’m not embarrassed, I just don’t need you telling me that shit.

Sacks is in a fucking good mood.

Just a lot of up 15 cents.

Why are you so fucking happy, dummy?

Well, the markets are closed today, it’s Good Friday, so my stock portfolio can’t

be down because the markets are closed.

Yeah, thank Jesus.

Praise Jesus.

Yeah, it’s a good Friday if the markets are closed, my portfolio can’t go down anymore.

It’s truly a good Friday.

Your portfolio will rise again.

It needs to be resurrected.

And instead, we open-sourced it to the fans and they’ve just gone crazy with it.

Love you, S.I.C.

Queen of Kinwan.

Nowadays, he works in DNA, but in the 90s, all he cared about was the MDMA, the Duke

of DNA, the Titan of Tempe, the Shepherd of the Soy Boys.

He turns water into wine and dollars into dimes.

He’s a Fulio for Coolio.

The Sultan of Science himself, David Freeburg.

Welcome.

I have never done drugs, just for the record, but go on.

No, of course not.

Of course, none of your behavioral problems in high school had to do.

Yeah, neither has Jason.

No, absolutely not.

Not this morning.

He’s the VC who loves Brie.

He’ll sell you the sleeves off your vestee.

He’s enthralled with Greenwall.

He eats uppers for supper.

The Rain Man himself, David Sachs.

All right, thank you.

You’re welcome, Dad.

All right, coming around the bend.

That timepiece, what does it do?

It reminds him of how much more money he has than you.

The sweater is worth six dimes.

Laura Piana is above his line.

You’re a super villain with that 1985 Sasakaya.

He be chillin'.

There it is!

He loves SPACs just like junkies love crack.

He’s your dictator, Chamath Palihapiti.

That works.

I’m like becoming the Eminem of intros.

I mean, I’m rhyming shit.

It’s really solid, bro, I gotta say.

I’m workshopping it.

Shout out to Nick.

And one person on Twitter of 100 gave anything.

I’m moving into my spring sweater season.

My spring sweater collection.

Oh, wait, hold on a second.

I just got a call.

Oh yeah, confirm.

We know what he gives a fuck.

Fucking Christ.

He’s the king of the inane.

I don’t think it’s inane at all.

This matters to exactly one person.

No, the person selling you the sweaters.

I think if you took a poll on Twitter,

there’s a lot of people who silently hate it, but love it.

I think a lot more who hate it.

Let’s get to all the news.

So much news going on.

All the news.

Where should we start, Jason, on a Friday afternoon?

You know, I’m trying to think about it.

Was there any news topic this week?

Because obviously the war in Ukraine has obviously got everybody in America.

Oh, wait, no, I’m sorry.

That’s not important anymore.

We’re on to the next thing.

There’s only one issue.

Elon put in a bid to buy Twitter outright on Thursday

and take the company private in a deal worth $43 billion.

The most breaking news when we’re taping this on Fridays at 11am,

when we typically tape this, is that the board of directors,

you know, the professional board of directors

has decided they would like to get personally sued.

I mean, this is the most insane thing.

I woke up and read this and I was like,

OK, they’re creating a poison pen.

I’m sorry, a poison pill.

That’s going to give Twitter’s existing shareholders the ability to buy

more shares if Elon hits 15% of the company at a discount.

Chamath, explain the concept of a poison pill, just generally speaking,

and then give us your, because everybody knows what’s going on,

but like here we are in this whatever,

I don’t know if this is the seventh or eighth inning of this saga,

or it’s the second.

But where do you think we are in this saga?

And then what happens on Monday?

And describe a poison pill.

A poison pill is basically a defensive maneuver

that a board of directors uses to prevent a hostile takeover.

And basically, the simple way it works is it allows the board

to create enormous amounts of new shares

and effectively dilute the potential hostile acquirer

so that it becomes economically unfeasible

for them to get enough shares to get control.

The way that they do that is that they basically give

everybody except a person that crosses a certain ownership threshold.

So let’s use Twitter as an example.

So Twitter’s poison pill basically says that if you get to 15%,

you’re essentially locked out from a right that then everybody else has

that effectively allows them to buy another share of stock

at I think it’s a 50% discount.

And so what it does is it creates an incentive to essentially

almost double the fully diluted shares outstanding of the business.

And what that does is it makes it almost impossible

for the person with 15% to then go and acquire

what’s necessary to get to 50%.

There are different kinds of poison pills.

There’s things that you can do with debt.

There’s things that you can do with equity.

But that’s the thing that Twitter did.

I think if anybody’s interested in it,

Nick, maybe you can just bring it up,

but you can Google on Wikipedia.

There’s a phenomenal article called Revlon versus McAndrew and Forbes.

And McAndrew and Forbes was the holding company

of this very prolific dealmaker in the 70s, 80s, and 90s named Ronald Perlman.

And what happened was he was the CEO of a company called Pantry Pride.

And Pantry Pride made an unsolicited hostile takeover bid for Revlon,

which made makeup.

And basically, you know, there was like 40 to 45 bucks a share.

The board instituted all these poison pills.

The price kept escalating.

Then a private equity firm stepped in, also tried to compete for the asset.

All along the way, there was enough shenanigans

that essentially what Ronald Perlman did was sue Revlon,

which went to Delaware court.

And from it basically came the current framework of law

that we use in this situation.

And basically, what it means is that board directors

have these fiduciary obligations to their shareholders.

And in some cases, these are very broad fiduciary obligations,

meaning do the right thing.

But in some really narrow circumstances, all of that collapses

and their sole focus is to get the best price.

And what a director and a board of directors

typically wants to do in a situation like this

is not end up in that second bucket.

They want to keep all their options available.

They don’t necessarily want to sell to one person.

They’re probably going to assume they’re going to get fired from the board.

They want to stay on for different reasons, et cetera, et cetera.

And so right now, what Twitter and their advisors are trying to do

is basically stay in that first bucket,

have all of the options available to them

and not be forced to run an auction.

And I think what Elon will try to do

is essentially use the public pressure that’s going to build

and the existing shareholders who own stock at 40 some odd dollars,

a chance to basically get, you know, a 20% payday

by selling it to Elon for 54 bucks or 53, whatever the price was.

And the Twitter board now will have to justify

how whatever they come up with is better than this,

because then if they don’t,

and they’re still exercising this broad fiduciary obligations,

you know, one thing I’ll tell you as a public company director,

it is a horrendous process when you get sued.

And these guys will be in court for years.

And the incremental pressure that this Twitter board has

is that they can be held personally liable here.

So I think it’s getting very complicated, very quickly.

Okay, on that note of personal liability,

you have director’s insurance.

