Pivot - Has Musk Crossed a Red Line? Plus: Uber’s Superapp, and Career Advice for Grads

Episode Date: April 8, 2022

Stock buys, joining the board, edit buttons, polls: Kara and Scott Discuss everything Elon and Twitter. Also, Uber’s looking to create a superapp. Plus, a listener question on startup culture, and Wins and Fails. Send us your Listener Mail questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or via Yappa, at nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and say you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

And I have a sandwich named after me at Warner Media. You want to know what it's called? Oh, my God. It's not even a joke. This is the truth. In the Warner cafeteria at Hudson Yards, you can order the Galloway Stelter sandwich. So this brings up a host of questions. One, why did they do it after a turkey club?

Because Daddy, it's a church picnic and Daddy brings the egg salad. Uh-huh. Okay. And two, why did they pair me with Brian Stelter? That I don't understand. That was inexplicable to me. Do they not have enough sandwich ideas that they cannot give you a separate sandwich? Yeah, I can't get my own sandwich?

I mean, I would have settled for a condiment, like a Brian Stelter with a little Galloway on it. What would your sandwich be? It wouldn't have been a turkey club. You're so not a turkey club. You're so not a turkey club. I haven't had a turkey club since, I don't know. Like bacon? Like whatever.

Club sandwich feels very white to me. I feel triggered. Yeah, mine would be a tuna sandwich on rye. That would be mine. So yesterday, I'm at Warner doing B-roll, you know, me walking around trying to be funny and likable. Yeah, thanks, TV guy. Thanks for the info. Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, the walk-around stuff. And then I learned that on Google, B-roll. All right. And I said, literally, I see Brian Stelter and I yell, hey, Brian, and I'm not exaggerating. He ran for me. I'm already like, I'm already persona non grata. I haven't even been there a week. That's funny. But let me just tell you, that's a surprise because Brian's one of the friendliest people I know, honestly. Literally ran for me. I'm not exaggerating. He saw me and, like, started to smile like, oh, maybe it's a friend. And then he realized who I was and he ran into the elevator.

All right, I'm going to find out. I'm going to run this one down. Do you know Brian? I know everybody. He's very smart. I will find out what happened. I know everybody. I had breakfast this morning with Casey Newton and Ben Smith.

So it was like at a Greek diner in Chicago. So I know everybody. I had breakfast this morning with Casey Newton and Ben Smith. So it was like at a Greek diner in Chicago. So I know everybody. That's called you walking into your garage. Let me guess, Ben is renting the outhouse? That's where they're starting Semaphore at my house. No, no. All right. We got a lot to talk about, Scott Galloway. You were away for a very critical news event, which everybody was like, what the fuck? All right. But luckily, we had George Hahn come in and play you in the movie. Very quickly, Uber is creating a super app, another super app coming. We've talked about super apps many times. It will add trains, buses, car rentals, even flights to the app in the UK this year.

They won't supply the travel services, but they'll have software integrations with companies who do. but how software integrations with companies who do. Dara talked about this many years ago in an interview with me, that Uber would be your transportation app, essentially, for everything. Like, you're in the subway, you do this and that. So it's just smart, don't you think? I think Dara should be thought of as one of the bigger, bolder strategic thinkers in tech right now. I mean, if you think about it, it's substantially down.

It's basically been cut in half since its 52-week high. And I think he recognized when he showed up that we're not going to get where we need to be, hauling people around in the back seats. So do you know they get the majority of their revenue now from delivering food, not people? I think that's incredible. And freight. You know, I think they're freight, but I've met a bunch of their freight people, that kind of stuff. Logistics is really what they should be in. Well, I'm getting stuff. I'll order stuff online and Uber will show up and deliver it,

or an Uber driver. So I said seven years ago at DLD that Amazon was under threat because I thought Uber would be the last mile threat that eroded Amazon's differentiation and everyone laughed and I was wrong. But I wonder if Uber might end up being this incredible last mile fulfillment service that a lot of people take advantage of. He talked about it extensively in the first interview I did with him after he was CEO, this idea.

And much undercut, and he's always undercut the car service because they have a hard time making money from that. You know what I mean? Like they just don't. And so never have, and he's always undercut the car service because they have a hard time making money from that. You know what I mean? Like, they just don't. And so, never have, never probably will, unless it's very pricey, and then that limits growth. And so, it's an interesting thing. And I think it's smart. I'd like to have one app where everything is, where you just point it.

Like, I was in the subway in New York, and I'm like, do I have this app? Do I have that app? And opening them up is a big pain. I would certainly, just like we talked about with, you know, Apple being your subscription service for things, Uber's another thing I probably would add a lot of stuff onto in terms of transportation. Or Lyft, but probably Uber. The yoga babble of the year is Web3, which is just all this nonsense about decentralization by people who want to centralize power and wealth. But the real business word or term of the year is going to be super app.

And that is basically an operating system that brings together social payments and transportation. And that is what Uber is trying to be. And there are super apps in India and there are super apps in China. In China, quite a few. And whoever can develop kind of that Swiss army knife approach to the internet in the U.S. will likely be one of the most valuable companies in the world. And Apple and Google have a vested interest in not letting anyone establish super app status. Apple now offers me a lot more stuff, I've noticed.

Like, your car is here, your this is here. It's offering me more help without my actually soliciting it, which is interesting. But I would definitely use it. I was actually welcoming a couple of things they were doing. And a little bit nervous about why they suddenly were doing it. We'll do anything to avoid pain. And part of pain is figuring out something different that we don't immediately enjoy. So, for example, I used caviar.

When I'm in New York, I basically don't turn on a flame unless it's to light a now legal substance in New York. But I haven't cooked. I order everything. And I used to use caviar, and I like caviar. And my favorite restaurant, one of my favorite restaurants, Jack's Wife Frida, is all of a sudden not on Caviar. So for shits and giggles, I typed in Uber Eats. And what do you know? Uber Eats is probably Uber has come in with some of that ridiculously cheap capital and formed an exclusive with Jack's Wife.

