'Character Limit' unveils Musk's expensive Twitter buy and its real impact

Mr Trump (then ex-President) also gets a fair share of attention in the book, particularly about how he used Twitter and other social media to make false claims

Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter

Author: Kate Conger & Ryan Mac

Publisher: Penguin

Pages: 439

Price: Rs 999

  Two things about this book and its authors. One, this is the most unputdownable non-fiction that I have read this entire year. It can hold its own against the best of fiction thriller page-turners available today. 

Two, despite the brilliant reporting, writing and analysis by the authors, I suspect Elon Musk is having the last laugh. He may have massively overpaid for Twitter — now labelled X — on a whim with borrowed money, and then gone about destroying its value through all sorts of erratic behaviour, but he used it potently in the current elections and can take credit, at least partly, for  Donald Trump’s win. I also suspect he feels that the money spent was worth it for this reason alone.

  Now to the review proper. Character Limit  is not just a blow-by-blow account of how Mr Musk took over Twitter for a staggering $44 billion, almost all of it borrowed and what happened once he got his hands on the platform. It is also the story of Jack Dorsey, the other protagonist involved in the building of Twitter, the machinations and office politics that saw him being ousted as chief executive officer (CEO) and plotting his way back, and then his inability to run it properly and letting it lose steam until Mr Musk, who loved tweeting first and thinking afterwards, decided to suddenly announce that he was going to mount a bid for it.

  Among other characters whose stories are told in this book is Parag Agrawal, a brilliant engineer, who was anointed CEO by  Mr Dorsey after the latter decided he wanted to spend more time with his new creation, Square, and whom he didn’t help out as soon as  Mr Musk expressed his interest in taking over. Mr Agrawal had a short stint as CEO, less than a year, but had a golden parachute built in, unlike many other unfortunate employees. It is hard feeling sorry for him either, given that he immediately sacked some of his old friends the moment he became CEO.

  The authors are unsparing — whether they are describing Musk or Dorsey. In fact, the Twitter co-founder does not come off looking too good either. He has good ideas but is vain, quite eccentric, a bad manager operationally, often indecisive and, of course, has the oversized ego of all co-founders in Silicon Valley. He often creates messes and then expects others to clean up. He once hired two separate people to head cybersecurity at Twitter — and then let them fight it out until Mr Agrawal became CEO and fired both. Mr Dorsey also pushed Mr Agrawal, who was relatively unknown within Twitter because of his backroom job, over the better-known product, marketing, finance or legal heads of Twitter when he decided to move out. The board wanted more time to look for CEO options but Mr Dorsey left them practically no choice. But having practically ensured that only Mr Agrawal  could become CEO, Mr Dorsey did not think it worth backing him when Mr Musk decided to mount the takeover bid.

  Mr Trump (then ex-President) also gets a fair share of attention, particularly about how he used Twitter and other social media to make false claims, which finally triggered the Twitter ban on his account. Twitter’s top executives, including its legal and policy head Vijaya Gadde, and their efforts to clean up the frequent problems created by Mr Dorsey’s often whimsical decisions are described in wonderful detail. Mr Musk’s erratic takeover is the kind of stuff that proves the old adage that truth can often be stranger than fiction. First, he  bought shares and wanted a board seat. Just when he was supposed to join the board of directors though, he refused and said that he wanted to take Twitter private. 

  But after the Twitter board forced him to sign the legal papers that would ensure he could not back out from his offer, he found it difficult to raise money and had second thoughts. He tried to get out nonetheless and that triggered a legal battle — before Mr Musk suddenly changed his mind again and decided to go ahead with the purchase. Then, he started trying to raise the funding. To raise $44 billion, he needed outside funds and had to tap everyone from Larry Ellison, his many friends in Silicon Valley, and even the UAE and Saudi Arabian investment agencies. He was still $400 million short on the day the deal was expected to close and his finance team tried to get Twitter to transfer the amount from its cash reserves to complete the deal. Their argument was that as Mr Musk would soon own 100 per cent of Twitter, the cash reserves of Twitter would be his anyway. The Twitter team refused but eventually the shortfall was met by other means.

  There is much more and the book is worth reading not once but several times for the lessons it holds and its description of mad billionaires who think they are infallible. The only failing in this otherwise wonderful read is that the authors have not explained or have not been able to get insights into how someone as eccentric and erratic as  Elon Musk has had repeated successes and ended up as the richest man in the world. But I guess that was too much to expect.

  The reviewer is former editor of Business Today and Businessworld and founder of Prosaic View, an editorial consultancy