So how can that pierce through?

Doesn’t cover it, doesn’t cover it.

Have there been examples of this happening?

Yeah, DNO insurance is kind of like,

DNO insurance is their directory and officer insurance

is a layer of protection that we all have

as public company directors.

We actually also have it as private company directors.

Sure, yeah.

But the amount of coverage changes.

But what I’ll tell you is DNO coverage

tends to be relatively nominal

because the risk profile doesn’t really,

you know, include these kinds of tail events.

And now what you’re talking about

is 10 to $15 billion of equity value

that’s going to either get created

for existing shareholders or get taken away.

And typically what courts will do

is that they will look at the amount of money

and they will start to think about,

you know, compensatory and punitive damages

as a function of how much money was made or lost.

And so you’re talking about a realm of risk now

for these directors.

That’s well beyond what DNO insurance will cover.

So if a lawsuit did happen, Shamath,

you have to find damages.

So if the board found a better offer, great.

But if this thing goes down on Monday,

Elon sells the shares and it goes down to 30.

Now you have the opposite effect.

Go ahead, Freeberg.

So I’ll say two things.

One is all in all these cases, by the way,

the board is indemnified by the company.

So the individual board members,

I don’t know if there’s ever been a point in history

when an individual board members

had to pay out of pocket for liability

associated with their actions as a board member

and as a fiduciary,

except when they’ve done something

to benefit themselves outside of the company.

Now, in this case, the job of the board

is to use their best judgment

to do what they believe to be in the best interest

of creating the most value possible for the shareholders.

It’s very simple.

When the stock price is at 30

and someone says, I’ll give you 50 bucks to say,

oh, well, obviously getting 50 bucks

is in the best interest of the shareholders.

Let’s assume though that you’re on that board

and you know about some super secret plan

that you believe in the next 30 days

is gonna get the stock price to 60.

And your belief in that plan

and your understanding of that plan

gives you a good rationale

for having a debate as a board

that this deal doesn’t make sense at 50.

We should hold out until we finish our plan

over the next 30 days,

get the stock up to 60.

And then we’ll see if someone comes in and says,

hey, I’ll give you even more than 60.

It could be something on the product roadmap, right?

This is the complicated point.

It’s not just about the current share price.

And there was a history in the 80s and 90s,

early 90s when stocks would drop

tremendously for market volatility reasons

or various some bad news event

or someone quits the board macro.

And all of a sudden the stock price drops

and you have a hostile buyer that says,

oh my God, this company looks super cheap.

I’m gonna come in and buy it while it’s cheap.

And I’ll offer them a premium

to the current share price.

And the share price recently

may have been much higher

than the price that’s being offered.

And the board says, you know what,

we’re gonna get back to that share price

because the market will pick up again.

The things we’re working on

are gonna grow us out of this hole.

And so it’s very hard for us to sit here.

And I know that I want everyone here on the Zoom

to suspend your alliance to Elon

and belief that Elon will do a better job

just for one second.

And just think about the board members.

They’ve all been working on quarterly plans,

strategic plans, et cetera,

with the current CEO.

And as a board for Twitter,

that gives them a point of view that says,

may give them a point of view that says,

hey, you know what, we can get back

to 70 bucks a share.

So remember, it was only a few months ago,

Twitter stock was trading at 70.

The stock price dropped with market compression,

we’ve all experienced.

And then Elon’s come along and said,

I’ll offer you guys 54 bucks.

And the board’s like, wait,

a few months ago, we were at 70.

We have all these great things we’re working on.

And so I’m just trying to paint the other side

for everyone that this is not just like

a clear cut, obvious deal.

It’s their judgment at this point

that they should get more for the stock,

given where they think the company’s headed

and where the stock price will eventually get to.

All right, going to you, Sax.

You heard from Friedberg to suspend disbelief

that the greatest entrepreneur on the planet

running two of the most important companies

is not more qualified to run Twitter

than the current CEO.

I’m not going to suspend my disbelief.

Let me make the case for the clear cut,

for the clear cut case here.

Sorry, let me just say something.

He could be better at running this company.

Could be.

Okay, he will be better, Jason,

but the shareholders don’t benefit from that.

Because he buys the whole company.

Of course they do.

Well, hold on.

Yeah.

They’re getting $54 of cash.

They do not have any ownership in Twitter

after Elon takes over.

That’s the deal that’s on the table.

So if I, as a shareholder, get $54 of cash,

I don’t care if Elon does a better job

running Twitter down the road

because I have no interest.

Suddenly, one fact check on that.

One fact check on that.

He said he wants to bring along

as many of the shareholders as possible.

JCal, that’s a thing he said

that’s not actually in the proposal, right?

So as a board member,

I have to look at the proposal on the table,

which is I got to take $54 of cash

for my shares and give up all the upside.

Sax looks like he’s going to explode.

Fair enough.

Look, here’s the reason

why fiduciary duties exist.

Let’s just explain where this concept comes from.

There is fundamentally a principal agent problem.

This is what it’s known as

between stockholders

and the people running the company.

So in other words,

the owners of the company

are the stockholders, okay?

They appoint agents, managers,

to run the company for them.

But those managers can be conflicted.

They have an incentive

not just to get the highest share price

for the stockholders,

but to pocket personally

as many benefits as they can.

And the whole reason

why fiduciary duty was invented

is to prevent that agency problem.

So if the board members

or the CEO of the company

are just looking out for themselves

and trying to pocket personal benefits,

excessive compensation,

or turning down an offer

to sell the company

for a much higher price,

that would be a breach

of their fiduciary duty

because they’re looking out for themselves.

Parag knows that if Elon buys this company,

he is out of a job.

His head is on the chopping block.

He is fired right away.

Elon has made that clear.

He said in this letter,

on this SEC filing on Thursday,

I have no confidence

in the management of the company.

If I’m unable to buy the whole thing

and take it private,

I will dump all my shares.

It’s all or nothing for him.

So Parag is interested

in preserving his job.

If Elon wins this battle,

Parag is going to have

the shortest executive career

since that pope who got poisoned, okay,

to borrow a line from Wall Street.

So he is incentivized

to fight this thing,

whether it’s in the interest

of shareholders or not.

Now, what is the incentives

of the border?

I think they’re the same.

These are guys who love

the power they derive

from being on this board.

We know Twitter has

enormous cultural power.

These guys,

they enjoy all the benefits they get.

They probably do get some compensation

being on the board,

but they enjoy being

in this very exclusive club

that wields enormous power

over our culture.

And they have no incentive

to give that up.

And by the way,

how much of the company

do they really own?

You know, not that much.

