Musk had barely 20 minutes to address the employees on Thursday.
During a nearly one-hour Q&A session, which The Verge obtained a recording of, Musk was blunt about the financial state of his company, his desire to turn it into an app for payments, and his love for gizmos.
Musk spoke about his plans to offer banking services on his verified account.
There is a great opportunity in payments. Payments are simply the exchange of information. Sending a direct message and sending a payment are the same thing. They are similar. Direct messaging stacks can be used for payments. We are going to go in a direction that will allow people on the platform to send money anywhere in the world in real time. It is our goal to make it as useful as possible.
Later, more detail was offered.
If you can simply have one balance on Twitter that can simply go positive or a negative, and when it goes positive, the interest rate is better than what you could receive elsewhere, and when it goes negative, the interest rate is lower than what you see elsewhere, now you have a much simpler system.
Then you attach a debit card to the Twitter account so that you have backwards compatibility into the payments system because not everyone will accept Twitter. So if have above a certain balance, you automatically send people a debit card. You want backwards compatibility to the existing financial infrastructure.
There are a few checks that are used in the U.S. If your landlord wants you to send a check, you have to have a lot of checks. We would send a few checks to people who needed them. Automatic payment is added afterwards. Over time, you address what you would like from finance standpoint. We will be the people's financial institution if you address all of the things that you want.
There are circumstances that could lead to a declaration of bankruptness.
We just definitely need to bring in more cash than we spend. If we don’t do that and there’s a massive negative cash flow, then bankruptcy is not out of the question. That is a priority. We can’t scale to 1 billion users and take massive losses along the way. That’s not feasible. I don’t think we will.
It is the remote work policy of the social networking site.
Now, if somebody’s contribution is so significant that they can overcome the communication difficulties of being remote, then they should absolutely remain at Twitter. But it will be a higher bar. They have to be that much better to overcome the communication issues of being remote. There are plenty of people at Tesla and SpaceX that do work remotely, but it is on an exception basis for exceptional people. And I totally understand if that doesn’t work for some people. That’s the new philosophy at Twitter.
Let me be crystal clear. If people do not return to the office when they are able to return to the office, they cannot remain at the company. End of story.
Basically, if you can show up in an office and you do not show up at the office: resignation accepted. End of story.
The platform could be used for short-form video.
But right now, content creators cannot post the length of video that they would like to post and they cannot monetize it, which means they cannot pay the bills. These are not like super complicated things. They’re pretty basic. We’re not trying to put YouTube out of business, but I’m just saying, do we really need to give YouTube a whole bunch of free traffic? Maybe not. So at least give creators the option if they would like to put their video on Twitter and earn the same amount as they would on, or maybe slightly more, on YouTube or TikTok or whatever the case may be.
I was actually flipping through the Twitter video where once you go into kind of a full screen video mode, you can just start flipping through videos. It’s actually not bad. I was like, “Okay, well, it’s pretty good.” I think building on that makes a ton of sense.
How do we start the creator flywheel if we don’t have video ads to begin with? This is where subscriptions come in because YouTube also has subscriptions and they don’t show ads in subscriptions. So I think this is a case where it does make sense to start spending some money and at least matching to slightly better than matching creators on YouTube, and saying, for now, we’ll just pay them money that is reasonably competitive, maybe slightly better than YouTube for their content on Twitter as well.
The first couple of weeks under Musk have been chaotic. They started with Musk firing a lot of the C-suite and laying off a lot of the global workforce. The introduction of a blue verification checkmark on the social network caused impersonation to run rampant.
After Musk took over, the heads of trust and safety and ad sales resigned. If you feel uncomfortable about anything you are being asked to do, you should seek the protection of a whistle blower. Even as the company's user growth sees "all-time highs", Musk has tried to convince advertisers to return despite the chaos.
Mr. Musk, welcome to the world. It was nice to see you all. I am very excited to be here, and I think the long-term potential for the service is great. Some of the things that I say publicly are the same things that I say privately.
I believe that the public town square where people exchange ideas and where once in a while, they change their minds can be achieved through the use of the social networking site. The violence in many cases can be replaced by a battleground of ideas. People can talk rather than fight. It would be amazing if we were a force for peace. I believe that there is a lot of good that can be achieved with the help of social networking sites. We are going to try and get that.
How do we get a lot of people to join the platform? There are billions of people. We have a small percentage of humans if we don't have a billion. We want to have a decent amount of humans. This isn't for the sake of money. We need a lot of people on the platform and a lot of people talking to help us do a lot of good.