So the great thing is it's all on the same operating system. They already have my credit card, and it was super easy and super fast. And they all want to be the same thing. They all want to be the digital operating system, or they all want to be the operating system for your digital life. And the thing about super apps is they generally command a lot more of your time without having to pay the biggest toll booths in history, Facebook, Google, and Amazon, because you go directly to Uber or Uber Eats once they command a big portion of your digital life. So the race for super app, I think, is about to break out. I thought that Tencent

might acquire Twitter and immediately establish two legs of the super app stool. But right now, in terms of a threat to Apple and Google, in terms of quote-unquote super app status, Dara's making a very bold move here. So I think it's really interesting. It makes sense. He's got to get all these, you know, every one of these subway systems has its own app now and everything else. And so he's got to get them into that.

But I certainly would use their app for transportation. I'm not sure. Maybe delivery. Or even like parking. Have you done parking off these apps? Parking. It's such a pain. I don't want to download an app. They're okay. Yeah, but figure out what spot it's in. It should just be Uber.

You should just pull up Uber and it should geolocate where you are. And it says how long and you say two hours and boom, it's done. Transportation logistics. And flights. I might buy flights from Airbnb. That's the interesting point, Cara. As always, you're zeroing in. You're teaching me, Scott. What can I say? If Uber can become Airbnb, watch, Airbnb, I think, should purchase, should acquire Lyft. Because at some point, Lyft shareholders are going to go, okay, the market leader can't make money. I like it. So there's no way we're going to. But Airbnb needs to become Uber before Uber becomes Airbnb. And it's going to be much easier. It'd be much easier for Airbnb to disrupt Uber's business than the other way around.

Yeah, we do do a lot of a la carte in our app usage. It shouldn't be that way. Anyway, we need a bundle, rundle perhaps. Anyway, let's get to the big story. Elon Musk, Twitter board member. Musk says he wants to make significant improvements to Twitter Let's get to the big story. Elon Musk, Twitter board member. Musk says he wants to make significant improvements to Twitter in the coming months. In his first act as board member, he asked his followers if they wanted an edit button, the resounding yes. Twitter says they've been working on an edit feature since last year, whatever.

It's called Edit Trace Twitter, and everyone else does it. It's really easy, apparently, according to techies. And there are new questions about Musk's Twitter stock buy, obviously, including when he purchased and how. There's been several really interesting stories about how he reported he just changed his status from passive to active. He just refilled out his form, which was a little late. So you've been involved with Twitter. Scott, let's hear, I'm going to let you rant here for a little bit, because I did a show with Casey. I've written about it, talked about it with George. So let's hear your take. People are dying to hear your take. So just some backstory. I acquired what for me was a lot of Twitter shares, wrote a letter to the board. Basically, my strategy has been entirely,

or my recommended strategy has been entirely the opposite of what Elon is recommending. One, I think they need tighter moderation. I think this First Amendment bullshit is bullshit. And that they need to move to a subscription model. For example, Elon Musk has 80.8 million followers. General Motors will spend $2 billion on advertising this year. Tesla has much greater awareness, much stronger brand, because one, it performs, two, it delivers on time, it's got incredible products, and three, they have an individual who has this Jesus Christ-like following, and he uses this channel called Twitter to get unbelievable reach. It is worth, if Twitter turned around and said, hey, Elon, we're going to charge you $10 million a month to maintain

your account. He would make ad hominem attacks on board members, take polls, threaten to start a new network. And then you know what he'd do? He'd pay it because it would be a bargain. And so basically clean up, get rid of all the bots. Then the only reason they're there is to spread misinformation such that Twitter salespeople can lie to advertisers and inflate their numbers, which is total bullshit. They have been a 10-year experiment in how you cannot compete with Facebook and Google. So by two, that they have too little moderation, meaning it's too much of a free-for-all, which is what Elon wants. Look at his feed. You want to know what a must Twitter looks like? When he made the announcement,

his feed was dominated by crypto scams and daily collar-like whack jobs, misusing the term First Amendment. That's because they think he's on there. He's on nobody's side, but that's another issue. So when you were involved, you abandoned your effort, correct? Let's disclose here. You bought a lot. So I bought the stock at 32 and I sold it at around 56. So I actually sold it higher than where it is now. And everyone is saying, oh, you're just angry because you got out too early. Actually, people forget. The stock was at 70 bucks. It was at 74 just like six months ago. So I mean, granted it went up. So anyways, this is what, so I have a backstory here. I've advised some hedge funds around this and- Were you involved with Elliott? Just explain what Elliott, so people don't know. There was another

active investor, activist, well, active or activist. So basically an activist firm called me and said, tomorrow morning we're announcing we've signed your letter with a billion-dollar pen. And they put on a master class on how to be effective in addition to being right. And they got board seats in record time because this ridiculous notion that they could have a part-time CEO and underperform the market consistently was getting old in the eyes of shareholders. So they knew they were all wet. They got a bunch of board seats. I don't know. I haven't talked to Elliot about this in a while,

so I don't know if they've sold their shares, if they still have them. But effectively, in the last month, the stock touched 32. Actually, in about two months ago. Get lower. In about two months ago, I began talking to hedge funds again about taking a stake and said it's time to go subscription and it's time to clean up the platform. And here's where I made my mistake. Okay. I started talking to lawyers and figuring out things like what are our Hart-Scott-Rodino requirements if we have multiple parties and one capital source

has more than 50%. What would be the timing of our disclosures? If there's compensation in inter-party agreements, how does that affect our triggers in terms of filing deadlines? And I literally spent weeks trying to figure this shit out with some very smart people at other hedge funds. And here's the thing. I'm the fucking idiot because it clearly doesn't matter. Yeah. This is now bridges to where Elon is. Elon began acquiring shares at the end of January. He blew through a lot of stop signs, but go ahead. On March 14th, he crossed 5%. By the way, and tweeting about the topic, about whether there should be a different Twitter. Taking polls, making recommendations about policy. And on March 14th, his stake blew by 5%. Now, what does that mean?