If you look at the wealth

of the people on Twitter’s board,

and we know all the people

on Twitter’s board,

their wealth is significantly greater

than whether Twitter stock

sells for 60 or 70.

So and I think that we all know

that these are all

sophisticated actors.

They are all high integrity people.

We all personally know

many of the people

on Twitter’s board.

I don’t think that,

you know, look,

maybe there’s a variety

They’re conflicted.

It’s got nothing to do with integrity.

The fact of the matter is…

You could say the same

about any board, Sax, that it’s…

No, because it’s different.

Listen, when we’re on a board,

OK, because I’m on plenty of boards,

we own a huge percentage

of the company.

So when somebody makes

a takeover offer

to buy one of our companies,

we are thinking like stockholders.

We’re fundamentally aligned.

You have massive skin in the game.

We have massive skin in the game.

These people on the board,

what skin in the game do they have?

Most of them are these directors

who are disappointed.

And it is, it’s like a club.

These guys, it’s all big,

backscratching club.

These guys are all on a bunch of different boards.

So wait, you think they’re motivated

by the influence of being

a Twitter board member?

Yes, of course.

That being a nexus of power.

Why do they serve on these boards?

And that is what this is shaping up to be,

is a nexus of power

and who controls the power.

By the way, none of them own much of Twitter.

None of them own much of Twitter.

I do 100% agree with Sax.

I’ve always believed

what I think Carl Icahn said

or whoever it was,

that the board should be represented

by the biggest shareholders,

the folks who actually

have skin in the game,

the folks who actually care

about the share price.

You know, having some nominal number of shares

issued to you as a board member

of a public company,

showing up, you know,

patting each other in the back,

it certainly, generally speaking,

leads to non-founder led companies

ultimately dying.

Because there is no motivation

and incentive and drive from anyone.

Let me take the other side partially.

I think you’re mostly right.

I would never join

a public company board

that I did not own

a significant piece of.

Right.

And I have never.

Right.

Now, the reason to be

on a public company board

is that unlike a private company,

the single biggest advantage,

there are many disadvantages

of being public,

but the single biggest advantage

of being public

is that you have a lower cost of capital.

So if you have an ambitious company,

an ambitious leader

and an ambitious plan

to build and compound value,

you cannot do it privately forever.

You must do it in the public markets

because there’s just an infinite

amount of capital that’s available

and an infinite amount of ways

in which you can raise capital

relative to you being private.

So with that being said,

when you are public,

I think the best boards

are the ones that are sort of 50 50 split

between the biggest shareholders

and people who are very much experts

in a handful of things.

And I just want to be specific

in a company board.

You have to have a lot of focus these days

on things like governance audit,

because you have to attest

to these financial statements, right?

Cybersecurity becomes a huge one

because you have to disclose these risks.

And so I think that it really behooves

boards to have a few experts

who can chair those committees.

Compensation tends to be another one,

as David mentioned,

that can be a real hot button.

But there are experts you can find.

They’re not going to own

a large piece of the company,

but they’re going to do a really good job

of managing those things

that minimizes risk for the business

so that then the rest of all of the board,

which are the large shareholders,

can really use their influence

and strategic understanding of the business

to build a huge equity value.

When those things come together,

you have great outcomes.

But I really agree with you.

If you stack the board

and you know, we’ve had this issue.

Public boards in America got perverted

over the last sort of last few decades

to being these little badges of status

that people would collect.

And now, you know,

we’re starting to see a real pushback

on what’s called overboarding, right?

Where these distinguished folks

will pick up five, six, seven boards.

All of a sudden, that’s the fastest way

to make three, four, five,

$6 million a year.

How can you sit on five or six company,

public company boards?

It’s impossible and at any value.

Exactly. And do you think those people

get appointed to boards

by standing up to the CEO?

No, the opposite.

They’re there to be a safe vote for the CEO.

So let me ask you guys a question.

What do you think is the right thing to do

as companies that go public mature

and their ownership base disperses?

So, you know, in Europe and Asia,

many companies go public,

families own them for a very long period of time.

As you guys know,

they remain significant owners.

They don’t sell off the shares.

In the US, traditionally,

as companies have gone public,

the shares, the founders,

the original investors,

because we have a lot of venture capital

in this country,

historically compared to other countries.

So those owners end up selling off their shares

and they get dispersed

and a long tail of owners end up

owning the bulk of the shares.

How do you think those companies

can be best represented on the board,

given that there isn’t concentrated ownership

in public companies,

generally mature public companies

in the US like Twitter,

the largest owner is Vanguard

with 5 million other investments.

And then Jack Dorsey,

he only owns 2%.

What do you guys think is the right thing?

How do you create good alignment

with board members

that could be better placed

and better suited here?

Well, I think one of the ways that you do it

is that when somebody wants to step up

and acquire a concentrated position

because they have a plan for the company,

you don’t stand in the way

and completely thwart that.

Your job isn’t to assess their plan

because your job is to assess

the dollars you’re getting paid today

for your shareholders.

And then whatever they’re going to do with it,

it’s their thing.

But are you getting a fair price?

Is it?

Elon is willing to put massive skin

in the game

in order to basically fix this company

and get the best value.

We all agree,

but that’s not about the shareholder sacks.

Like I agree with you.

I think Elon should own and run Twitter.

Let’s evaluate this poison pill for a second.

Okay.

So Elon comes in,

he starts buying up the stock.

The premium he’s proposing

is something like a 50 something percent premium

from when he started accumulating.

54 percent.

54 percent is like a 38 percent.

But a 40 percent discount.

From the time he basically made the offer.

And by the way,

the stock is going right back

to that previous level

if they turn down this proposal.

Okay.

So he’s made them a good offer.

Okay. Now,

I think it’d be acceptable for the board to say,

okay, this offer is attractive,

but we need to shop this.

We’re going to run a process

and we’re going to see who else is out there.

And if there’s nobody better,

then we’re, you know,

why wouldn’t we take this?

There’s one thing that’s left over

that you didn’t mention.

The thing that’s left over,

you’re right.

They absolutely have a responsibility to shop it

and find the best price.

But what’s left over is their judgment

that the company’s stock price

will get above that level.

They have the ability and the right to do that.

And the responsibility to do that as a board.

This happens all the time.

The problem is,

the board can look at the deal

and they can say, you know what?

We believe that this business in the future

is going to be worth a lot more

than what we’re being offered for cash today.

The problem they have some inside information.

The problem with that argument

is that this is what activist firms use

all the time in reverse.

The inverse of the argument is more powerful.

You’ve been a director with purview

into all these confidential plans

that has effectively caused this company

to tread water for five years.

