This interview was recorded on 18 November 2022.
In this video two SVIC members, Aman Verjee and Jonathan Brill, discuss the acquisition of Twitter and if Elon Musk can make this acquisition successful.
Episode Notes:
00:00: Introductions
01:20: Should Twitter charge subscription fees?
05:15: Charging users on your network
08:20: Should Twitter moderate the content on its platform?
09:03: The importance of moderation
20:47: Twitters headcount reductions
23:00: Can Twitter operate after the layoffs?
27:19: Ebay’s previous layoffs in 2008
30:20: Morale killers of layoffs
31:40: Can Elon break even on this deal? The most expensive billion dollars never spent.
32:50: Why Elon couldn’t walk away from the deal
33:50: What the courts could have asked Elon to pay for walking away from the deal
34:40: If you had a time machine and were Elon’s financial advisor, would you tell him to walk from the deal or not?
36:15: What Elon needs to overcome to make this deal sustainable
37:50: Waste of Elon’s time
38:50: When Jeff Bezo’s bought the Washington post
40:00: Last thoughts
41:30: Why didn’t X.com happen?
About the guests:
Aman Verjee is the general partner and founder of Practical Venture Capital, a venture capital company here in Silicon Valley. Aman has spent the last five years in venture. Before that, he was the CFO of Sonos (the publicly listed maker of wireless sound systems) and spent 10 years at PayPal, where he led the Financial Planning and Analysis team also the Strategy team, and was once the junior guy on the IPO deal team working for David Sacks, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk.
Jonathan Brill is the Senior Vice President of Community at Slickdeals. Before joining Slickdeals, Jonathan spent seven years running Community & Operations at Quora, consulting with startups on community strategy, and held several sales leadership roles with B2B startups.
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