The SEC, once you blow by 5% ownership, wants you to publicly disclose within 10 days that you are a 5% owner. Now, why do they do this? Because they don't want, one, creeping takeovers. About 20, 30 years ago, a shareholder came in and quietly acquired 51% of Macy's and then popped up and said, hi, I own you. And Macy's shareholders never got a takeover premium. So when Elon was acquiring additional shares after March 24th at an average of $35 to 38 bucks a share, the people who were selling their shares to him

didn't know that the company had been put in play by the wealthiest man in the world. And as a result, they sold their shares to him for 39 bucks a share instead of $50 a share, where the stock traded once the market knew the world's wealthiest man was taking a large stake, which means, according to the SEC, Elon Musk owes every shareholder that sold their shares for less than $50 between March 24th and when he disclosed his stake. Right, which is about $146 million. In other words, he got his shares for $140 million less than if he had done what every other activist, including yours, truly has done, believing it's the law. Or every shareholder that sold shares for less than they were worth at that time. He's asking for forgiveness rather than permission.

He blew through it. He blew through it. Well, isn't that adorable? Well, he does that. Listen, the SEC does nothing with this guy. Like, they don't. So at some point, like, why should—I mean, he's learned the lesson is they're not going to do anything. They're a paper tiger.

That is disappointing and true. I agree. But the fine is not very much. I was reading a lot up on this. And it's a couple hundred thousand dollars, which he can afford. So, you know, at some point, just like I said with taxes, no, he doesn't pay enough taxes, neither do a lot of rich people, but this is the law. And so in this case, he's stretching it. He doesn't break the law. He doesn't break the law with his taxes. He's breaking the law here.

He is breaking the law. Except it's a parking ticket. I agree with you. I think the SEC in this instance, and I want to come back to him acquiring these shares, this is what happened. This is how sophomoric or incredibly arrogant these people are. They want to pretend it's their idea. So Jack Dorsey and Farag Argarwal come out and say, we've been talking to Elon for a while about joining the board. And then some lawyer in the room who they clearly didn't have the wisdom to have in the room before they started publicly saying we've been talking to him about a board member goes, you realize that it's the definition of being an active investor. And he has to refile his G to a D, meaning he was supposed to disclose this. 13. This is the 13D.

13D versus 13G. G says you're passive. I'm not going to do anything. says you're passive. I'm not going to do anything. When you start taking polls, making recommendations, and are talking to management about a board seat, that is literally the definition of an active investor. And Twitter is either, their general counsel is either so stupid, or they didn't think to have a lawyer in the room when they started putting out tweets saying, we've been talking to Elon about his board seat. And then some lawyer raised his hand and goes, Jesus Christ, guys, you're basically saying he's been

violating securities laws for the last week and a half. And so what you have, what you have is the world's wealthiest man. This is America. Hi, let me assault you. Now give me an award. Let me buy shares for $150 million to a half a billion dollars less from shareholders that don't have the information they are legally mandated to have so I can buy shares on the cheap. And I think I can get away with it. I think I can absolutely get away with it. At this moment, he is getting away with it, however you think. I mean, one of the things is he's going to say it's an accident. There's all kinds – again, I read a lot on this. It's very hard to do anything about what he did.

And with Twitter, maybe more so. But they certainly wanted to keep him in a controlled position before it got out of hand, right? Before he started to really attack them. And so that's why they assuaged him and gave him a board seat. They got, you know, that he can only buy up to 15% of the company or close to 15% of the company if he's on the board and 90 days after if he leaves. So they got some control of him in advance. And I think that's what they were trading here. Instead of having him screaming on the outside, they have him screaming on the inside, essentially. Well, let's talk about what this could mean for the company, right?

Yes. So let's talk about that. Okay. So he's flown through a law that's not going to really hinder him. So go ahead. So I want to come back to that because I actually disagree. But anyways, I do think, I think, one, at a minimum, there are shareholder lawsuits being drawn up here like there's no tomorrow. Well, that is true.

That is true. And also, I think Gensler is sick of being called flaccid and a wimp and neutered. And at some point, he has to actually go. I actually think Musk has crossed a red line here. That's going to be my prediction. I'll come back to it. I'm going to go opposite of you on that. Let's go glasses half full here.

Okay. He is the most brilliant product engineer of this in the last century. If anyone who can get us to Mars faster, land two rockets concurrently on two barges, and inspire the EV market, is – if he brings a fraction of that product genius to Twitter – and by the way, it's very hard to dictate product strategy from the board because you need to be around focusing on the little things. But if he's able to just even influence it a little bit around product strategy, it could be absolutely wonderful for Twitter. That's the bull case. That's the bull case. The bear case- And he'll cause attention to it. Let me just add to it before you go on. He also brings attention to it. People like him or not like him. He's got fans and detractors, and they're equally inspired by him in some fashion, negative or positively. So he

attracts attention to it, making it a little hotter. But go ahead. This notion of censorship and violation of First Amendment is, I now believe they're just gaslighting everybody. That anybody that knows anything about the law knows that the First Amendment is a Congress-compassional law that inhibits free speech. This is a private company. If you put enough pressure on Twitter to not distribute hate speech, to not distribute vaccine misinformation, then to a certain extent, you are violating free speech. Free speech is also that you don't have to publish information when you are a private company because your speech is a function of the voice and editorial you put out, which is not only a function of what you have on your platform, but what you don't have.

This would be no different than me saying to Tesla Radio. Him saying that. Yeah. It's insane. It doesn't... Well, he called it... It's interesting because I took issue. He called it a de facto public square.

I said it's a de facto private square is what it is actually. Okay. And it's a square. No, but I'm saying he's making that typical argument. He is in all his tweets. But go ahead. It is for him. It lives rent-free in his mind.

But it doesn't appear that this company has a monopoly on social media. They do not. It's a pimple on the elephant. It is the pimple of which Elon Musk lives inside, though. It is very important to him, but the notion somehow, this isn't the public square. Like you said, it's absolutely the private square. It's a very small private square is what it is. I know that in my column today. What could be very dangerous here or unfortunate is that this whole – Twitter could digress into this cesspool of far-right, daily-collar-like people talking about the First Amendment and spreading hate speech. They could continue to let bots run unfettered and spread misinformation.

And then on the far left, people are going to feel like they have to be the public access channel in Wokistan and just be outraged all the fucking time. And the algorithms love both of those sides, extremist sides, because it creates enragement engagement so they can lie to Nissan about how much engagement they get. Well, advertisers don't like this. And we continue to tear at the fabric of American discourse. This is terrible. All right. But here's the deal. I think on one hand, as you said, his product stuff could be great.

