Even Twitter Inc. co-founder and former Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey, who originally tried to talk Musk into joining the board and then attempting to take the company private, metaphorically throws his own garments up onto the stage. “I couldn’t be happier you’re doing this,” he texts as Musk was on the verge of becoming a board member. “Got very emotional when I learned it was finally possible.”
But reading through the many pages of messages, there’s one figure who approached the world’s wealthiest person on an even keel: current Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal. At first, Agrawal, who has been at Twitter for more than a decade and was named chief executive last November, is solicitous to the guy who might become one of his bosses on the board of directors. “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,” he writes on April 3.
Over the next few days, Musk and Agrawal communicate directly via text messages and have at least one late-night phone call, and Musk floats some of his notions for change. “Would be great to unwind permanent bans, except for spam accounts and those that explicitly advocate violence,” he texts Agrawal on April 5th. Agrawal doesn’t respond to this text—or if he does, it isn’t included in the data dump. In fact, opening the floodgates to banned conspiracy theorists such as, say, Alex Jones (not to mention a certain former president) would have significant ramifications on the tenor of conversation on Twitter.
Instead, Agrawal invites Musk to talk about his specific technical ideas for the long embattled social network, asking him to “treat me like an engineer” instead of a CEO and promising to evaluate his proposals neutrally. “I want to hear all the ideas—and I’ll tell you which ones ill make progress on vs not. And why,” Agrawal texts on April 7th. He also asks Musk to speak to Twitter staff and answer questions, including “some from people who are upset that you are involved and generally don’t like you for some reason.”
And then things go spectacularly sideways. On April 9th, the insatiable Musk
notes in an early morning tweet that certain famous people post irregularly and asks, “Is Twitter dying?” A valid question or not, it’s indecorous for a purported ally to ask it publicly, and it’s Agrawal who delivers the brushback pitch later that day. “You are free to tweet ‘is twitter dying?’ or anything else about Twitter,” he texts, “but it’s my responsibility to tell you that it’s not helping me make twitter better in the current context.”
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Musk then throws a tantrum, texting Agrawal, “What did you get done this week?” and writing “I’m not joining the board. This is a waste of time,” before vowing to take the company private instead.
After this confrontation, Musk appears to take a dislike to Twitter’s boss. In his filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission a week later, Musk states, “If the deal doesn’t work, given that I don’t have confidence in management nor do I believe I can drive the necessary change in the public market, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder.”
In late April, Dorsey brokers a phone call with Agrawal and Musk—both his hand-picked successor and acquirer. We don’t know exactly how that conversation at 7 p.m. central time on April 26th went, but it wasn’t good. Subsequent texts suggest Agrawal refused to be dutifully sycophantic. Afterward, Dorsey writes to Musk that “it became clear that you can’t work together. That was clarifying,” before selling out his former colleague altogether: “Parag is just moving far too slowly and trying to please people who will not be happy no matter what he does.”
Agrawal doesn’t merit exaltation quite yet of course. Twitter under his relatively new leadership still faces massive challenges, including high employee turnover and a gutted stock price. But his professionalism and steadfast texts with Musk should be viewed in context of the others in last week’s haul, which includes groaners like “you have my sword” (investor Jason Calacanis) and “You are the hero Gotham needs” (Riot Games co-founder Marc Merrill).
Agrawal’s refusal to bend the knee—and his insistence on considering the ramifications of Musks’s aspirational yet detail-free plans for Twitter—is at the very least admirable. Perhaps he’s the tragic hero Gotham needs.
