- Elon Musk doubted ex-Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal from the start because he was too nice: ‘What Twitter needs is a fire-breathing dragon’ Fortune
- Elon Musk Went On A Gaming Marathon After He Offered To Buy Twitter – Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) Benzinga
- Elon Musk Biography to Show Epic Dogecoin Connection CoinGape
- Elon Musk helped Larry Ellison reset forgotten Twitter password: biographer Business Insider
- Elon Musk’s ‘ruthless’ plan to close his Twitter deal early let him fire the social media company’s top execs—and stop them collecting a ‘$200 million’ payout Fortune
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Elon Musk fired Twitter execs including CEO Parag Agrawal ‘for cause’ in a bid to avoid paying out tens of millions in severance, report says
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Elon Musk fired top Twitter execs “for cause” to avoid severance payments, The Information reported.
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He fired CEO Parag Agrawal and three other executives on Thursday as he completed his takeover.
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The execs are in line to receive up to $122 million in payouts, researchers Equilar told Reuters.
Elon Musk fired top Twitter executives “for cause” in an attempt to avoid hefty severance payouts in the wake of his takeover of Twitter, The Information reported on Saturday.
Musk removed Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal, legal chief Vijaya Gadde, and general counsel Sean Edgett on Thursday after closing his $44 billion deal.
A person familiar with the matter told The Information that Musk dismissed the executives “for cause” to try to avoid severance payouts and unvested stock awards, suggesting he had justification for their termination. Two people with knowledge of the subject told The New York Times the executives were now considering their options.
The former executives were in line for payouts totalling almost $90 million, with Agrawal set for $38.7 million, largely due to shares vested since his departure. Research firm Equilar told Reuters the payouts could go as high as $122 million.
Equilar’s research director, Courtney Yu, told Reuters on Friday that the executives “should be getting these payments unless Elon Musk had cause for termination, with cause in these cases usually being that they broke the law or violated company policy.”
Musk repeatedly lambasted Twitter’s operations and their executives in the months before closing his deal over the number of fake accounts. His relationship with Agrawal in particular quickly soured, with the pair trading blows on Twitter and over text messages.
The Tesla CEO has wasted no time in reforming Twitter. Insider reported on Saturday that team leaders and VPs had begun drawing up lists of who to keep on based on performance reviews.
The new owner of Twitter, who is naming himself as CEO on internal company files, per Insider, also had to deny reports that he was planning to lay off 75% of the workforce.
Musk is expected to make more layoffs quickly because of a November 1 deadline when employees are scheduled to receive stock grants as part of their compensation in mind, per The New York Times. These are a significant proportion of most Twitter employees’ compensation, the newspaper reported.
Read the original article on Business Insider
You’re free to tweet: Messages reveal Elon Musk- Parag Agrawal fall out | World News
Messages between Tesla chief Elon Musk and important place holders at Twitter- Jack Dorsey, board chair Bret Taylor and current head Parag Agrawal – were released during an ongoing documentation ahead of Elon Musk’s trial against Twitter.
Elon Musk and Twitter are due for a trial in court In mid-October which will decide on the former’s $44 billion acquisition of the social media platform.
In new messages that were revealed, Elon Musk told Parag Agarwal that he did not think he should be the “boss of anyone”.
Elon Musk said, “Frankly, I hate doing mgmt [sic] stuff. I kinda don’t think I should be the boss of anyone. But I love helping solve technical/product design problems,” adding that he wanted to be treated “like an engineer instead of a CEO.”
In a reply by Parag Agrawal to Elon Musk, he said, “You are free to tweet ‘is Twitter dying?’ or anything else about Twitter – but it’s my responsibility to tell you that it’s not helping me make Twitter better in the current context.”
“Next time we speak, I’d like to you provide you [sic] perspective on the level of the internal distraction right now and how it [sic] hurting our ability to do work,” he added.
Elon Musk responded, one minute later, “What did you get done this week? I’m not joining the board. This is a waste of time. Will make an offer to take Twitter private.”
Elon Musk’s messages with Jack Dorsey were also revealed in which Elon Musk blamed Parag Agrawal.
“You and I are in complete agreement,” Elon Musk messaged Mr Dorsey. “Parag is just moving far too slowly and trying to please people who will not be happy no matter what he does.”
Jack Dorsey replied back, “At least it became clear that you can’t work together. That was clarifying.”
Elon Musk challenges Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal to a debate on bots
Centi-billionaire Elon Musk provoked Twitter and challenged the company’s CEO Parag Agrawal to a “public debate” about fake accounts and spam in the midst of a contentious legal battle over a $44 billion acquisition.