Why should we believe you now?

And that argument is way more credible

than actually you can really trust us this time.

Because if you look at the tenure of all these folks,

you know, the last sea change

that happened on the Twitter board

was when Elliott pushed to add,

I think, two or three directors.

But in the absence of that,

I think David is largely right.

These are status games.

And when status games ultimately play out over years,

they either play out in the stock price,

when one way or the other,

and in this case, what’s true

is that this is a languishing stock

that has largely been going sideways,

independent of anything that’s been happening.

What about the fact that less than 90 days ago,

it was trading at $70?

You mean during the COVID bump?

Yeah, everybody was betting stocks.

I mean, history Friedberg,

it was $69 guys.

You have to give some context.

January 3rd, 2014, the stock was trading at $69.

The fact that it got a ridiculous bump,

like the entire market did during the Robin Hood stonks,

you know, heyday during COVID means nothing.

That was market beta, not their performance.

Exactly.

That’s exactly what I was going to say.

If you could actually point to some alpha,

meaning there was a strategic misstep

or something that happened that was fixable,

a better example would be,

let’s just say that Twitter instead

was not a technology company, but a pharma company.

This example would be easier to understand.

The stock is at $69,

and you get some interim results

from your phase three trial.

People misread it and the stock tanks.

Meanwhile, the stock market, broadly speaking,

is at the same level.

You could say, well, that negative alpha

can actually be fixed because of our strategic plan.

But what Sachs just said is more true in this case.

In this case, what’s irrefutable

is that there’s been a broad-based drawdown

in the markets.

There is nothing that you can point to

that says this is something inside of Twitter’s control

to get the stock back to $69,

meaning 69 three months ago

is actually 38 or $40 today.

We’re at an apples to apples even comparison.

So from there, the real question is

this 20 or 30% premium to this,

can you actually show a plan?

I think the right thing for Twitter’s board to do,

just to be very precise, is the following.

They have to take Elon’s offer

and they have to create a go shop.

I will go and try to get a better price.

They won’t be able to.

And the reason they won’t be able to

is not a single person who is capable

of stepping up with $43 billion

would ever get it through regulatory muster.

Not going to happen, in my opinion.

And anybody with the 43 billion who could buy it

will never take it on.

Meaning, could Comcast show up?

Sure.

Could Disney show up?

They’ll never even look at it.

No, they’re not interested.

The people for whom this asset is strategic,

Apple, Facebook, Google, can bite dance.

Amazon.

Amazon could never get it done.

Nina Khan.

No, Brano.

I think that’s probably right, Shamath,

but there is a chance.

So I just want to finish.

I just want to finish.

From who?

So hold on, just let me finish.

Okay, finish, Shamath, yeah.

And then Sax, who?

So I think basically it’s like,

Elon, thank you.

We’re going to create a Go shop.

We’ll try to find the best offer.

I don’t think any offer comes in.

But then I think what they can do, Freeberg,

is if there is this magical plan

to shoot rainbows up their ass,

they should actually put that to a shareholder vote

and let people decide.

And I think that’s a really fair thing to do

that also allows them the credibility

and the air cover to say,

look, we actually have been working on a plan.

We think that that will create

an amazing amount of shareholder value.

And we just want shareholders

to be able to see that,

compare it to Elon’s offer,

and decide for themselves.

Who’s the white knight, if anybody?

I heard Comcast.

We know that big tech can’t do it

because of Alina Khan,

and then we’ll go on to the next topic,

the next nuance here.

Sax, do you have anybody,

a financial player,

anybody who is a dark horse in your mind?

Somebody, you know.

I think it could be Disney.

Jack is on the board of Disney.

There’s a lot of relationships.

Sorry, go ahead.

They tried to buy it.

Bob Iger said he bailed on it.

Listen, I think there’s a lot of companies

that could be interested in Twitter.

And I think you create the period

to shop it, to see.

And by the way, listen,

I think this administration

does not want to see Twitter

become a free speech company again.

And so the political winds

will blow towards letting,

I think, Twitter be acquired

by a big tech company,

even if it means big tech gets bigger.

So I think they’ll put Alina Khan on pause

to allow Google to buy this company,

if that’s what it comes down to.

You’re kidding me.

Your conspiracy theory is that

I will bet 100 to 1 against that.

Will you take 100 to 1 odds against that?

I’m saying if it comes down to it.

Biden’s going to whisper in Alina Khan’s ear,

put your thumb on the scale

and let Google buy this thing.

I’m just saying that the Dems can own it.

The Libs can still own Trump.

If it was a choice,

if it was a choice between.

What David’s saying is my enemy’s enemy

is my friend.

And so instead of having Elon’s stated goal,

I guess what David is saying

is instead of having Elon’s stated goal

of having a free speech platform

at scale exist on the Internet,

which they may believe

is even the bigger threat to political power,

they’d rather it go into the hands of companies

that will acquiesce to them,

at least on the margins.

But no question about it.

Biden would tell Alina Khan

to put her thumb on the scale.

It’s the lesser of two evils.

You believe that conspiracy theory?

From their point of view.

I do not personally,

but I’m just trying to explain.

I feel like I’m on a radio,

but go on here.

Listen, yeah, where’s my

what is this all about?

Where’s my tinfoil hat?

And by the way, I just want I just just to go back.

What is this all about?

I just sent you guys.

Hold on one sec.

I just sent you guys the revenue chart for Twitter.

It may not be that impressive

relative to enterprise software companies and others.

But I want to be really clear.

I am not arguing against this deal.

I’m trying to give you guys the perspectives

that we all have a really kind of honest dialogue about this.

Why this board may actually stand on their own two feet

and win with shareholders

by saying, you know what,

look, our revenue has been going up.

We’re continuing to grow revenue.

We’re continuing to grow usage on the platform.

We’ve got all these products that we’re working on.

There’s a real reason that we’re going to make

more than $54 a share over the next 12 to 18 months

as we start to deliver this year’s numbers

and we start to deliver these product features

that we’ve all been sharing

and talking about in the progress we’ve been seeing.

And that’s that’s honestly,

I think the most likely kind of middle ground here

is that this board has enough to stand on

by looking at the fact that it doesn’t matter

if the stock’s gone up and down.

What matters is that they’ve been in their minds,

steadily improving the business

and continuing to improve the business.

And it is an iconic asset that the market should own,

not a single person and yada, yada.

And I think that’s going to be part of the case.

Let me make two points.

First, the problem with Freeberg’s argument

is that there’s no limiting principle to this.

Any board at any time could always claim

that they’ve seen the magical plan.

And therefore they can reject the bid.

You’re right, by the way.

That’s the problem with it.

