🔔 Elon Finally Buys Twitter: Next is X, The Everything App

Welcome to The Level Ups. Modern business news for the future business leader (explained in plain-Jane English).

Today:

• Elon Musk Ends Up Buying Twitter

• X, The Everything App (Western WeChat).

• Resource for Startups

Let’s get into it.

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes & 58 seconds. 

Back to Elon Buying Twitter

A lot is riding on this, so it comes up a lot.

Twitter is where the world first sees the day's news. Now, the world’s richest man will complete his purchase of the company.

Here’s a recap:

• Elon got invited to join Twitter’s board

• Elon accepted and everyone was celebrating.

• Elon changes his mind. Says no to joining the board.

• This was the text exchange I covered the other day when he asked Twitter's CEO “what did you get done this week?” and followed up with “this is a waste of time.”

• Elon doesn’t join the board. Says, “f this, I’ll just buy the company,” and makes an offer. Pretty boss move.

• He changed his mind using “bots” as an excuse even though it was actually because the stock market crashed. His offer was before the crash and meant he’d be overpaying.

• Twitter sues him, saying he has to honour the deal and buy the company.

• Now, Elon “announced” he’s going to buy it at the original price ($44B)

Interestingly, he demanded the courts stop the trial as part of this agreement. 

Elon likely realized that going to trial and losing would be the worst thing for his image and the stock prices of his many companies (Tesla, SpaceX, Boring Company, now Twitter, etc.).

Better to get ahead of it, even if it means overpaying (it's the $44B price listed in the original offer).

The good news is that Twitter’s stock price shot up 22% since the announcement.

Bad news for Twitter’s CEO, Parag Agrawal. After that text exchange, he’s got to know he’s fired.

Feels bad but this made me laugh:

The Next Move is X, the Everything App

Elon has gone on the record talking about the next everything app. He’s call it X.

The logic is clear, one app to do everything. Messages, phone calls (the basics), checking into hotels, logging into your car, paying bills, and managing your finances. Everything.

Turns out this will have a connection to the blockchain and crypto.

How do we know this? Because Elon’s phone is like my old fridge. Leaky.

That’s right, his messages were leaked. Here’s the image and a breakdown.

He’s suggesting charging a tiny fraction of a penny to send messages or register an account on the social platform.

It won’t amount to much for the users. It’s basically nothing.

But because of how bots work, spamming will no longer be viable. It’ll kill the spammers and solve the original bot issue. It’s genius.

Aside from this, there’s one “everything app” already on the market to emulate.

Creating a Western WeChat

The only true everything app right now is the Chinese app, WeChat. Tech behemoth Tencent owns it (along with many other major companies) and did $17.4B in revenue in 2021. Insane.

WeChat is like its own world. An Internet within the internet.

People use it for literally everything. Phone calls, msgs, videos, bill payments, hotel check-ins, computer logins, flights, etc. Businesses host websites on it. It’s got CRM platforms, built-in apps (called mini-programs) and games. It’s wild.

Over $17B in one year is no joke.

Will X be able to copy the success of WeChat?

It’s possible but not easy. WeChat has 1 billion people using it every month. The total US population is around 330 million.

Odds are stacked against Elon. He gets a lot of hate (and often for a good reason), but he builds great companies business-wise. People used to laugh at the idea of Tesla creating a consumer car.

If anyone can pull it off, it’s him.

For Those Of Us Who Are Not Billionaires…

Starting a business is hard; not everyone has a billion dollars to work with.

There are some fantastic resources to speed up the start-up process for the rest of us.

Founders’ Book brings together the best curated and vetted resources to build, launch and scale your startups.

• Access the best tools and resources to turn your idea into MVP and beyond

• Startup OS: One Notion-based workspace for building and growing your startup.

Check it out!

Thanks for reading.

See you tomorrow,

Darwin