Musk filed a bid with the Securities and Exchange to acquire Twitter back in April this year. After the companies agreed to move ahead with a take-private deal, Musk said he was terminating his acquisition, and accused Twitter of presenting false numbers, including in its SEC filings, pertaining to the amount of monetizable daily active users, and the number of spam and bot accounts on the social network.
Twitter then sued Musk in a Delaware chancery court to ensure the deal would go through as promised, and Musk filed counterclaims and a countersuit there on July 29.
In a series of tweets that Musk began posting just before 1 a.m. on Saturday, Aug. 6, Musk interacted with a fan who had summarized his accusations about Twitter including that it was stonewalling him and giving him, “outdated data,” and “a fake data set” when he asked the company for details about how it tabulates mDAU, and estimates for spam and bot accounts.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO wrote, “Good summary of the problem. If Twitter simply provides their method of sampling 100 accounts and how they’re confirmed to be real, the deal should proceed on original terms. However, if it turns out that their SEC filings are materially false, then it should not.”
By just after 9 a.m. Saturday morning, Musk started a Twitter poll asking his followers to vote on whether “[l]ess than 5% of Twitter daily users are fake/spam.” Respondents to the informal poll could choose one of Musk’s provided answers which read either “Yes” followed by three robot emoji, or “Lmaooo no.” (The slang abbreviation “lmao” stands for “laughing my a– off.)
Musk also wrote Saturday morning: “I hereby challenge @paraga to a public debate about the Twitter bot percentage. Let him prove to the public that Twitter has <5% fake or spam daily users!"
A source close to the company says a debate is not going to happen outside of a pending trial.
Attorneys for Musk did not respond to requests to comment on Saturday, and an attorney for Twitter declined to comment on Musk’s Saturday tweets.
Twitter’s attorneys have argued in court filings that Musk gave the company just twenty-four hours to accept his offer before he would present it directly to Twitter shareholders, and waived due diligence including a chance to seek more information on false or spam accounts.
They wrote in court filings, “Musk’s repeated mischaracterizations of the merger agreement cannot change its plain words.”
At an annual shareholder meeting for Tesla on Aug. 4, Musk was asked to speak about Twitter during a question-and-answer session that followed a proxy vote.
He said, drawing laughter from the audience in attendance, “I obviously have to be a little careful what I say about Twitter because there’s this lawsuit and stuff.” He confirmed that the only two publicly traded securities he owns are Tesla and Twitter.
And then he spoke as if he still wants to become the owner of the social networking company, a stark contrast to arguments made by Musk via his attorneys in legal filings in Delaware in which Musk argues he should not have to go through with the deal.
At the Tesla 2022 shareholders’ meeting, Musk said: “I think in the case of Twitter since I use it a lot, shoot myself in the foot a lot, you know, dig my grave, etc. I think it’s — I do understand the product quite well, so I think I’ve got a good sense of where to point the engineering team at Twitter to make it radically better.”
He added that Twitter would “help accelerate” a “pretty grand vision” he had to build a business he’d been thinking about since his earliest years as a tech entrepreneur, X.com or X Corporation.
“Obviously that could be started from scratch,” he said, “but I think Twitter would help accelerate that by three to five years. So it’s kind of like something I’ve thought would be quite useful for a long time. I know what to do. Don’t have to have Twitter for that but, like I said, it’s probably at least a three-year accelerant and I think it’s something that will be very useful to the world.”
Musk didn’t go into any further details at that meeting. However, he reportedly said during a town hall meeting with Twitter employees in June this year that he wanted to grow Twitter’s user base to a billion people and saw Twitter as a platform that could evolve into an app like China’s WeChat, a “super app,” that incorporates everything from messaging, video and social media, to mobile and point-of-sales payments, with a robust app ecosystem.
Unless they reach a settlement first, Twitter and Musk are headed for a five-day trial in Delaware that starts on Oct. 17. The judge ruling on the case is Chancellor Kathaleen St. J. McCormick.
Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal Fires 2 Top Executives, Freezes Hiring Ahead Of Elon Musk Takeover
Twitter also confirmed that it is pausing all hiring except for business-critical roles.
San Francisco:
Twitter confirmed Thursday that two senior executives are heading for the exit and it has paused most hiring, as Elon Musk stands poised to become the global messaging platform’s new owner.
Kayvon Beykpour, a general manager who leads research, design and engineering at Twitter, is leaving along with head of products Bruce Falck, a Twitter spokesperson told AFP.
Beykpour however said he was ousted from the San Francisco-based tech company.