Like the edit button, pushing it forward, I'm happy he's screaming because they don't listen to us, right? Me and Casey and you have been screaming about it for a long time. Everybody has. I mean, honestly, it's literally – I finally went to tech people. They're like, oh, yeah, it's easy. It's not – don't believe them. It's called edit trace. And so if they're worried about that.

So one of the things that's interesting here is whether, if he's good on the product stuff, most people are on both sides of this debate of this first minute. It's all about Trump, whether Trump's going to get back on. That's right. For some reason, for some, it's just because Trump. And so for some reason, they think Elon has the power to do this. He does not at this moment in time. He could if he owned the whole company, I guess. The second thing is, and I'd love to know what you think of this, Twitter was going to have to, though they permanently banned him on January, permanently is the word they used. That could be changed.

Permanent means permanent, but nonetheless, you could change your rules. They were going to face this pressure anyway, Elon or not, if Trump becomes a candidate, and certainly if he won an election again. And so Twitter was going to, there was going to be a come to Donald moment for this company, even if they permanently banned him with or without Elon. Twitter is a media company. Key to being a media company is you make editorial decisions and have a voice. And they decided that if we get rid of this one account after several warnings, we can

clean up a third of election misinformation, which not only takes down the temperature on the platform, but also we as board members are supposed to be fiduciaries and we are supposed to be representing at some point the Commonwealth. And by kicking one account off, a third of election misinformation went away overnight. They have absolutely the right to put them back on. That's their decision. Even if you were to make the reach, and it's just not true that it was a First Amendment issue, the First Amendment is not absolute. You are not allowed to engage in speech that creates an imminent threat of violence. And when the president is organizing an insurrection that results in death, then even under the First Amendment, they could kick him off.

But they're not the government. I went back and read it again, and it's quite persuasive. They persuasively make that case without even – you should go back and read it on January 8th because I did yesterday. But this is what Elon – I'm sorry, go ahead. He can't change it. He can't change it. And Lauren Bovert, he can't put him back on. He can advocate for it.

He can tweet about it, but he can't make them do it. And he can't make them change. Now, what I find interesting here – I have two questions for you, Scott. One is how close do you think he's affiliated with the CEO who's wanted to kind of do this and Jack, who was somewhat forced out? You know, some people, he said he quit. There's, you know, it goes back and forth. But how affiliated he is with them, that's one, which could be interesting. And then how happy are you to see the stock go up? And sorry to see why, because you had talked about this, obviously. That's the reason you were, you know, wandering around buying up shares and dealing with activists.

Okay, so first off, I don't think Elon really cares about Twitter. I think Elon cares about being in the news every 48 hours. I think him and Trump are more similar than people believe. And let's talk about the stock price. It was great in the short term. It's gotten back to where it was about three months ago. But here's the thing. This is why it could be bad for the stock. He's taken away the takeover premium because he now has a blocking vote. And that means if Salesforce or PayPal or, I don't know, name the payment platform or Disney, nobody wants to deal with the errant missives of a guy who spent the equivalent of an average household's income on a laptop to buy his steak. They have to go deal with this manic, unpredictable guy. And so basically, this is – look at what happened to the stock.

This is fucking fascinating, Cara. It ripped when it saw that the wealthiest man in the world was buying shares. And you know when it started to go down and it's still going down? When they announced he was going on the board. Because the market goes – Because he's in control. Benioff isn't going to buy this thing now. Right.

A 9% stake is much more powerful than people think. Here's the bottom line. To get control of a company, you need at least 40% of the shares to show up and vote for an acquisition of sale. Because 20% doesn't show up. It's pensioners or widowers who don't show up to the annual meeting. When you have 9%, you have about 22% of the votes before anyone starts hiring proxy solicitors. So it's effectively – and in addition, this guy could go buy another 6% by snapping his fingers. It's literally a rounding error.

And it kind of goes back to a larger conversation about how power corrupts and whether we should have people worth $200 billion in this country. But I'll let Elizabeth Warren make that case. But what you have here is the takeover premium has been starched out of this company. No one can take it over. In addition, look at his history. No individual other than Tim Cook has shepherded a greater increase in shareholder value than Elon Musk. Except he doesn't bring value to his interests. And this isn't interest.

This isn't his full-time gig. Whether it's Dogecoin, whether it's GameStop, whether it's Etsy that he tweeted about, whether it's Bitcoin. He ultimately loses interest in these things and then they crash back to the same level or below. Elon doesn't bring value to these things. This is his great love. Twitter is his great love. Elon doesn't bring value to these things. This is his great love. Twitter is his great love. Elon doesn't bring value to these things. He brings volatility.

And this is, I don't- That's a really good point. So I do not believe, I don't believe he coordinates with anyone. Think about, and part of being his success is his megalomania. You're the only person I know that can name anybody else other than Elon that works at SpaceX, Boring, or Tesla. If there's a mic involved or a tweet or a press release, it is pretty clear at any of those companies, it is all Elon all the time.

And anyone who speaks to the press other than me gets fired on the spot. That has clearly been communicated to everybody at all three firms. So the notion that he's coordinating and cooperating with Jack and the new CEO, I don't think so. I don't think so. There's a bunch of really strong-minded people on that board. This is a really— I would say Egon is his biggest foe, or maybe not. I don't know. I don't know. Egon, the thing about—I don't know Egon, but the thing about private equity guys, their job is to take people golfing and be really likable because they're looking to do friendly deals with people. I think Egon was basically saying, well, if things get bad enough and enough people like me enough, I'll take this thing private and make a shit ton of money. So private equity guys usually don't like to stir it up. It's hedge funds and activists that stir it up. It's a strong board.

Egon is very interesting. Egon is very interesting. You know him better than I do. I don't know him. Yeah, I know him very well. He's very aggressive, I would say, and fascinating and interesting to talk to. Let me just read some of the board members here. Brett Taylor, who is also the co-CEO of Salesforce. Co-CEO of Salesforce. Which you have Parekh. You have, these are just people that I find interesting. You have Egon, who's a very strong-minded person and whip smart and not your typical

hedge fund or whatever person. He's really quite intellectual in a weird way. Martha Lane Fox, who does a lot of things. Omid Kordestani, who used to be at Google. He was former executive chairman. There's Dr. Fei-Fei Li, who's a really amazing AI expert. She's amazing. Elon now.

