Twitter founder Jack Dorsey says Musk wasn’t an ideal leader after all

Elon was always pretty sure he was some kind of Straussian wizard capable of Jedi mind tricks. Boring Company and Hyperloop were dick moves to try to stop rail and transit projects.

But having to cough up most of your personal liquidity (n.b.: not net worth) because you, mistakenly, thought you could trash talk your way out of a $44B deal for which you, personally, are on the hook could be classified a traumatic event.

Elon spent months publicly displaying that he did not want to actually pay for and own Twitter. And now he does. The opportunity cost to Elon is boggling. That kind of thing could make you meaner.

Musk didn't "rot". What happened is basically he's a talented fraudster who can speak about being on a mission from God to save humanity and transition Earth to this or that and this attracts immense amount of interest from capital and talent to bootstrap a company.

When this company is built from the ground up around Musk, there's a protective layer between him and the company, so that his bombastic narcissism doesn't leak out or hurt the company's management too much.

But Twitter wasn't built from the ground up for him, it was an existing company, he fired the top managers, the board, and 80% of the company, and then kept tweeting through every mishap he makes. We all saw him for what he always was.

Truly some epic level "behind the curtain Wizard of Oz" story here. And behind the curtain is an asshole with a lot of brazen lies and little to show for it in term of personal capability.

He's an "aligner". If he fools enough investors and workers that he's doing something big, they give him his money and their time & effort to make it happen, and it happens. He's good at starting things, but terrible at continuing them.

With respect, it depends on who you ask. I thought his behavior around investments was, at the most charitable, unsportsmanlike and gross. I thought the creation (and public admission of!) the boring company as a crowbar to get California HSR cancelled was disgusting.