Elon Musk’s Private Texts To Jack Dorsey, Parag Agrawal Shed Light on Twitter Deal

Elon Musk and the Twitter drama has taken a legal route and the hearing will begin soon. Ahead of the legal hearing, Elon Musk's private messages were made public and revealed in a court filing. The private texts give us a good look at the negotiations of the Elon Musk-Twitter deal.

Here, the private messages between Elon Musk and Twitter CEO Parag Agarwal were presented in a court filing. Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's messages with Musk were also presented. The messages also reveal how quickly things turned sour with Agarwal, especially after Musk's tweet mentioning that 'Twitter is dying'.

Elon Musk's Personal Messages with Parag Agarwal Revealed

One of the messages that were highlighted was where Musk tell Agarwal that he wants to acquire Twitter and take it privately instead of joining the board. As a reply, Agarwal confronts Musk about his tweet questioning if 'Twitter is dying'.

"You are free to tweet "is Twitter dying?" or anything else about Twitter - but it's my responsibility to tell you that it's not helping me make Twitter better in the current context. Next time we speak, I'd like to you provide you [sic] perspective on the level of the internal distraction right now and how it [sic] hurting our ability to do work," Agarwal's text reads.

"I hope the AMA will help people get to know you, to understand why you believe in Twitter, and to trust you - and I'd like the company to get to a place where we are more resilient and don't get distracted but we aren't there right now," the message further continues. Musk responded to Agarwal's message almost immediately - "What did you get done this week? I'm not joining the board. This is a waste of time. Will make an offer to take Twitter private."

Private Messages Throws Light on Twitter Deal

Soon after the chat with Agarwal, Twitter board chair Bret Tylor's text conversation with Musk was also revealed. "Fixing Twitter by chatting with Parag won't work. Drastic action is needed. This is hard to do as a public company, as purging fake users will make the numbers look terrible, so restructuring should be done as a private company. This is Jack's opinion too, " Musk tells Taylor.

This message further throws light on the relationship between former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk. Dorsey had previously said in public, "Elon is the singular solution I trust." But after Musk sued Twitter and announced to back off from the deal, Dorsey has been silent.

This brings us to the text messages between Dorsey and Musk, and how he was eager for the Tesla CEO to join Twitter's board of directors. "Back when we had the activist come in, I tried my hardest to get you on our board and our board said no. That's about the time I decided I needed to work to leave, as hard as it was for me," Dorsey says.

"I think the main reason is the board is just super risk averse and saw adding you as more risk, which I thought was completely stupid and backwards, but I only had one vote, and 3% of company, and no dual class shares. Hard set up. We can discuss more," Dorsey's message further reads.

But it doesn't end here. The messages shared above were right around the time when Musk acquired a multibillion-dollar stake in Twitter. Dorsey further explains to Musk that Twitter can't be a private company as Musk was hoping to turn it into.

"I believe it must be an open-source protocol, funded by a foundation of sorts that doesn't own the protocol, only advances it. A bit like what Signal has done. It can't have an advertising model. Otherwise, you have a surface area that governments and advertisers will try to influence and control," the former Twitter CEO explains.

"If it has a centralized entity behind it, it will be attacked. This isn't complicated work, it just has to be done right so it's resilient to what has happened to Twitter," Dorsey writes. To this, Musk replies that the idea is 'super interesting' and would work to move Twitter in a better direction and decentralize it.

Private messages also reveal how Dorsey tries to mediate matters between Agarwal and Musk, arranging a call between the three of them. A message after the call from Musk to Dorsey read: "You and I are in complete agreement. Parag is just moving far too slowly and trying to please people who will not be happy no matter what he does."

"At least it became clear that you can't work together. That was clarifying." Dorsey later responds. The Twitter vs Elon Musk court hearing will begin on October 17 for five days. As part of the legal proceeding, subpoenas have been issued to Larry Ellison, co-founder of Oracle, Robert Swan, former Chief Executive Officer of Intel, and Jack Dorsey.

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