Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk texts criticize Twitter board

But the Tesla CEO’s initial foray into the social media house may confirm quick-lived. Immediately after placing a $44 billion offer past April to purchase Twitter, Musk has been attempting to pull out of it since July, citing the unverifiable amount of spam accounts on the system.

With his court docket date established for next month in Delaware, facts go on to arise about people turbulent several months, together with Musk agreeing to sit on the company’s board ahead of abruptly altering his head and opting rather to acquire out all of Twitter’s remaining shares to consider the organization non-public.

Musk made it clear that if he had develop into the sole operator of Twitter—or, now, if a choose compels him to go as a result of with the acquire anyway—he would carry about some big improvements to the social media network and how the enterprise is operate. And new evidence reveals just how a great deal Twitter cofounder and previous CEO Jack Dorsey, who stepped down from the company’s board final May possibly, required to see those people changes materialize.

“The board is terrible,” Dorsey wrote to Musk in a textual content message, one of quite a few that had been collected and disclosed this week as element of a pretrial discovery procedure. 

Dorsey’s text—dated April 5, the working day Twitter announced Musk as a new board member—spared only company CEO Parag Agrawal, who Dorsey termed “an incredible engineer.” 

But as the takeover offer dragged on and tensions emerged amongst Musk and Twitter’s board, Dorsey created his genuine inner thoughts about Agrawal and the rest of Twitter’s board known in a collection of messages that criticized the board’s careful actions, when portray Musk as the savior the company experienced been waiting around for.

Dorsey and Twitter’s board

In texts sent to Musk last March, Dorsey unveiled that he experienced experimented with to get him authorized by the board as early as 2020, which the board refused. Dorsey criticized Twitter’s board for remaining far too “risk-averse” and explained they had refused to convey on a determine like Musk since they felt it would make “more risk” for the business.

It would not be the previous time Dorsey criticized Twitter’s board in his text exchanges with Musk. 

On April 25, Dorsey defended Agrawal as staying “great at getting issues finished when tasked with specific direction,” but the future day, seemingly after a board assembly, Musk texted to Dorsey that the two of them were being in “complete agreement” more than Agrawal, particularly that the Twitter CEO had been “moving significantly also slowly but surely and making an attempt to you should men and women who will not be content no matter what he does.”

Dorsey answered all-around two hrs later on: “It turned apparent that you can’t function collectively. That was clarifying.”

Unpredictable Musk

As CEO and founder of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk produced a identify for himself as a tough, unforgiving, and at times even rash manager.

Very last June, Musk mandated that all of Tesla’s white-collar staff return to the business office entire-time, warning that individuals who didn’t could “pretend to function someplace else.” He expects extended perform several hours, willingly working for upwards of 120 hours a week himself, and after allegedly worked a 24-hour day—on his birthday.

Musk’s special leadership design and style has gotten him into hot drinking water with his have companies at instances. A solitary foray on Twitter can send out Tesla inventory charges plunging or cryptocurrencies soaring, and shareholders of his corporations have even asked judges to muzzle his Twitter feed.

Musk’s unpredictability as a man or woman and as a manager left some Twitter workers anxious final spring that him taking around would suggest a comprehensive culture improve, such as a return to the business office and a more demanding get the job done atmosphere general.

But although Twitter staff worried, Jack Dorsey seems to have been eagerly awaiting Musk getting included at Twitter for very some time. Previous April, shortly just after the takeover offer experienced been declared, Dorsey greatly criticized Twitter’s board, saying “it’s continually been the dysfunction of the organization.”

A week later on, Dorsey publicly vouched for Musk as the ideal person to just take the company ahead by initially getting it personal. “Elon is the singular resolution I rely on. I have faith in his mission to lengthen the gentle of consciousness,” Dorsey wrote.

Signal up for the Fortune Options e mail record so you never miss out on our most significant options, unique interviews, and investigations.