Why Did Twitter's $44B Haircut Fail?
Bought for $44B, Marked Down 70% in a Year
📜 What Happened
Elon Musk offered $44B for Twitter with minimal due diligence — '$54.20 a share,' a number containing a weed joke — then spent months trying to cancel the deal before courts forced it through. He fired ~80% of staff in weeks, demanded 'hardcore' loyalty pledges, made verification a subscription overnight (spawning fake 'verified' corporate accounts that tanked real stocks), and dared advertisers to leave. They did: ad revenue halved. Within a year, Fidelity marked the company at ~30% of the purchase price.
☠️ The Fatal Mistake
Signing first and diligencing never — then running a $44B acquisition on impulse, ultimatums, and 3 a.m. polls.
🧠 The Lesson (Free for You)
The bigger the bet, the more boring your process should be. Genius in one arena buys you zero permission slips in another — and 'move fast' with other people's trust breaks things that don't get rebuilt.
📕 The Antidote Book
Ego — the unhealthy belief in your own importance — is not confidence; it's confidence's counterfeit, and it attacks at all three phases of any pursuit. ASPIRING: ego makes you talk instead of work, refuse the…
📖 OPEN THE FULL INTERACTIVE BREAKDOWN →Searchable, filterable, free to read — they paid billions; your lesson is free.