LEAKS from the Elon Musk’s pitch deck to investors show major changes are coming to Twitter in the long- and short-term.
Musk didn’t buy Twitter so he could keep the platform the same.
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Musk made an unsolicited offer to buy Twitter for $43billion on April 14th.
In the weeks since, his plans for the platform have gotten clearer in some areas and cloudier in others.
It was initially expected he would buy the whole of the company completely on his own by moving Tesla stock and securing big loans from major lenders – but Musk has taken on partners in the deal.
Musk has snagged $7billion in co-financing, reducing the amount of cash he has to put up himself – here’s a look at how he sold investors.
Musk is planning to quintuple the company’s revenue from $5billion in 2021 to $26.4billion in 2028.
In conversations with bankers and investors, Musk promised to find new revenue streams for Twitter – but the pitch deck says he wants to shed the company’s reliance on advertising for revenue.
90% of Twitter’s 2020 revenue came from advertising and Musk wants to drop that number down to 45%.
Only Musk could mention 5x-ing revenue while dropping Twitter’s main source of cash in the same breathe.
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Musk is betting the farm that the platform will get more popular under his leadership.
He wants to see 931million Twitter users by 2028 – currently, there are about 300million active accounts.
But Musk doesn’t just want egg-head accounts – he wants paying customers.
The richest man in the world has an ambitious plan to electrify Twitter Blue, a premium tier service that costs $3 a month.
Protocol spotted a uninspiring quote about Twitter Blue from a 2021 shareholder letter that read “While very small as a percent of revenue today, we believe Twitter Blue and other subscription-related revenue represents a significant opportunity for Twitter over time.”
Musk told investors he wants 159million Twitter Blue users by 2028 – representing 17% of his expected total accounts and $477million in potential revenue.
Perhaps correcting these failures is what Musk meant when he said he would “unlock” Twitter’s potential.
Musk is also working a “mysterious” product for Twitter simply called “X” – the letter holds sentimentality for the billionaire.
When Musk founded X.com in 1999, he expected the company to become the nervous system of online payments everywhere.
The product X.com ultimately produced was PayPal – a billion-dollar idea but not the global online bank he envisioned.
The New York Times reported that little is known about Twitter’s X product.
Meanwhile, Musk expects to increase how much cash users spend on the platform – he could be hinting at a shopping model similar to Instagram and giving online payments another stab.
Musk’s plan will also go through ebbs and flows of layoffs.
Ultimately, he plans to balloon the size of the company from 7,500 employees to over 11,000.
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