I think it would be great to have more dialog between countries and to have more interest in them. There is an amazing market share for us. We don't see a lot of Japan's super interesting tweets in the US or even in Japan. I think it would be great to expose people from different countries and different language groups to ideas that are interesting, entertaining, and funny and learn from them. We have a chance to connect people around the world and expose them to ideas and content that will entertain them. It is going to be great if we can show people the funniest stuff from around the world.
We would like to be a multi-media platform. We are definitely that way. When it comes to writing and real-time, we are the best. We want to have that for pictures and video, but we don't want it to be like what other people do. I don't think it's a good idea to copy something just because another person did it. We want to make it as compelling as possible so that we can enjoy it and learn from it. You don't regret spending an hour on the social networking site. You might spend an hour on some of the social media platforms, but you regret that sometimes. It's like you want to spend an hour and be like, "WOW, that was a great hour"
There is a great opportunity in payments. Payments are simply the exchange of information. Sending a direct message and sending a payment are the same thing. They are similar. Direct messaging stacks can be used for payments. We are going to go in a direction that will allow people on the platform to send money anywhere in the world in real time. It is our goal to make it as useful as possible.
If we are going to solve the reasons that people click away from the site, we need to not put people on the site. A person is a content creator on the video sharing site. If they are able to monetize their video at least to the same degree as on YouTube, then naturally, they would just post their video on the social networking site. Content creators can't post the length of video they want to post because they can't make money from it, which means they can't pay their bills. These are not very complex. They are fairly basic. We don't want to put YouTube out of business, but do we really need to give them a lot of free traffic? It's possible that maybe not. Give creators the option if they would like to make the same amount of money if they put their video on the social network as they would if they made it on the video sharing site.
I look forward to working with you to make the future a reality.
Even with the user base at its current size, we are facing challenges.
The question is how to prevent the growth from outgrowing the risk.
Musk is a big fan of getting people to be verified, using the payment system and security of the mobile operating system. I think we would like to have automated checks. I'm willing to listen to ideas. We don't care about user growth that isn't real. We care about authenticity. We will succeed if we take steps toauthenticate real users and exit ones that are not good, and if we don't create bot armies.
Without payment verification, you can do a million bot accounts a day with the cost of a tenth of a cent. State actors have more than the $8. Can they make a million phones and credit cards? That is more difficult. They are going to make a mistake there.
There is an inaudible question about reviving vine.
I think it is just a question of whether we have compelling short-form video or not. Let's not copy from one year to the next with ancient code. How do we have compelling short-form video? Once you get into a full screen video mode, you can just start flipping through the videos. It is not terrible. I was happy to hear that it was pretty good. I think it's a good idea to build on that.
I told a lot of people this morning that I could have been on it for an hour. I liked the videos that it showed me. Some of the videos were really good. They didn't know it existed when I told them. It would be a good idea to make it more obvious that it exists.
The exchange was inaudible.
I have no issue with battle. Just send it to me. I like to respond to emails. If I didn't respond within a day, email me again. It usually takes me less than a day to respond. It usually happens within hours. Let's have some fun and have some adventure here. Try some crazy things. We'll stop it if it doesn't work. We'll amplify it if it works. That is fun and exciting.
Try strange things. It's nothing more than that. How do we make improvements if we're too cautious? Revolutions are not finished. We want to try things that don't break the whole system, but I think as long as we respond quickly to improve things and correct mistakes, it will be fine.
We want to get a bunch of content creators that we think are cool on YouTube and say, "Hey, would you consider putting your content onTwitter, and we'll pay you 10 percent more than YouTube and see how it goes?"."
A question from an employee
You say we need some video ads. Video ads are hard to register if we don't have them. The question is a great one. If we don't have video ads, how do we start? They don't show ads in subscriptions, so that's where subscriptions come in. I think this is a case where it makes sense to spend some money and at least match to slightly better than matching creators on YouTube, and say, for now, we'll just pay them money that is reasonably competitive, maybe slightly better than YouTube for their content on social media. I believe that as we build our subscriber base, we will see that YouTube is building a subscriber base as well.
I try to use YouTube as a non-subscriber to get a better idea of what advertising is like. I don't think their advertising is nice. It seems to be a scam ad every time.
Did you know that there are 2.6 billion users on the video sharing site? We are nothing.
An employee said yes and only 80 million subscribers.
It is a lot. My kids were educated by both websites. Let's just try it. Let's get a bunch of content creators that we think are cool on YouTube and say, "Hey, would you consider putting your content onTwitter, and we'll pay you 10 percent more than YouTube and see how it goes?" That is something we should do. It's great. Are you going to do that?