Patrick Pichette, who used to be the CFO of Google, which was, you know, he was a very integral early executive there. David Rosenblatt has been sitting around, you know, David, and he started, he was also at Google in ad sales, and he's been doing first dibs and others. And so, it's a really interesting, Robert Zolnick, who used to be the chairman of the board of Allian Bernstein. There's just, there's more. There's a whole bunch of people. And so it's a big board and very, I don't think Dr. Fei-Fei Li gets pushed around by Elon, interestingly. I don't think Patrick Pichette does. David, I don't think is, you know, a weak person.

And you know what I mean? Like, it'll be interesting. Brett, of course, has, you know, has his way around a boardroom. So, and Egon certainly is a tough mother. So, it's an interesting, it'll be an interesting dynamic on the board now, given how much of a goat rodeo Twitter has been in the past. But we'll see. Well, look, this is a board of impressive people. But there is a weird dynamic that develops.

But there is a weird dynamic that develops. You have the world's wealthiest man, someone who can be difficult when he wants to and, quite frankly, could show up with 15 percent or sell his shares. And this guy isn't afraid to start insulting other board directors publicly on Twitter. I don't think he thinks traditional decorum applies to him. So he will command an even larger space than he occupies on this board. And it could go one of two ways. If he's able to elegantly coach the CEO and folks in his spare time around product, it could be amazing. And you said bring attention to the company. I personally think his strategy is exactly the wrong strategy. This company needs to clean up the platform and move to

subscription, which he won't like because it would mean him paying a lot of money. So I think his strategy is incredibly flawed. And if you want to know what Twitter looks like under the guise of Elon Musk, just go look at the comments after he made his announcement. It's literally a cesspool underneath his name of bots and crypto fraud. But you're right. This is an impressive board. But the stock has had the takeover premium taken out of it. Yeah, I get that. But is it a meme stock now? I don't know.

That's a really interesting thought. I don't think it is. It's not. Here's the thing. I love Dogecoin. It's up 50%. Oh, it's a hustle. Then it's down.

I like Etsy. Up 9%. Then it's down. GameStonk, referring to GameStop. Company's up 50. Then it's down. I like Etsy. Up 9%. Then it's down. GameStonk, referring to GameStop. Company's up 50%. Then it goes down. He doesn't bring value. He brings volatility unless he's purely focused as an engineer on something.

I like the value volatility. But I think, listen, you know what? You and I should have, when I was having breakfast with Ben and Casey, we were like, oh, we should have done a Dow and bought Twitter now. Like, it is kind of a move. Like, I would have done this if I were him. I would have, like, run in there and grabbed it. Well, you're talking to someone who is spending a ton of time with hedge funds in the last 60 days trying to pull together a billion dollars to go do it.

What someone much smarter with much deeper pockets than me did. So, I'm a little bit sour grapes because when I saw, I mean, all of us got on the phone when this was announced and we're like, fuck, you know, because he was right. I mean, let's be honest. This was a gangster baller capitalist move. He looked at this thing and said, it's undervalued. I'm going to go buy a bunch of shares. Now, what happens next, Cara? And this is kind of my last question. This is my last question because I was there. May I just make a point? Sure. Musk will serve as class two director until 2024.

Technically, that prevents him from taking over complete control of Twitter's board. But that doesn't necessarily mean. And Ron Barron, CEO of Barron Capital and a Tesla bull called Musk's stake in Twitter, quote, meaningless. He could rally Twitter shareholders to vote his way, I guess. But they don't – I don't know if it'll ever, go ahead, finish your last thoughts. He's got a lot on his plate. My prediction, he gets bored with it. I think, I have served on seven public company boards. I always show up with a shit ton of ideas and what you ultimately find is they're not, you're not as smart as you thought and they're

not as dumb as you'd hoped. And it is very hard to dictate strategy and tactics and product from the board unless you're going to show up. I went on the board of Gateway Computer, and they had a marketing there that said, come have an office and help us. I was able to have a small amount of impact there. I just left the board of Panera. I have a lot of thoughts on subscription. I worked with the CMO. But at the end of the day, it's the CMO that makes the difference, not a director waving his arms and talking about rundles. And so what's going to happen here?

The steam, the mist will lift, and he will find something else to keep him in the news. Because guess what? You know what he's going to hate about being on this board? He has to shut the fuck up. He can't make big statements where he violates all sorts of Reg D. The fastest way to silence an activist, and this is what boards don't get, is put them on your board. Because the moment they're on your board, they have access to insider information and they're not allowed to go out and start

insulting the company or talk about the company. Yeah, but this is Elon. I think more significantly, he's not pushing around Dr. Fei-Fei Li or Egon Durbin. I don't see it. I don't see it. These are not Facebook board members, let's just say. The problem is they've been sitting here with a company that has underperformed itself forever. And let me just, my last thought, and then you have to have the last one, is this is a company that is a small company with a business that kind of sucks. And so as much as it has an outsized influence on our lives, and we think it looms large because we happen to like it, it's a brand of cigarette we like or whatever, it's an addiction for sure. It's not the big one. It's the small one. And so that's what you have

to realize. And so it's his little playground. And I think he loves it the way we do, in a weird way. He gets a lot of pleasure out of it. He gets a lot of enjoyment. And I think he loves it the way we do, in a weird way. He gets a lot of pleasure out of it. He gets a lot of enjoyment. And I think he's a rich person. And why not? It's not the stupidest. I was like, huh, that's interesting. I don't think, what's going to happen to it?

That's my last question for you. What do you, guess what's going to happen if you had to guess, if you had to predict. And then we can go into the next story. A lot of excitement. People will credit him with the edit button. He'll get distracted by the next big shiny thing when he's no longer allowed to be in the news every day because he's on the board. This company sits on top of a shitty business model.