“The truth is that this isn’t how and when I imagined leaving Twitter, and this wasn’t my decision,” Beykpour, who is on paternity leave, said in a tweet.
Twitter chief Parag Agrawal “asked me to leave after letting me know that he wants to take the team in a different direction,” he added.
Twitter also confirmed that, effective this week, it is pausing all hiring except for business-critical roles.
Musk’s $44-billion deal to buy Twitter was announced last month but still needs the backing of shareholders and regulators.
The takeover is expected to close later in 2022, with Musk — who runs space exploration endeavor SpaceX and electric automaker Tesla — stepping in as its boss at least for a little while.
Musk is on record saying he would lift the ban Twitter slapped on Donald Trump, contending that kicking the former US president off the platform “alienated a large part of the country.”
Musk’s endorsement of a Trump return triggered fears among activists that Musk would “open the floodgates of hate.”
Trump has stated publicly he would not come back to Twitter if permitted, sticking instead with his own social network, Truth Social, which has failed to gain traction.
Trump was booted from Twitter and other online platforms after supporters, fired up by his tweets and speech alleging election fraud, attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 in a deadly bid to stop Joe Biden from being certified as winner of the presidential election two months earlier.
Musk reasoned that permanent bans at Twitter should be rare, and reserved for accounts that are spam, scams or run by software “bots.”
Activist groups have called on Twitter advertisers to boycott the service if it opens the gates to abusive and misinformative posts with Musk as its owner.
The fate of Twitter’s top attorney, deemed a moral champion of the platform, has been in doubt since Musk tweeted displeasure with content moderation she had carried out.
The lawyer, Vijaya Gadde, has led efforts to battle bullying and posts that could lead to real-world harm such as the US Capitol riot.
She was involved in the decision to ban Trump, and others including removing political advertising from the app.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
Here’s Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal’s memo about firing execs and a hiring freeze
On Thursday, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announced a number of big shakeups within the company in an email to staff, including firing consumer product leader Kayvon Beykpour and head of revenue product Bruce Falck. The company is pausing most hiring and pulling back on spending in most areas, though it’s not currently planning any layoffs.
It’s a strange, uneasy moment inside Twitter, as the company prepares for Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition to close later this fall. It’s not entirely clear why Agrawal made these changes now, though, or how they relate to Musk’s acquisition. Twitter’s new head of product is Jay Sullivan, an ex-Facebook director who joined in November. The company is now beginning its search for a new head of revenue product to replace Falck.
The Verge obtained the email Agrawal sent to staff about the changes. Here it is in its entirety:
Team,
Building Twitter and serving our customers around the world is important yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Our purpose is existential. During this time of change, it’s critical that we continue to strengthen our work through increased accountability and execution to make Twitter everything it can be. The priorities and decisions we make now will not only bolster how we navigate through this time, but also for the longer-term success of Twitter which I care about deeply. Some changes are happening to us and some we will drive. A number of these changes are difficult but they are right for Twitter and its future.
Leadership
It’s critical to have the right leaders at the right time. Jay Sullivan, currently interim GM of Bluebird, has shown this powerfully. His product vision, ability to inspire, move quickly and drive change is what Twitter needs now, and in the future. I have therefore decided to make Jay the permanent GM of Bluebird. With this change, Kayvon Beykpour will be leaving Twitter. Kayvon has been an amazing leader and force at Twitter over the years with his founders mindset and deep passion for the service. Under his leadership, our product has evolved and grown meaningfully – I know I speak for all of us when I say we are deeply grateful for his tremendous impact.
Over the past number of months, I have also gotten much closer to the revenue product work and believe that here too, we need to make a leadership change. Bruce Falck will be departing Twitter and we will be opening the search for a new GM of Goldbird. Bruce joined Twitter at a critical time and has been a strong collaborator, leader and supporter of the revenue product work and our purpose. Under his leadership we rebuilt our ad server and anchored the foundation for evolving our ads business to be more performance based. In the interim, the Goldbird org reports to Jay Sullivan. His leadership will be very meaningful through this transition.
Please join me in thanking Kayvon and Bruce for everything they’ve done for Twitter.
Current environment
At the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, the decision was made to invest aggressively to deliver big growth in audience and revenue, and as a company we did not hit intermediate milestones that enable confidence in these goals. More recently, the global macroeconomic environment has become less favorable, the war in Ukraine has impacted our results, and may continue to do so. Many other companies have been experiencing a similar effect. And, of course, we are in the middle of an acquisition and we don’t yet know the timing of the close. In order to responsibly manage the organization as we sharpen our roadmaps and our work, we need to continue to be intentional about our teams, hiring and costs.