You are going to do it. It's great. Do it, please. Let's do something. I think it is important to have a sense of urgent. If you can do it after this meeting, I'll do it. There's a sense of desperation. If you want to get things done, there is a sense of desperation. Go! It's hardcore.
The employee said it was $8 on the subscriber side.
Really? There's a chance that it's true.
The employee knows his purpose is to verify people. Are we willing to pay for people to be verified?
It's just one step at a time. We couldn't handle a lot of fraud, so I limited things to a small number of countries. It's the most difficult thing to commit fraud if you need a phone or a credit card.
We piggyback on the payment system and Apple. It is possible to scam. It is not easy to scam at scale. They can do individual accounts, but they can't do a million.
You don't want someone taking a million credit card numbers off the dark web and then spawning a million instances that appear to be individual users going a lot of proxies around the world. A million fake accounts have been created by us. Web is going to be last and we will do that with great caution. There are some bugs in the system that need to be fixed.
It's kind of embarrassing to give people a country error. Users in the U.S. are receiving a country error. The error should be 'You have the wrong version of the account'. It's just like things like that. It has been a soft launch and I have not used my main account to sign up for the service. It was a deliberate act.
An employee has a follow up question. We talked about people who subscribe. Jack spoke about how he regrets having the follow button in an interview. Do you believe that we will want to promote creators because of your vision for this?
Musk thinks "subscriber" is a better word than "follow" because it sounds more like a cult. I think I have a bit of cult, but not everyone would want to be a cult member.
I am interested in what someone has to say. I decided to follow them because of that. I'm not just their minion. I am interested in what they have to say and I can agree or disagree with it. I don't think it's a good idea to call it follow. I don't like "super follow" because it sounds like I'm your favorite fan. Is this person going to murder me? I think we're changing the term to "subscriber" That is a better way to describe it.
An employee asks if they want to reserve a graph of people together.
Musk is very interested in ideas here. I wouldn't say I'm stuck on something. I think this person has interesting and funny things to say. I want to hear what they have to say I don't always agree with it or think it's good. I want to listen, read, and hear what this person says.
A lot of our technology is built towards that kind of graph, and that is where we have to make a decision. The home timelines are one more I have. It is difficult to gauge the intent of the user through a general home timelines. We have a search where we can find events, neighborhoods, trends, and all these things. We are trying to organize these over time. If you want to be more exploratory, do you think we should be still on the home timeline?
Intent is the most difficult thing for us to get. I want to know how you think the app will be. We can either direct the user based on their intent or give guidance. Want to know what you think about that.
I would like to see ads for gadgets. I would buy all of them if I saw ads for gizmos. I have to send it to my assistant in order to get it.
The onramp to Twitter is too complex right now. This is a case where TikTok is superior. To download the app, you have to use the on ramp. Unless you want to post video content, they don't require you to create a user name. It should be the same thing. When people download the app, they just ask what interests they have, and then immediately put them into a tweet, showing them a home timeline that has some of the most interestingtweets. It may not be what they asked for, but they are really interesting. People don't know what to ask for I think we can do a better job of knowing that something is interesting or funny.
Sometimes, I will see something that has a quarter-million likes, but it is never shown to me in the timelines. A friend of mine sent me the link. We should show those to people if we have good ones. They will show popular videos to people.
We really want to show people ads that are as accurate as possible to their interests, so I don't think we should have a separate ad engine and recommend engine. Content is what someone would actually want to buy if it was done well. You have to have a lot of ads in order to be content. It's annoying that you're asked to sign up for a mortgage when you don't want to.
I would like to see ads for gadgets. I would buy all of them if I saw ads for gizmos. I will still purchase gizmos even if they are not great. I'm a big fan of technology. Content for gizmos will not include an ad or ability to buy the gizmo. I have to send it to my assistant in order to get it. It goes that way most of the time. I would be happy to click on it and make a purchase.
I want to improve every aspect of the social networking site. I was searching for Jack this morning. I typed "@jack" into the search engine and it was not the top thing. That should be the top priority. I had to type it in. If you type j-a-c-k, the first thing that should come to mind is Jack Dorsey. That's probably what you're looking for. I think we should do everything we can to improve the system immediately.
I received a lot of questions and I want to summarize them. We have a lot of services and key contributors who work from home or remote and was hoping you could share some more thinking behind how we should be handling it, where your head is at in terms of the critical contributors who are remote right now
It is a consistent policy that I have at the two companies, which is that we need to be default in the office for a period of time. It isn't like a lot of hours. I will do crazy hours in the office, but I won't ask everyone else to do it. It is my belief that people are more productive when they are in person.