If it had moved to subscription overnight, I think the thing could have been triple digits. They don't want to do that. That's ridiculous. There'll be a bunch of ridiculous arguments about censorship and First Amendment that is just a moot distraction. And then this is what happens. This is the real prediction. The SEC is coming for them, Cara. And I know you don't believe this, but this is why. Varsity Blues. There are thousands of rich people all over America. So he's Martha Stewart. He's more Martha Stewart. He's Aunt Becky.

He's Aunt Becky because here's the thing. There are tons of people who find ways to buy their kid's way into a private elite university. And the DOJ said, we've had enough of this. Let's put Aunt Becky and a bunch of TPG partners and high-profile people in prison, and it'll send a strong message. And the algebra of deterrence is very powerful. And the SEC is totally overwhelmed right now. Despite the fact they have 4,500 people, they only have a $2 billion budget, it is so hard for them to keep track of crypto and Web3. The money best spent for them right now would be to go after the most obvious market manipulator, the most obvious person who's committed basically securities fraud by not disclosing a stake.

And they can send a very strong message of algebra of deterrence by going after what people believe is the most powerful man. They could go after Twitter and say, you need to take his directorship away ASAP or we're no longer going to regulate you as a public company and try and trade on the NASDAQ. Gary Gensler, Gary Gensler, in my view, is going to do all the game theory here and say, we have limited wood. We will create more algebra of deterrence. And it's an easy case. We have to go after this guy. Otherwise, the SEC

is not even a paper tiger. It's paper fucking mache. Well, I think it is a paper mache. So that's the issue. I'm going to go take the opposite bet on... You don't think the SEC is going to grow a uterus is the bottom line.

I think he's a smart Trump or Trump's a dumb Elon. Trump's not Elon. Elon's so creative. I think he is painted as a villain Elon. Trump's not Elon. Elon's so creative. I think he is painted as a villain by many and has behaved badly all over the place. I think he is loved by people. I think it's going to be very hard, very hard to go after him.

And he's got a lot of things. He's Stark Industries. He is Iron Man. And so they talk about Teflon Man for Trump. I think Trump is in very serious trouble criminally. Elon Musk is Iron Man in a lot of ways. And I don't mean that as a joke, because I think some of these allegations of racism at the plants, which happened several years ago, issues. The stuff around COVID, you know, I had a beef with him and then his mother about this, about the COVID reaction he had. He says, the Senator Karen stuff with Elizabeth Warren seems just stupid to me. I don't think it's fatal. I just think it's juvenile. But there is something swaggering about him.

When I first heard it, I'm like, oh, Scott's going to be mad. Not because, you know, you don't like him or he called you an insufferable numbskull. It's because you're like, this is kind of cool what he did, right? And I think people think that of him. And so I think there's a lot more complexity in the SEC's strategy of going after him. I think it's not an easy lift for this guy. This is why they went after Milken. They're like, we have to send a message. He said, Milken was the beloved. We'll find out. This is my prediction. You're going to see a bevy of shareholder lawsuits come out in the next couple weeks.

Yeah. I mean, the shareholder plaintiff's attorneys are licking their chops. They're going to put out a notice saying, did you sell Twitter shares between March 24th and April 4th? And you entitled to compensation because you should have sold your shares for 50 bucks a share, not 39. And the SEC and Gensler are in a room right now, fly specking this out and all roads lead to the same thing. This is the highest profile, easiest way for the SEC to go. We're the sheriff and we're back in town. And that's what they're going to do. They're going to go after him.

You know who this is good for? You know who this is good for? Pivot. This is good for pivot. We get to talk about this. And we like to talk about this. I'm going to say this was a fantastically fascinating move by Elon. Oh, it's a gangster capitalist move.

But here's the thing. And there's a larger existential issue here, and that is government is meant to prevent a tragedy of the commons. It's meant to be more powerful than any individual.

The law is meant to be applied to all of us equally. That is the rule of law. The one thing that has created more economic value than anything in the world is probably fossil fuels. But number two are U.S.

markets that raise capital for corporations and innovation of corporations as recognized through access to capital markets. Those capital markets don't function unless you have protocols and a rule of fair play. And he is literally waving his middle finger in the face of this. And what I would say to Gary Gensler is until I hear from the SEC, my assumption is I don't need to do any of this filing shit you've been asking me to do for the last 20 years when I take a stake in a company. That you should publish a new set of rules and regs for billionaires. And that is not what America or the American government about.

This is a bigger question about who we are as a nation and what it means to be the government and represent all of us. Okay. All right. Okay. We have no, let me just say, oh, the right wing, he doesn't like you. He doesn't like the left wing. He's not your friend. He's not anybody's friend.

He's Elon's friend. Elon is Elon's friend. And he will do things that will surprise you. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll take a listener mail question about startup culture. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle. When you picture an online scammer, what do you see? For the longest time, we have these images of somebody sitting crouched over their computer with a hoodie on, just kind of typing away in the middle of the night. And honestly, that's not what it is anymore. That's Ian Mitchell, a banker turned fraud fighter. These days, online scams look more like crime syndicates than individual con artists. And they're making bank.

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You've got mail. Hi, Karen, Scott. My name's Christina, and I'm a senior at Cornell University studying genetics. I'm originally from the California Central Valley. I wanted to call and ask about working for a startup because I'm graduating and I'm looking for a job after graduation. And I know biotechnology is a sector that you guys think is going to be really important in the future. So I'm looking to work in biotech for the next two years. And I'm considering working for a company out of San Francisco that's a mid-to-advanced-based startup. But I know nothing about startup culture, and I know very little about what that would be like.

Given my immense respect for you guys, I'd really like your opinion. Alrighty. Thank you so much. I appreciate anything you have to say. Ah, the career counselors of Galloway and Swisher. You know, you know more about startups working. I mean, I've started a few startups myself. I love them. And I don't know anything much about biotech, except I know enough to be dangerous. But I would say, go for it. She sounds like a young woman, senior at Cornell. Go for it. Why not? You have nothing to lose at any point in your life on stuff like that. Scott, and you know what it's like to work for a startup, but you've often said, go to a bank or a big company too.