Okay, agreed.

And particularly in this case,

we have to look at the track record

of this management team,

which it barely exists,

but also this culture at Twitter, okay?

This is a company that’s languished for years.

The culture, look, this culture, a decade.

This culture has been so inept

that in response to Elon’s takeover offer,

they gave all the employees a day of rest because-

Oh no, that’s a reoccurring monthly thing.

They have a day of rest.

No, they don’t.

The employees were so stressed out.

The employees were so stressed out,

they told them to stay at home and take it easy.

Okay, this is, this is a weak-

You don’t know the emotional labor it takes

to deal with this.

This team is weak, okay?

Soft.

And it’s soft, okay?

Work isn’t weak.

And Elon would give the whole company an enema

and fix this thing.

And that is why they don’t want him taking over.

Yeah, but you are 100% right.

But that’s not the question at hand.

But this is why you should not let this board

and this CEO invoke some magical plan

that they don’t have, that they never came up with,

and they would never come up with

because it’s just a big excuse.

So they’re not out of a job.

Okay, but now let me go-

Wait, wait, wait.

I never got a chance to make the second point.

Let me respond to the tinfoil hat thing.

So listen, what is this story really about?

It’s about free speech.

It’s what it’s about for Elon.

He said in this takeover,

and then at the speech that he gave at TED,

that listen, this is not about economics for me.

Twitter needs to be the open town square.

It is the marketplace for ideas.

We’re going to make it a free speech platform.

We’re going to open source the algorithm

so people know when they’re being canceled,

they know why they were taken down.

Is that algorithmic?

Was that a human intervention?

This is what it’s about for Elon.

It’s also what it’s about-

Hold on.

It’s also what it’s about for all the elites,

for everyone observing this,

for everyone who’s criticizing it.

Listen, look at the reactions.

We haven’t talked at all about the hysterical reactions

to all of this news that happened.

There was a fantastic tweet here.

Business Insider said that

Elon Musk’s attempt to buy Twitter

represents a chilling new threat.

Billionaire trolls taking over social media.

This is one problem.

Back in 2013, Business Insider’s headline was

Billionaire Jeff Bezos,

Washington Post spy,

marks a fascinating cultural transition in America.

These guys are completely hypocritical.

When it’s a billionaire that they like,

they praise it.

When it’s a billionaire supporting free speech,

they oppose it.

That’s what’s going on.

You had Jeff Jarvis with this insane-

Professor Jeff Jarvis?

Yes, saying today on Twitter feels like

the last evening in a Berlin nightclub

at the twilight of Weimar, Germany.

I mean, somehow these people think

that the re-institution,

the restoration of free speech

is somehow like the end of Weimar, Germany.

And then I think probably the best example

was this tweet by Max Boot,

where he says that for democracy to survive,

we need more content moderation,

i.e. censorship, not less.

So in the warped mind of all of these elites

and the media, the corporate media,

they think that for democracy to survive,

they need more censorship.

This is the worst thing the Democrats ever did

is give the Republican Party free speech.

That was our issue.

How we gave it to you guys is just insane.

By the way, this is your bias in evaluating this deal.

I want to point that out.

You talk about the board’s bias,

but you do have a bias on,

and that’s not really the question at hand.

The question at hand is $54,

the fair price to pay for this company.

No, I know, but it is also about free speech.

There is another issue here at its core.

That’s not, that’s not that.

Sorry, I agree.

It’s not about the deal,

but that is why Elon’s buying the company.

I agree. I agree. I agree.

He’s not doing it for profit.

I’m just pointing out that we all criticize the board

and we all criticize them for not taking the deal.

We’re motivated generally

because we want to see the deal happen.

We want to see Elon do it.

I want to be, I want to be very clear.

A couple of things.

First of all, the stock is basically the same price

it was in December of 2013.

Right.

Okay.

So what happened in the market during that time?

It went absolutely up and to the right in a violent manner.

Right. So if you had a strategy to not grow

and you deployed it,

could you actually achieve this performance?

So I’m just saying that’s just an objective fact

that we have to keep in mind.

Whatever has happened has collectively not worked.

And it is, it is systematic,

meaning the underperformance is not a quarter.

It’s not in a month,

but whatever has happened here collectively

inside this business

has not been working for nearly a decade.

Okay. So just getting all the emotion out,

that’s a fact.

Right.

Okay. And so at some point people will say,

well, the devil I don’t know

is better than the devil.

I do know because the devil I do know

is destroying money for me at a horrific rate,

which if you look at how the S and P is compounded

since 2013 versus now,

I mean, my gosh,

if you had done a spread trade of long,

the S and P and short Twitter,

you would have made a fortune.

How about long Tesla short Twitter?

Well, I’m just trying to give the general market.

No, I’m just trying to give you

the general market math, right?

Forget any individual.

Right. And look, Friedberg,

it’s not just ideological here.

I think we all agree on the correct economic thing

to have happened here,

which is that the Twitter board should run a process.

They should see if there’s a better bid out there.

If there is, you play for the bigger bid,

make Elon come up on the price.

Okay. But if there’s not a better bid,

Elon’s offer is the best deal on the table.

I think you take it.

That’s what economically should happen,

but it’s not going to happen.

And the reason it’s not going to happen

is not because of superior economics or a magical plan.

It’s going to be cause the,

the board members on this country club,

they call a board.

Their interest is to stay on that board.

Parag’s interest to stay as CEO

and all the elite observers and the media,

all the people denouncing Twitter.

I’m going to give you guys some numbers.

Want censorship to remain in place.

That is what’s going on.

Give me one second.

I want to ask one question.

You have a lot of Bitcoin.

You have a decent amount of Bitcoin.

Some.

Bitcoin’s trading like 40,000.

If I said, I’m going to buy out all your Bitcoin for 45,000,

would you take it?

Well, that’s a, it’s a different situation

because you can’t, you can’t make an offer for that.

And by the way, there’s no,

there’s no, here’s the difference.

There’s no principal agent problem in that context.

I know.

It’s a fully decentralized currency.

You have a point of view on Bitcoin.

No, forget about the structure.

I’m coming to you and I’m saying, Hey,

sacks, I want to buy all your Bitcoin for 45,000.

What’s your answer?

It’s trading 40.

That’s not, that’s not a share.

That’s not a share.

So then put it, put it to a vote.

Yeah, I’m trading.

Then put it to a vote.

Right.

Let every single shareholder decide,

then put it to a vote and we’ll see.

Yeah.

And by the way, Freiburg,

there’s no limits on your ability to go on the open market and buy Bitcoin.

So if you do want to try and acquire a hundred percent of Bitcoin,

go on the open market and acquire it.

