Major Cringe for a CEO
Just a quick post tonight because I have to get it off my mind.
There has been this image floating around the news. There is a photo that is so mindboggling and so cringey I keep laughing at it with disbelief.
How do they capture such images in an embarrassing way? Are they videotaping the event and then clipping a single image out of the video?
Here’s the image that is just stupifying.
He is the CEO of five major innovative companies (Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Machine, NeuraLink, xAI) (Yes, I’m leaving out Twitter/X because he did not start it) and yet he seems to have the maturity of a teenage boy.
I’ve read somewhere that he is on a spectrum so maybe that would account for his behavior, although I generally don’t think spectrum affects maturity behavior but hey, I am not an expert in that area. What do I know?
I do wonder how the investors of his companies feel.
I still have a hard time squaring his management of Twitter/X and Tesla/SpaceX/Boring/NeuraLink. He seems to have the group of four companies well enough that they grew out of the startup stage to become successful players in the market. Twitter remains to be seen. His initial takeover was horrendous, and I read that he was hemorrhaging customers due to the toxic nature of the social media environment.
But the company is still hanging in there. Here is Google’s AI take on the health of Twitter:
Twitter, now known as X, is facing a number of challenges, including:
- User growth – User growth has stalled since Elon Musk acquired the company in October 2022. In the second quarter of 2024, X added only a little over four million users, compared to double-digit growth in previous years.
- Revenue – Revenue has dropped by 84% since Musk took over. In 2023, annual advertising revenue was $2.98 billion.
- Valuation – Some estimates value the company as being worth 71% less than when Musk bought it. Fidelity, a mutual fund company, marked down its investment in X holdings by 71.5%.
- Workforce – Musk has slashed 80% of Twitter’s workforce.
- Blue check – The blue check, which used to indicate “notable” figures, is now seen as a revenue stream.
Other challenges include: lawsuits, overhauling the platform, struggling with a drop in advertising revenue, and some say the platform has become a “toxic mess.
Some statistics about X include:
- Over 500 million monthly active users
- More than 200 million daily users worldwide
- Most popular among users aged 25-34
- Reaches 12.6% of internet users worldwide
- Men use X/Twitter more than women
With those kinds of statistics, it is hard to say he is managing the company well.
So how did he do it with Tesla/SpaceX/Boring/NeuraLink? I’ve heard faint rumors that he actually bought out those companies in their infancy.
Google tells me that he founded SpaceX, Boring and NeuraLink and bought out Tesla.
I hope his investors tell him to chill out because that jumping around on the stage is so embarrassing. He comes off as a dork.
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