Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Twitter's Parag Agrawal.
Recently-released text messages between Elon Musk and Parag Agrawal shed some light on how the Tesla billionaire’s relationship with CEO of Twitter soured over the course of a few days. The texts were revealed in court filings as part of Twitter’s lawsuit against Musk, who tried to back out of his deal to buy the social media giant before announcing, just a day ago, that he was willing to go ahead with it.
As part of the pretrial discovery process, the Delaware Chancery Court also released Musk’s private communication with people like Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, podcaster Joe Rogan and journalist Gayle King.
But in a text dump with hundreds of conversations between Musk and investors jostling for a piece of the Twitter deal and journalists angling for an interview, only one person came out looking good – Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal.
A Bloomberg report notes how Agrawal is one of the few people who approached Musk on an “even keel.”
Their relationship seemed friendly enough in the beginning. On April 3, a few days before Musk was publicly named to Twitter’s board of directors, Agrawal texted him: “I’m super excited about the opportunity and look forward to working closely and finding ways to use your time as effectively as possible to improve Twitter and the public conversation.”
Two days later, on April 5, Elon Musk wrote to Agrawal: “Would be great to unwind permanent bans, except for spam accounts and those that explicitly advocate violence.”
Agrawal did not respond – or if he did, it was not included in the court filings.
A couple of days later, they spoke again. This time, Agrawal told Musk: “Treat me like an engineer instead of a CEO.”
But the tone shifted on April 9, when the Twitter CEO upbraided Musk over his tweets about the platform.
"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. I'd like to provide your perspective on the level of internal distraction right now and how it hurting our ability to do work [sic],” wrote Agrawal to Musk.
“What did you get done this week?” the Tesla chief retorted.
“I'm not joining the board. This is a waste of time,” he wrote 40 seconds later.
“Will make an offer to take Twitter private,” was Musk’s final tweet.
— Dare Obasanjo (@Carnage4Life) September 30, 2022
It appears as if Musk’s dislike for Agrawal, his pal Dorsey’s handpicked successor to lead Twitter, grew from there.
Business Insider reported how Agrawal tried to get on a call with Musk, only to be rebuffed. Board chair and Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor also tried to speak with Musk over the phone Musk simply said "Please expect a take private offer."
"Fixing Twitter by chatting with Parag won't work," he later told Taylor. "Drastic action is needed."
In late April, Dorsey, Musk and Agrawal got on a virtual call. Later, Dorsey texted Musk that “it became clear that you can’t work together. That was clarifying.”
Agrawal’s refusal to budge from his stance, and his insistence on considering the possible outfall of Musk’s buyout, have been praised as admirable on social media.
But even as their relationship spiralled further to poop emoji as means of communication, many also praised the Twitter CEO for his professionalism in the face of Musk’s criticism.
Checkout Budget Highlights 2023