Hiring
Effective this week, we are pausing most hiring and backfills, except for business critical roles as determined by Staff members in partnership with their HRBPs. We will also be reviewing all extended offers to determine criticality and those that should be pulled back. We are not planning company-wide layoffs, but leaders will continue making changes to their organizations to improve efficiencies as needed. As always, performance management will continue to be a priority at this time at all levels to ensure we have the strongest teams possible.
Budgeting
We also need to pull back on non-labor costs to ensure we are being responsible and efficient. We are reducing contractor and consulting spend, travel and events, marketing, our real estate footprint, on premise and public-cloud related infrastructure spend, and other operational costs. Please continue to treat Twitter’s resources as you would your own, and manage tightly to your budgets, prioritizing what matters most.
As promised, I will continue to communicate often and directly with all of you as we continue to move forward. Next week, will be holding a virtual offsite with our Global Leadership Team (GLT) to drive further cohesion and focus, and strengthen our collective plans to best support all of you. We will report out the outputs of that meeting to you.
While we are in a ton of change right now, historically, Twitter often is. What stays true is our purpose, Twitter’s importance and the criticality of our work, and how we come together. Thank you for your leadership, your focus and your support for one another.
Parag
In Elon Musk’s Twitter Bid, A Role For CEO Parag Agrawal’s Wife
Vineeta Agarwala is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz
A move by Andreessen Horowitz to join Elon Musk’s bid for Twitter Inc. threatens to create a conflict for firm co-founder Marc Andreessen, who sits on the board of social-networking rival Meta Platforms Inc.
Andreessen Horowitz agreed to invest $400 million in the Twitter takeover deal, part of $7.1 billion in new financing commitments announced Thursday. That put one of the biggest early backers of Facebook, which changed its name to Meta last year, in position to become a new owner of Twitter.
Firm co-founder Ben Horowitz said in a tweet that Musk was perhaps the only person in the world with the “courage, brilliance and skills” to fix Twitter’s problems and “build the public square that we all hoped for and deserve.”
Andreessen Horowitz’s involvement has raised questions about the VC firm’s links to Meta, where Marc Andreessen has served as a board member since 2008. Though it’s not uncommon for Silicon Valley investors to have a hand in competing startups, potential conflicts can be more serious with publicly traded businesses, said John Coates, a professor at Harvard Law School.
“It’s safe to say that Silicon Valley norms about conflicts — where they are often tolerated or even encouraged, in a culture along the lines of ‘it all comes out in the wash’ — are dangerous to carry over to the world of public companies,” he said.
A representative for Andreessen Horowitz said it planned to seek legal advice to ensure compliance with any rules around the sharing of Twitter information with the firm.
Andreessen, 50, has come under scrutiny for previous possible conflicts at Meta, such as investing in companies — including Oculus VR — that Facebook ended up buying. At one point he was sued by investors for advising Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg on how to protect his majority voting control even if he sold his shares.
On Twitter, Andreessen has been publicly supportive of Musk, and he’s railed against the content-moderation policies at social media companies. Musk has said he plans to loosen the rules if he takes charge of Twitter.
Since the investor doesn’t sit on Twitter’s board, his connection to Meta may not be an issue, said David Larcker, a professor at Stanford University. “Although I know of no way to figure this out from public data, I would guess that many executives and board members trade in the shares of their competitors,” he said.
Twitter, while far smaller than Facebook, is considered a Meta rival, competing for digital advertising dollars and users’ posts. When Twitter’s board was evaluating whether to take Musk’s bid, they looked at the recent decline in Meta’s valuation as part of their deliberations, according to a person familiar with the matter. They ultimately concluded that the billionaire’s offer was fair.
Andreessen isn’t the only partner at his venture firm whose existing relationships may get more complicated after Musk’s deal is completed. Vineeta Agarwala, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz who invests in biotech and medical companies, is married to Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal. It’s unclear if Agrawal will remain as CEO under Twitter once Musk takes over, but Musk has previously said that he made his bid for Twitter in part because he didn’t have faith in the company’s current leadership.
On Thursday, CNBC reported that Musk plans to take over as CEO for a short time after the deal closes.
New Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal raises free-speech concerns
Some critics fear Twitter’s new CEO has a worse record on free speech than his predecessor —given his “terrifying” public statements on the issue, an “appalling” new rule implemented on his first day on the job, and a major executive restructuring Friday.
The concern is that Parag Agrawal’s leadership will bring even more restrictions to the site than Jack Dorsey’s — who infamously censored The Post over its Hunter Biden email exposés, banned President Trump and suspended former Customs and Border Patrol Commissioner Mark Morgan for tweeting favorably about the border wall — actions Dorsey later admitted were a “mistake.”