I mean, there are people trying to build big positions.

Yeah, exactly.

So go do that.

But there are huge limits.

I just want to hold on.

There are big limits on the ability

of Elon to go on the open market and just keep buying up all of Twitter.

And the poison pill is now this poison pill.

They’ve stopped it.

Do you agree with the poison pill, Freiburg?

J Cal, hang on.

I want to explain why that is,

because this is really important from a corporate governance perspective.

So people understand what you’re saying is right.

But the job of the board is to look out for the interests of all shareholders,

particularly minority shareholders,

people that own a small stake in the company.

So if someone came along,

let’s say a private equity firm owned 60% of a public company,

the board can’t just act in the interest of the private equity firm.

They have to protect the smaller shareholders.

And so their job is to say,

is there upside for the smaller shareholders that their vote should matter more?

And that’s why we have a board to have that judgment debate and to decide.

And I’m not arguing against you as much as I’m explaining

what goes on in the lawyers meetings with the board.

This is what they’re telling.

I think basically your job is to look out for all shareholders.

So Elon can go out and buy a bunch of shares.

But if he doesn’t have 30% of the shares,

the board has to represent the interest for those 30%.

Right.

I think I think what the what also works and what normally good boards will do,

and I don’t know whether Twitter will or will not do this,

but I’m assuming these are, you know, they’ll do the right thing here.

Because we do know most of them, they should probably get a fairness opinion.

I’m sure Goldman is doing evaluation as we speak.

But again, when you factor in what’s happened to this stock over the last decade,

and when you factor in the market beta today,

it’s I think you’re going to have a very hard case to make

that there is a path to an outcome that’s a lot bigger in an obvious way here.

And I don’t think that that’s going to pass a lot of mustard.

And so the problem that this board will have is justifying

the alternative of not taking this.

I think it’s going to be harder than you think.

Yeah, I think it’s going to create an enormous amount of backlash where,

you know, there’s a probably a lot of shareholders

that would probably want to get out.

You have to understand, like, why are Vanguard and all these guys owning Twitter,

they have to own it through these ETS that they’ve created.

And that’s right.

That’s right.

They don’t necessarily have a point of view on the company.

Right.

I agree.

And so, you know, they’re out to just basically,

so when you really boil it down, how many concerned interested shareholders are there?

Well, he’s Elon is clearly the largest there, you know, and then after that,

it’s probably only 30 or 40% of the total outstanding equity.

I bet Jack has a really I bet Jack is the linchpin and what’s going to happen here,

you know, his point of view on this transaction and whether or not Elon should be the steward

of this business going forward, and whether this is a fair price for him,

is going to sway a big part of how this process is going to go.

Jack owns 2%, Elon owns over 9%.

Yeah, but my point, my point is, I think Jack’s going to be a big opinion setter

in that board discussion.

And they’re, I think they’re simpatico and they’re friendly.

So just to give you guys a number to react to here, 2021 revenue is 5 billion.

They have 8000 employees back of the envelope $625,000 per employee in revenue.

Just looking at Google, which is the greatest business ever created,

perhaps in terms of efficiency, as we’ve talked about,

they have 135,000 employees and revenue is 257 billion,

which puts them at two close to 2 billion, 2 million per employee.

How many people sacks on an operational basis?

Does this business actually need to run efficiently?

8000.

Yeah, you could fire half those people or more,

there’d be absolutely no impact to the business.

In fact, they probably run better because right now,

they probably got too many meetings happening with too many people.

We all know this.

That company culturally has been broken for a long time.

Elon comes to you and says, you’re my guy, you did Yammer, you’re in charge.

Would you run it?

That’s when you take this?

No, of course he would.

Of course you see now guys, come on.

Nope.

Wrong.

You take the job for 10%.

I wouldn’t.

You’re a liar.

Would you take the job for 10%?

No, I’m done operating companies.

I’m sick of it.

What if?

What if your funds got?

I don’t like doing real work.

Wait, hold on.

Hold on.

I think I think I think this is time.

I think this is time where we where we can share.

I’m too old.

I think it was six years ago, five years ago, I did approach Twitter with

another large investor, but it was more of a friendly activist thing.

And David was our nominated CEO.

Oh, that place apart.

Breaking news.

Much credit all in.

But now after that meeting, which which was a little heated,

their VP of engineering and CTO quit the next day.

I remember.

Yeah, that’s funny.

What?

Just at the concept of reporting it to SACs, they quit.

They rage quit at the possibility.

You know, startups are like the NBA.

I mean, you get to a certain age, you’re just, you know, you’re too old.

You’re the coach.

You’d be Phil Jackson.

Guys, it’s flattering, but I’m done.

I’m done operating.

I’m so sick of all that.

Wow.

Zach, who do you think?

I go on Zoom calls a couple of times a day.

It’s a great life.

Zach, Elon can’t run it.

He’s got a lot going on.

Who do you think should be the actual CEO, the day to day CEO there?

Well, I think Elon would figure.

I think he would go in and figure it out.

I mean, he is obviously an extremely competent operator.

But who would be on the ground?

Well, he’s got a lot of people he can probably plug in there.

You know, my understanding of the way that things work at Tesla and SpaceX is he’s got

some terrific young talent who he appoints to these sort of project manager or product

manager positions.

And he’s got like 20 of them reporting to him.

And they run the company doing a whole sequence of projects in parallel.

Right.

So he has like a bench, like Elon is the new GE.

Remember when GE, when all the talent used to go there?

Elon’s got so much incredible talent on his bench.

He could parachute in some amazing operators there and clean up that place.

Let me tell you, the AI team on that self driving team, which I’ve met, and I’ve seen

their work, like, you know, in private, and it’s so impressive that if he took one of

the AI people working on self driving, and drop them into Twitter, I’m one, they would

solve the bot problem, the spam problem in 30 days with one, and if God forbid, he sent

three, they would solve it in the weekend.

The fact that they can’t solve spam, and bots and other machine going on at that company

is crazy, right?

He would fix that, by the way, there would be less, sort of, there would be less problematic

content on that site with Elon running it.

Why?

Yes, there’ll be less harassment.

There’ll be less harassment, because he gave her all the bots he’d imposed.

Who’s doing the brigading?

It’s all these bot armies.

The problem is, they don’t want the bots to go because the only sign of life in that

business is spammers and, you know, all these fake accounts being created.

So they’re just scared to take that 20% hit.

But the site would be cleaner without it.

But look, Jason, I really think that part of the problem with our conversation today

is that we’re viewing this whole Elon versus Twitter thing, purely in economic and to some

degree operational terms, when really, I think this is also an ideological and cultural battle

or struggle.

