Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk texts criticize Twitter board

However the Tesla CEO’s first foray into the social media area could show short-lived. After hanging a $44 billion deal final April to purchase Twitter, Musk has been making an attempt to tug out of it since July, citing the unverifiable variety of spam accounts on the platform.

Together with his courtroom date set for subsequent month in Delaware, particulars proceed to emerge about these turbulent few months, together with Musk agreeing to take a seat on the corporate’s board earlier than abruptly altering his thoughts and opting as a substitute to purchase out all of Twitter’s remaining shares to take the corporate non-public.

If Musk had develop into the only proprietor of Twitter—or if a choose compels him to undergo with the acquisition anyway—he had already made clear that he would result in some large modifications to the social media community and the way the corporate is run. And new proof reveals simply how a lot Twitter cofounder and former CEO Jack Dorsey, who stepped down from the corporate’s board final Could, wished to see these modifications occur.

“The board is horrible,” Dorsey wrote to Musk in a textual content message, one among many who have been collected and disclosed this week as a part of a pretrial discovery course of. 

Dorsey’s textual content—dated April 5, the day Twitter introduced Musk as a brand new board member—spared solely firm CEO Parag Agrawal, who Dorsey referred to as “an unimaginable engineer.” 

However because the takeover deal dragged on and tensions emerged between Musk and Twitter’s board, Dorsey made his true emotions about Agrawal and the remainder of Twitter’s board recognized in a sequence of messages that criticized the board’s cautious conduct, whereas portray Musk because the savior the corporate had been ready for.

Dorsey and Twitter’s board

In texts despatched to Musk final March, Dorsey revealed that he had tried to get him authorised by the board as early as 2020, which the board refused. Dorsey criticized Twitter’s board for being too “risk-averse” and stated they’d refused to carry on a determine like Musk as a result of they felt it could create “extra danger” for the corporate.

It wouldn’t be the final time Dorsey criticized Twitter’s board in his textual content exchanges with Musk. 

On April 25, Dorsey defended Agrawal as being “nice at getting issues carried out when tasked with particular course,” however the subsequent day, seemingly after a board assembly, Musk texted to Dorsey that the 2 of them have been in “full settlement” over Agrawal, particularly that the Twitter CEO had been “shifting far too slowly and making an attempt to please individuals who won’t be comfortable it doesn’t matter what he does.”

Dorsey answered round two hours later: “It turned clear you can’t work collectively. That was clarifying.”

Unpredictable Musk

As CEO and founding father of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk made a reputation for himself as a tough, unforgiving, and at occasions even rash boss.

Final June, Musk mandated that every one of Tesla’s white collar workers return to the workplace full-time, warning that those that didn’t might “fake to work elsewhere.” He expects lengthy work hours, willingly working for upwards of 120 hours per week himself, and as soon as allegedly labored a 24-hour day—on his birthday.

Musk’s distinctive management type has gotten him into sizzling water together with his personal firms at occasions. A single foray on Twitter can ship Tesla inventory costs plunging or cryptocurrencies hovering, and shareholders of his companies have even requested judges to muzzle his Twitter feed.

Musk’s unpredictability as an individual and as a boss left some Twitter staff involved final spring that him taking up would imply a whole tradition change, together with a return to the workplace and a extra demanding work setting general.

However whereas Twitter staff fearful, Jack Dorsey seems to have been eagerly awaiting Musk getting concerned at Twitter for fairly a while. Final April, shortly after the takeover deal had been introduced, Dorsey closely criticized Twitter’s board, saying “it’s constantly been the dysfunction of the corporate.”

Per week later, Dorsey publicly vouched for Musk as the proper particular person to take the corporate ahead by first taking it non-public. “Elon is the singular answer I belief. I belief his mission to increase the sunshine of consciousness,” Dorsey wrote.

Join the Fortune Options electronic mail checklist so that you don’t miss our greatest options, unique interviews, and investigations.