Well, we just romanticize entrepreneurship. If you are a pure economic animal and you have the kind of opportunities you're going to have as a young woman coming out of Cornell, the ultimate sweet spot in terms of risk to upside is to join a small company that's already got its A and B round done where some of the real risk around infant mortality has been starched out, but you're early enough to get a sizable equity stake. So sort of I would say between 30 and 200 employees on a risk-adjusted basis. Employees zero and one sucks. There's a lot of well-publicized stories of people becoming worth $100 billion. people becoming worth $100 billion. But for every one of those, there's 1,000 people who show up to Thanksgiving and are embarrassed because they got to pay. They lost $80,000 of their father-in-law's money. Startups are just really, really hard. But if you're – biotech is incredibly volatile

because it's so much – the company quintuples in value or goes to zero based on FDA trials. But if you can join a great startup as employee, call it 30 through 200, get a significant amount of equity, have you trust management startups, the culture, I'm kind of the wrong person to talk about culture because every time I walk into a big company, I'm like, I wouldn't survive a week here. And I walk around Warner, I walk around Google and I think, I couldn't last a week here. I know. I just don't have those skills.

Small companies— Don't fence Scott in, is how I would put it, correct? You know what? It's not skills. It's insecurity. I need to know what everything that's going on. I kind of need to have that transparency because my stalemate, the only job I've ever had was at Morgan Stanley. And my stalemate stayed at Morgan Stanley and is now vice chairman and has made, I'm considered a

successful entrepreneur and has made as much money as me with less volatility in his life. So working for a big organization, it sucks in some ways, but it has real upside. These platforms are powerful. But startups, what I would say the most rewarding things about startups is you do feel as if you're part of kind of a family. There's a sense of camaraderie with small organizations where you know everyone's name, where you really celebrate collective victories. I think they're a ton of fun. Also, do it while you're young, because quite frankly, you're not going to have time for dogs or kids in a startup. Also, do it while you're young because, quite frankly, you're not going to have time for dogs or kids in a startup. Startup is licensed to work 80 hours a week.

And being a startup founder means you work 100 hours a week and you sign the front of checks, not the back of checks. Whenever I've started a company, I get to come home and tell my partner, yeah, I'm working 100 hours a week and I need to put another $100,000 into the company. I mean, that's just not fun. And, oh, I don't know if it's going to work or not. Let me just say, Christine, I think you should do that when you're at a young age. Scott and I were just talking about some career stuff and everything like that. And part of me is like, if I can get to the same place with less work, I might want to do, you know what I mean? It's a really interesting, as you age, not just that, although, because you and I have both startup companies at advanced stages, right? So it's not like that, that we don't like to do it. But there is like a

sense of, just go for it. I think he's right. You say it's a mid to advanced stage startup. That seems just about right. And you could learn a lot there. At the same time, you could learn a lot at a BCG too. Like there's no bad choice for you coming out of Cornell in an excellent job market. In an excellent job market. The difficulty, which there are lots of statistics show, which is our guest earlier this week said, if you come out in a bad job market, your career suffers over the long term, no matter how you slice it. You're coming out in one of the best job markets there is. So there is no bad decision here, except what do you like to do, you know,

for someone who has an advanced degree and is working in biotech, which is fast growing. But a great degree from a great university, moving to the Bay Area, working for a biotech company, regardless of what happens, it's good to be her. Did you know, and just a quick aside, did you know in major metros now, women under the age of 30 with college degrees are now making more than their male counterparts? It's finally happened.

Oh, interesting. It's finally happened. Well, there's a talent deficit. There really just is for some reason. There's a real – that's going to change, obviously, over time. Cool. And in the next five years, get this. You want to hear a scary stat?

In the next five years, for every one male that graduates from college, there's going to be two females, two to one female to male college grads over the next five years. Anyways, good for her. You know the basic facts. Women are better. Oh, sorry. Did I say that out loud? Yeah. One of us can say that. I shouldn't say that. No, they're not. I have, no, I have 75% men, children. So, but, you know, I think, Christina, enjoy yourself. We're glad you like our opinion, really. We're not very good career counselors. Keep us posted.

Go invent drugs for prostatitis and erectile dysfunction that doesn't draw you out or give you a hangover. Get on the important stuff, Christina. TMI, Scott. TMI. You know, that's what I yell out now when I'm about to climax. I yell out, I'll have the Stelter Galloway sandwich. Is that sexy? I can't believe, literally Brian Stelter would talk to like- He wants nothing to do with me. He's the friendliest person I know. Like one of them,

he talks to every, hi, hi. He's like that. And then sent me an email saying, oh, heard you were in the building. Let's catch up some other time. That's literally like every woman I met in the nineties ghosting me. Oh, so he made the connection. He didn't say let's grab coffee. He like tried to say like, oh, sorry, we can't get together. Like we can get together. I'm in the building. I'm going to come find you. And then that was one of those moments where I'm like, oh, sorry, we can't get together. We can get together. I'm in the building. I'm going to come find you. And then that was one of those moments where I'm like, should I be stalking anchors in their own workplace? We'll see where it goes with CNN+,

which the New York Magazine, which you also work for, called Quibi. Oh, wait! Who's in episode two? Who's got the BIAG interview that's getting all this heat on Twitter? Yeah, me. That's right. Kara Swisher, episode two, No Mercy, No Malice on CNN Plu. I don't look good in that.

You should better make up. Anyway, you've got a question of your own. You'd like answers, send it our way. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

As a Fizz member, you can look forward to free data, big savings on plans, and having your unused data roll over to the following month. Every month at Fizz, you always get more for your money. Terms and conditions for our different programs and policies apply. Details at Fizz.ca. Okay, Scott, give us this week's wins and fails and make it snappy. Okay, fails. Despite all the hype, the SEC is coming from Musk. The stock's going to go sideways because the takeout premium has been starched out and he's going to get bored with it. In Ukraine, it's just apocalyptic. Crimes against civilians, mass graves, intentionally slaughtering civilians, torture are war crimes.

Everyone's been saying that a no-fly zone starts World War III. You know what starts World War III? Genocide and appeasement. I'm up for, I believe we need to take real risks here to push back on what is taking place there. Another fail, a near total ban on abortions in Oklahoma, except, quote, open quote, except when the health of the mother is threatened in an emergency. Even the Mormon church is more lenient than this, allowing for abortion, one, if the health of the mother is in danger, doesn't need to be an emergency, two, in cases of rape, in cases of incest. So this is where the Republican Party is.