All right, we’ll go to that.

Let’s do it.

And this is why it’s really captured the imagination of the public.

There, look, what is the, if you were to sort of zoom out 30,000 foot view, the big struggle

of our time, politically and culturally, is populist versus elitist, okay?

That’s the big battle that’s happening.

Elon is one of the rare billionaires who is sort of anti-elitist.

He pokes fun at their pieties all the time.

This is why they call him a troll, okay?

He wants to restore free speech.

Somehow, the elites are now on the side of censorship.

Like Max Boot said, they believe that in order to protect democracy, they need more

censorship.

What they really mean is to protect their control over democracy.

They need censorship.

Why?

Because they’re greatly outnumbered.

There’s more populists than elitists.

So if the more democratic this country becomes, the more they are going to lose power and

be kicked out.

That is why they are so fiercely resisting the restoration of Twitter as a free speech

platform.

It means the end of their cultural power.

The Axios headline encapsulates that to a T.

I gave you guys the link, Nick.

You can show it.

The world’s richest man, someone who used to be compared to Marvel’s Iron Man, is increasingly

behaving like a movie supervillain, commanding seemingly unlimited resources with which to

finance his mischief making.

I mean, what a…

Are you really?

Are you serious?

This is the same guy that’s…

That’s journalism?

I mean, this is the same guy that’s doing more on climate change and has been doing

it to, you know, 20 years ago when it wasn’t popular and satellites.

But I said this before, and space travel, and I said this before, but I just want to

say it again.

I think if he does get a control of Twitter and there is a strong, reliable moral force

for free speech, I think that’s actually going to be his biggest contribution to society.

Because independent of all these other things, you know, we want sort of this political philosophy

of democracy and capitalism to roughly work together.

And I think it sits on top of this fundamental idea that you can say what you think without

retribution.

And it’s only there you can actually seek out different opinions, and try different

ideas, and say things, and most importantly, make mistakes.

And right now, we have such a high cost for making mistakes that it just shuts so many

people down and out.

And if he does that, that’s actually a really big deal.

I think, globally, you know what that Axios headline could have said, you’re not that

could have said, Elon Musk spends significant portion of his fortune to restore trust in

public square by open sourcing, but you can’t open or hold on open sourcing the API and

allowing transparent moderation.

No, Jason, what he said in his TED talk, Jason, they can’t because they lose power.

If Elon wins and gets control of Twitter, right?

Exactly.

Look, the journalist like Axios, they don’t make a lot of money, what they have is some

degree of status.

But more importantly, they have influence.

That’s why they do those jobs.

And the fact the matter is, and their influences and hat enhance when other people don’t have

the right to speak.

And the reason why Elon is a supervillain, in their eyes, is because he’s going to give

the people their right to free speech back.

That is what this is really about.

And they are adamantly opposed to that.

Now, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, every member of the press would have defended the First

Amendment.

They saw freedom of speech, freedom of the press as synonymous and fundamental to our

republic.

Today, they don’t believe that anymore.

History has been inverted.

Glenn Greenwald actually had a great paragraph about this.

If I could just, I know, Jason, in front of the fact that-

Here we go, in front of Glenn Greenwald.

Look, I mean, I’m a Glenn Greenwald fan all the minute, but what he said is that somehow

these elites, they’ve somehow inverted history.

So now they believe that it is not censorship that is the favored tool of fascist tyrants

and authoritarians.

Even though every fascist and despot in history used censorship as a key means for maintaining

power, but they instead believe that it is free speech, free discourse, and free thought

that are the instruments of repression.

So that is what it is about.

But the irony is that these elites now believe in the use of authoritarian tactics to preserve

their cultural power.

That’s the battle that’s taking place right now.

I think they’re conflating harassment on a platform or hearing opinions they don’t like

with actual censorship.

There’s going to be harassment, sadly, in the world, and you can build tools to mitigate

that.

I mean, one of the things I don’t understand, I don’t know if you know this feature they

added last year or so, where you can say, only your followers can reply.

All these people who are complaining about harassment, I never see any of them say,

my followers can reply.

If they did, they would never have anybody reply who they didn’t want to reply.

The problem would be solved.

Okay.

Lots more to come on this topic.

I want to just get five predictions.

That was a long topic for us.

Wow.

Well, I mean, it is the perfect topic for us because you have freedom of speech, you

have markets, you have governance.

I mean, it’s just everything, entrepreneurship.

I just want to end with, we’re here 30 days from now.

What is your majority case?

What is your majority probability here of what happens?

Give it a second.

What is the stock trading at?

And who’s running the company in 30 days?

Sachs, you’re first.

Here’s what’s going to happen.

This goes back to my tinfoil theory.

I think one of two things is going to happen.

Okay.

First of all, Elon is going to be thwarted by these folks.

He’s not going to get control of this company.

They’re the vested interest in stopping him by the board, by the new CEO, and by the corporate

media and the political elites is too great.

They will find a way to stop him.

Okay.

And one of two things is going to happen.

Either the poison pill will win and Twitter stock will be down in the dumps 30 days from

now.

It’ll be the same price it was when Elon started accumulating around that price.

It’s going to be back in the dumps.

And to Chamath’s point, all these board members are going to be sued, justifiably so, because

they did not pursue the best deal of the company.

Or there’s one other possibility that they will find a buyer for Twitter.

And the way they will defeat Elon will be to find another buyer at the same or greater

price.

And they will place Twitter in the hands of another company who they regard as culturally

safer because that company buys into the regime of censorship.

And it might be Disney.

It might even be Google.

I’m telling you, I think that if Google were the company to step up, the administration

would ultimately support that deal rather than Elon getting the company.

And I think they would tell Lena Kahn to stand down in that instance and let it go through.

Okay.

Lena Kahn, you have-

And we will find out.

And I’m telling you, in 30 days, we will find out how rigged this game is and how deep the

corruption goes, because they will do anything to stop Elon from acquiring this company,

even if it means violating their fiduciary duty or violating antitrust law.

Okay.

You got it, Alex Jones position.

Let’s go free bird.

I mean, I am not at all-

What is the majority case in 30 days?

I’m not at all conspiratorial as Sachs.

I don’t think that this is about-

I agree with your first part, Sachs.

Protect.

I think that we have a board of rational actors.

I really do.

I think that they’re going to do what they think is in the best interest of shareholders

in terms of price per share.

I think that’s how they’re going to operate.

They’re all super smart, super ethical, high integrity people on that board.

Now, would I like to see Elon own and operate Twitter personally?

Yes, I would.

Why?

Well, I think he’s going to be a better operator.