It is better to sit in the same room and interact with people than it is to sit in a different room. There's a reason to have an office. If someone's contribution is so significant that they can overcome the communication difficulties of being remote, then they should stay at the social networking site. It will be a higher standard. They need to be better at overcoming communication issues. There are a lot of people that do work remotely, but it is not always done by exceptional people. I know if that doesn't work for some people. That is the new philosophy at the social networking site.
Those who go hardcore and play to win are a good group of people. Those who are not are fully comprehended. It's not for you, then.
There is a question that I have been asking you for a long time, and I was hoping you could answer it. We are experiencing attrition, what is our plan? How are we going to bring people together to focus on the vision?
I don't know. I don't know what to say. I can tell you that a small group of people can get a lot done if they are hardcore at work. If you look at the teams that are competing against each other, there are about 3000 teams. A small group of exceptional people can do better than a large group of people who are pretty good and moderately motivated. My philosophy is that. It's a good place for people who play hard and win. Those who are not are fully comprehended. It's not for you, then.
The employee wants to know what engineering-driven culture means concretely.
The core technology of the product is being advanced by engineering-driven culture. This is not engineering to exclude other things. It's possible to takeTesla for example. We have an amazing design studio that I built from the ground up with a friend. There is a project management organization and then there is an engineering organization. Product management, design, and engineering are all reported to me. Everyone reports to engineering. The design, project management, and engineering are important to me.
What is the core product made up of? The software is made of. It's hard to make the product better if we don't write great software. We're going to build rockets and cars at both companies. There are also very good software teams there. I regard the company as a software company rather than a hardware one. We aren't shipping hardware in the case of the social networking site. Shipping software is what we are. We need to write code that advances the product. It's clear.
If we're already understaffed, why is our leadership trying to increase attrition rate?
Musk thinks we are not understaffed. I believe we are over staffed. I agree with you disagreeing with that.
An employee thinks a lot of people want to be a part of that team. We don't know how to spin up more of these types of projects.
We will be paranoid and we will survive.
Musk thinks we need to change the way we subscribe. I think we're headed into a serious recession and that's the reason I'm very concerned about subscriptions. Every company is doing layoffs. It's not just a social networking site. Advertising is more affected in a recession. Advertisers who can't clearly trace how much they spent on an ad to what demand it generated will be more affected. We are looking at a very dire situation from a revenue standpoint.
I sold a lot ofTesla stock. I did that because I wanted to save it. Not because I don't trust the company. I think it's going to be a lot of money for the company in the future. I sold the stock to someone else. To keep the conversation going on the micro-messaging service. We are going hardcore with our subscribers because we want to keep the service alive. We will be disproportionately affected by a year or two of a serious recession. We will get through that and not die. The priority there is due to that.
I was through the recession of 2000 and 2001 and the recession of 2008-9, and I am paranoid that I will die in one. During the 2000 recession, I kept X and PayPal alive, and during the 2009 recession, I keptTesla alive. In 2009, General GM and Chrysler both went out of business. The electric vehicle company did not. It was difficult to survive in 2009. Being paranoid is one of the reasons we were able to survive. Andy Gross used to say, "Only the paranoid survive." We will be paranoid and we will survive.
I have a question from remote people.
I don't know what the revenue shortfall will be next year so it's hard to say what our runway is. There is a chance that we could see a negative cash flow. Predicting the severity of a recession is not possible. We don't want to have a situation where we bet on the recession being shallow and short if it ends up being a long recession. We have to make sure we are able to survive a long recession.
If you can show up in an office but don't show up at the office, you can resign. It is time to end the story.
A person reads a question.
I haven't had time to dig into the design side of it, but I would say that over time it would be more like design, program management, and engineering would report directly to me. If anyone has great design and is artistically excellent, I would recommend that they stay in this place.
The employee asked about the return office question. Right now, a lot of the company is distributed. Are you trying to get us to come back to the office so we can call the other offices? We will still have access to our teammates in person. Why do you want to know this?
I want to be clear. People can't stay at the company if they don't return to the office when they can. It is time to end the story.
That's not my question. The offices are not the same if people come back. We won't be in person.
You can still maximize the amount of in- person activity. It's not a single place forTesla. If you can show up in an office but don't show up at the office, you're done. It is time to end the story.