“You’re talking about an organization where free speech is integral to what they do. I’ve seen the left talk about how this appears likely that Twitter is going to endorse the more European view of free speech — which is not free speech,” said Dan Gainor, of the conservative nonprofit watchdog Media Research Center.
In a 2018 interview, Agrawal said Twitter should “focus less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed.”
“Where our role is particularly emphasized is who can be heard,” he went on. “And so increasingly our role is moving towards how we recommend content … how we direct people’s attention.”
Wikipedia co-founder and Internet theorist Larry Sanger slammed the comments.
“So this is how he feels about free speech. Of course. Another Silicon Valley jerk engaging in doublespeak, using what should be an open public square for manipulation and indoctrination,” he fumed in a tweet.
Naysayers didn’t get much solace on Agrawal’s first full day, when Twitter announced it would no longer allow posting images or videos of people without their consent.
Media theorist and CUNY Journalism School professor Jeff Jarvis said the move could negatively “affect how journalism is done on Twitter.”
“If we go overboard in a moral panic,” he said, “it can have an impact on freedom of expression in general.”
“The woman who took the video of George Floyd, if she had not been able to post that video, that case would not have happened and that murderer would have gotten away with it. That concerns me,” Jarvis added.
Gainor called the new restrictions “very alarming.”
“I’m bothered because Jack Dorsey, for all of his flaws, he came from Twitter when Twitter cared about free speech. He had to be dragged into the safe-space era. This guy is new. And based on the actions they’ve taken on day one, he’s already there,” Gainor said.
Councilman Joe Borelli (R-SI) said the new policy was “appalling.”
“People should have the right to make the most cruel and obscene images of me, without my consent. … Twitter sounds like they would have banned burning the statue of George III,” he said.
A Twitter rep told The Post in a statement that images and videos of people at large events “would generally not violate this policy.” It’s not clear how posts will be reviewed under the vague diktat, which the rep said was intended to protect “women, activists, dissidents, and members of minority communities.”
On Wednesday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted a meme portraying Agrawal as Josef Stalin — and Dorsey as Nikolai Yezhov, a secret-police official who was executed and edited out of a famous photo with the Soviet premier.
The rep didn’t comment on whether Musk’s tweet featuring Agarwal’s likeness violated the policy — or on Agrawal’s plans for speech on the platform generally.
And on Friday, Agrawal restructured the leadership team, according to securities filings. Under the changeup, the company’s current engineering and design leads will leave the company, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Little is known about the political views of the mostly behind-the-scenes software engineer, who replaced co-founder Dorsey on Monday. At 37, he’s the youngest CEO of any firm in the S&P 500.
Born in Rajasthan, India, Agrawal studied computer science at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. He earned his PhD at Stanford University and joined Twitter in 2011 to work on its advertising tech.
Agrawal will get a $1 million salary, $1.5 million “target” bonus, “golden parachute”-style executive severance plan — and $12.5 million in Twitter stock, according to securities filings.
He didn’t broach on free-speech or politics in an introductory email to employees. “The world is watching us right now, even more than they have before. Lots of people are going to have lots of different opinions about today’s news,” he wrote.
What Elon Musk Said To A Tweet On Parag Agrawal, Other Indian Tech CEOs
New Delhi:
Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Monday gave a shout out to Indian talent in America after Parag Agrawal was appointed the chief executive officer of Twitter.
“USA benefits greatly from Indian talent!” Mr Musk said in a tweet.
The entrepreneur was replying to a tweet on how Indian-origin persons are now at the helm of some of the top tech companies like Microsoft, Google and IBM.
USA benefits greatly from Indian talent!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 29, 2021
Mr Agrawal, 37, is the latest Indian-origin person to head a major US-based tech company, following the likes of Google-parent Alphabet’s CEO Sundar Pichai and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
On Monday, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey announced that he would be leaving the company. Mr Dorsey steered the social network during the tumult of Donald Trump’s presidency and surviving an activist investor’s ouster bid in 2020.
Mr Agrawal takes over the reins of Twitter at a time when the company is looking to steer towards growth and away from free speech battles.
He joined Twitter in 2011 and became the Chief Technical Officer in 2017. In his message to the staff, Mr Dorsey said that Parag Agrawal has been behind every critical decision and has helped turn the company around.
“He leads with heart and soul, and is someone I learn from daily. My trust in him as our CEO is bone deep,” Mr Dorsey said about Mr Agrawal.