They've gone right of the Mormon church. And just some quick abortion stats, 60% of women who get abortions already have children. And the top reason they cite is lack of finances and guess what? Male abandonment. So all of these white guys in the Republican Party who are so vehement against abortion, if they're really serious about reducing abortion, and by the way, it has dropped dramatically. It used to be 29 women per thousand. Now it's 13. If they're really serious about reducing abortion, they need to do two things. They need to reinstate the child tax credit and they need to encourage their other male brothers to be better men. of terminated pregnancies. And this Oklahoma law is scary and doesn't get enough attention because we're so busy talking about, as we should be, genocide and fucking the Martian going on, buying a bunch of Twitter. Anyways, another fail, lack of financial literacy cost Americans $350 billion last year, overdraft fees, high interest rate loans, only two-thirds of Americans 15 to 18 years old passed a financial literacy test in a recent poll by the Financial Educators Council. I think we need to get serious about creating some level of financial literacy among high school seniors because it ends up

costing them the rest of their lives and creating an extra downward spiral into poverty if you don't understand basic interest rates and basic financial literacy. My wins. I apologize. I have so many here. Oh, my God. Keep going. Quick, quick, quick. Clarissa Ward, the war correspondent, has a one-and-a-half-and-four-year-old child. She was on with Anderson Cooper on his parenting show on CNN+. I saw. It was nice. Said she's grateful to support her husband, grandma, and grandpa, and nannies. Teamwork takes a village. And she's a journalist doing important work documenting war crimes of Putin such that he can be convicted, which he should be.

Lindsay Adario, who you've talked about, the NYT photojournalist, took striking images, took pictures of striking images in Ukraine. She's a lovely person, too. A family shot a few feet from her, risking her own life to document these war crimes. And it's important that we document these war crimes, and they are war crimes. A big winner, in my view, Mitt Romney. Also, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins voting to confirm Katenji Jackson. You know what the danger of this polarization in Twitter and Facebook algorithms and gerrymandering?

When Ronald Reagan nominated Sandra Day O'Connor to the Supreme Court, which was a historic nomination, you know what the vote in the Senate was to confirm her? 99 to zero. Now, where are we? Another historic nomination of the most qualified associate justice in history. We managed to get three Republicans. Mitt Romney is the same one in the Republican Party now. So kudos to Mitt. And then I just want to end on a light note. I will end here. I think the silly things that family did for April Fool's Day, things like a bag of M&Ms filled with grapes. On Twitter. find time to bring joy to their children. I'm trying to do fun things for my kids when they come home from school, treasure hunts and practical jokes, because they remember that stuff the rest of their lives. So my big win is to silly things from parents. Yeah, they sometimes don't like it. I wanted to take my son, one of my son's birthday is next

week, and he's turning 17. I want to take him to Benihana, which he used to love when he was a kid, and he was like, no, mom. So I was like, that would be fun. We'll sing. And he's like, no, mom. Do you have any wins and fails, Kara? I have just, you know, what's happening in Russia, what the Russians have done. What a thuggish, horrible, they should go to jail. This is just, and they're now capturing texts or communications between Russian military people saying they're doing just what they were doing. And then they're lying about it.

They can go to hell and they will. History has a habit. Whenever there's a mass grave involved, typically, the people who reverse engineer to those decisions end up upside down, naked, in a town square, dead. I doubt that's going to happen here. I'm sorry to tell you. I don't think this is going to happen. I think these folks have crossed. I think the whole world has seen them cross a line. Yeah, it's bizarre. They certainly didn't have to do it this way, for sure.

My last win is I am interviewing Michelle Yeoh, which is why I have to go soon. But the movie Everything, Everywhere, and All at Once is a wonderful movie. What's it about? It's about love. I can't even explain it to you. It's like being John Malkovich if you wanted a tone of a movie. Is this a lesbian thing? No.

Is this a Christian story thing? Well, there is lesbian hot dog. There is a – no. Ooh, I'll see it twice then. No, it's Michelle Ngo, who was just a martial – It is a wonderful, big-spirited movie. And it – I can't – it's about a woman who is in a multiverse. And she's – and one, she's an action star. And another, she owns a laundromat and has a sort of sad life.

That sounds very interesting. And another one, she has hot dog hands and is in a love relationship with Jamie Lee Curtis. And another, she's- Jamie Lee Curtis is in it? She's wonderful. I love Jamie Lee Curtis. Everybody in it. It's fantastic.

I'm so excited. I have loved Michelle Yeoh forever. And so, this is a great movie. forever. And so this is a great movie. And speaking of strong women, I rewatched Hacks again, which is having a second season with Jean Smart. Great series. HBO, great series. It is so wonderful. And Jean, oh, I really want to talk to her. I have to talk to her. Ask where daddy's going tomorrow. Where are you going? You have two seconds because I'm getting-

Daddy's going to Brazil to surf with his friends. And when I say surf, I mean, hold onto a sliver of fiberglass for dear life so I can say I went surfing. you going? You have two seconds because I'm getting... Daddy's going to Brazil to surf with his friends. And when I say surf, I mean hold onto a sliver of fiberglass for dear life so I can say I went surfing. I'm going to the south of Brazil tomorrow. All right. You have a good time. And I'm going nowhere. Anyway, Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot. Will you please read us out? Did you miss the dog? Did you miss the dog? I did. I did. I did. I did.

I did. I needed you for this Elon thing. And I can't believe you took time out of our strong relationship on the most important news of a recent moment. Okay. I was literally in D.C. You missed me. Interviewing Senator Amy Klobuchar. And when I read the news, I'm like, I got to blow off Senator Klobuchar and go back on pivot.

I was going to photobomb the episode. I was so horny to talk about Elon and Twitter. You miss me. I do. I always miss you. I like you. I like your company. Anyways, today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Intertott engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Neil Silverio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back next week for another breakdown

of all things tech and business. Your kids know you love them. They will remember the silly things you did. Do something silly. It feels fun. Something silly.