I think he’s going to make that product better.

I think he’s going to make the business better.

I think it’s going to be-

Better product.

He’s going to have a much more rational view on moderation that I think has been lost over

the last couple of years.

And I think he’ll innovate in ways that we haven’t seen in that business in many years.

So I’d be excited for him to own that business as a user of Twitter.

That’s awesome.

But I don’t think that-

I think the board’s going to act rationally.

They’re going to try and find the best price.

They’re going to reject his offer.

I don’t think he’s going to up the offer significantly to the point to get it done.

They’re going to go out and run a long strategic process.

Three months from now, we’re still going to be running that process.

That process is not going to be done.

No one’s going to have a real answer.

Elon’s going to trail off and do something else.

And this whole thing will kind of fade into the sunset.

And stock will be trading where in three months?

35 bucks a share, 37 bucks a share.

What is the majority case here?

30 days, 90 days from now?

I think the 30 days is we’re going to kind of still be here.

I don’t think much is going to get figured out in the next 30 days.

In the next 90 days, I don’t think you’re going to see a better offer.

I don’t think anybody wants to buy this dumpster fire.

Because you have to understand this dumpster fire is twofold, right?

On the one hand, you have a whole user usage, bot, spam, harassment problem.

And then you have an internal issue around culture and monetization and all of this other stuff.

And so you have to be really prepared to step in and deal with both of these two

issues in a really definitive way.

I think that that I’m not sure that corporate boards and

companies and CEOs have the stomach for all of that.

So I don’t think there’s a better bidder.

But I think within 90 days, they’re going to probably first try to reject it.

I’m not sure that that’s in the best fiduciary interest of shareholders.

In fact, I don’t think it is.

And I think to reject it would be more a sign of ego than a sign of logic.

And then I think they are going to get sued.

And they’re going to be embroiled in lawsuits for years.

So no sale happens, the stock languishes again, stalemate, disaster.

Well, I think by saying it, look, I mean, if you look at the stock,

like a simple stock market analyst would say,

whenever there’s a merger announced, right at like x price, right?

Like look at Microsoft and Activision.

That’s a better example.

You know, Microsoft announces the stock was at like, you know, $57, $58 a share.

Microsoft says, we’re going to buy Activision.

I think it was for $95 a share, right?

And if you notice, the stock hasn’t gone to 95.

Now, typically merger arb, merger arbitrage,

what happens is that the stock goes to $1 or $2 of the acquisition price right away,

almost immediately.

Or it goes to within $5 or $10 or 5 or 10%.

And then it bleeds towards the M&A price as the deal gets closer to certainty.

So when there’s a big gap,

what the market is voting is that the deal is not going to happen.

And so when you look at the gap, Microsoft Activision,

it kind of says it’s going to take a long time.

And there’s a risk that it doesn’t happen.

Similarly, if you look at this Twitter thing,

why didn’t it go to $53 a share?

It’s because a lot of people think that the board’s not going to do the right thing.

Agreed.

The fix is in.

So conspiratorial.

Saks, do you listen to Alex Jones?

The fix is happening in plain sight, Freeberg.

Chamath just said it.

Why is the price below $54?

Listen, when a deal is going to go through,

the price goes right up to like below that price.

The price is well below $54.

I think the reason the price isn’t going up is there is no buyer who wants this asset.

It’s going to be years to clean it up.

No, no, no, no, Jason, Jason.

I don’t think there’s a buyer who wants it.

Even if you thought that there was another buyer that was going to come at a higher price,

the money good thing to do

is for people to basically buy that equity to basically bleed into the acquisition price.

No, no, I get all that.

Yeah, yeah.

And so the fact that it didn’t move at all, in my opinion,

is a concerted belief that the board is going to reject the offer.

Got it.

Even if there was another offer.

And what they didn’t want to do is buy the stock at $50,

have the thing all of a sudden get announced as, you know, we’re not going to take it.

Elon dumps his shares.

All the people that bought the stock at $50 hoping it’ll go to $54

would all of a sudden lose a lot of money because the stock would instead be at $34.

So the fact that the stock basically didn’t move is essentially the market’s way of voting.

This is a head fake.

You should take the offer.

The board’s not going to and the stock’s going to tank back to its other its original price.

My prediction is the board tries to fight it.

Stock collapses.

Nobody thinks it’s going to get done.

Elon lowers his offer.

And he wins it by the end of the year.

And gives him a lower offer.

You didn’t like it.

Always with the optimizer.

Now we’re going 49.

That’s very Michael Corleone.

Yeah.

Now the offer’s 49.

And it goes down $2 every quarter until you guys acquiesce.

The end.

It’s trading at 30.

I lower my offer.

Jason, if you want to just finish with this little quote of the Revlon story,

it was actually kind of cool.

Forsman Little comes in to try to basically give like a white knight bid.

And what Ronald Perlman did was basically say, I’m just going to, you know, top tick every bid.

He was pretty baller.

He’s like, I’m going to top tick every bid.

So Forsman would be at 51.

And then, you know, Perlman would be at 51.50.

They would go to 54, 55, you know.

And he exhausted Forsman Little.

And eventually they just threw their hands up.

They said, we can’t do this anymore.

I want to make a couple of movie recommendations real quick.

Because I tweeted a couple of things.

Barbarians at the gate.

There’s Barbarians at the gate and Wall Street.

And, you know, I tweet these things and they get no likes.

So I think people just don’t watch old movies.

These movies came out, they came out in the 1980s.

Wall Street is one of the all-time great movies.

All-time greats.

Probably the best movie a business has ever been made.

Oliver Stone directed it.

You’re saying Wall Street is, yes.

Wall Street is.

Margin Call was pretty good.

I really like Margin Call, but yeah, I agree.

Barbarians at the gate was.

Better book, better book.

Yeah, it was a TV movie with James Gardner.

It was good.

The book is excellent.

The book is excellent.

Next level.

I gotta go eat lunch.

All right, everybody.

Love you besties.

Love you guys.

Bye-bye.

Back at you.

Hey, everybody, we decided to split this epic episode into two parts.

One, two parts.

So we can get you all the Elon Twitter discussion out as soon as possible for your Friday night

viewing pleasure.

Stay tuned for episode 76.5.

That’s part two, coming out in just a few hours.

We’re going to talk about the global food crisis, China’s plan for food storage, geopolitics,

including the French election.

And we got a bunch of all in summit talk.

Everything’s heating up.

So stick with us.

This is my dog taking a notice in your driveway.

We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy because they’re all just

useless.

It’s like this like sexual tension that they just need to release somehow.

What about beef?

What about beef?

We need to get merch.

I’m going all in.