The employee works on growth and notifications. We have been shipping a lot of different things in the last two weeks. I want to know what the best thing to do is over the next three months. We should try a lot of different things to see where we go. We can either focus on one or two things. Are we trying to get more users? Are we focusing more on revenue? I would like to know if there is a specific focus.
Musk said we need to bring in more cash. bankruptcy is not out of the question if we don't do that and there is a huge negative cash flow It's a priority. We can't scale to 1 billion users and lose a lot of money. It is not possible. I don't believe we'll. If we fix and improve search, that would be huge. If you add video content where creators are compensated, then people will be more likely to subscribe to the social networking site. They are on the same page. People will buy something if it's compelling. It has been my experience at two companies.
Is your recommendation that we try different things in the next few months to see what works, what doesn't, or what our focus should be?
Musk thinks it would be a good idea to propose those things to him. I think there's a lot that we need to do The situation is similar to video content and compensation for content creators in order to get content on Twitter and not have them have to put content elsewhere or not pay the bills. That is a simple decision. It's a high priority. Search is a high priority. Payments capability is going to be added to the site. That is a priority as well. If you think we should do something that you don't know about, just tell me and I'll do it.
The employee will discuss notifications. We hear a lot about how notifications can be chaotic, but at the same time it drives 20 percent of our growth. I would like to know where you see notifications for the social networking site.
Musk thinks we should be cautious with notifications. If you didn't work here, what would you do? If you didn't work at Twitter, what would you like to see happen with the service? You wouldn't want to do things that are annoying just for the sake of driving. You would like to be aware of something that is intriguing. A good way to think about whether it is the right thing or not is to say what you would like to see happen if you weren't at the site.
An employee is about to embark on a payments journey. What do you think we should do differently from what you had in mind? What are some of the things we should try and avoid?
We will be the people's financial institution if you address all of the things that you want.
There is a complicated answer to the payment story. In July of 2000 we wrote a feature road map for PayPal. You would like to have a balance for every verified user. They can send money anywhere in the system if they give them some money. Money transfer licenses are needed for that.
In order to get money out of the system in parallel, we need to establish a high-yield money market account so that we can get the highest yield possible. If someone has a checking account, savings account, bank CDs, money market account, and a credit card, then that's something to consider. This is very complicated and expensive. If you can have one balance that can go either positive or negative, and if it goes positive, the interest rate is better than what you can get elsewhere, and if it goes negative, the interest rate is lower than what you can get elsewhere.
If you attach a debit card to the account, it will be compatible with the payments system. If you have more than a certain amount of money, you can send people a card. You would like the financial infrastructure to be compatible with the past.
There are a few checks that are used in the U.S. If your landlord wants you to send a check, you have to have a lot of checks. We would send a few checks to people who needed them. Automatic payment is added afterwards. Over time, you address what you would like from finance standpoint. We will be the people's financial institution if you address all of the things that you want.
The employee thinks it's more of a bank. Do you think we'll be loaning?
If you want to provide a comprehensive service, you have to have key elements.
The privacy team has a question. Product launches and experimentation will be important to dig ourselves out of this economic situation. We have a lot of privacy obligations that we have to fulfill.
Musk doesn't know about security and privacy. I know it very well. All the cars are connected around the world. We know where they traveled. We don't keep the last half mile or so of where people went. You think about it, aTesla has surround cameras. Privacy is an issue with always- connected cars. In order to protect people's privacy, we went to great lengths. It's the same thing with Starlink. They can see what websites they visit. You're aware of where they are.
The whole system would collapse if Starlink was not very good at privacy. It's the same for both of them. This is something I've been doing for a long time. I have been dealing with privacy issues for many years. It's the same thing when you usePayPal. This isn't the first time I've had to deal with privacy issues. I have participated in six rodeos. We are going to take a few more questions.
What do you think about the metrics? As we try to prioritize our work, what are the key metrics?
Musk thinks we don't want to focus too much on metrics. These metrics can be seen as sanity checks. If you are over-optimistic on a metric, you will end up being like a stupid artificial intelligence. You don't know how to pursue a number. Are we making the product great? People will use the product if it's great.
We do not do market surveys. We make cars that we love, and we are confident that people will like them. It's all done. Everyone is sold byTesla. All of the people that do market surveys outsell all of the people that focus on metrics. We focus on making the product great. Last question, okay?
What is our goal with regards to migration to the cloud? Are we going to be in the cloud? Are we going to be our own DC? A mix of two.
We are not attempting to migrate to the cloud. I don't believe that is here or there. The product isn't here or there and we need to make it better.
The employee wants to improve the conversion rate by making the platform more e- commerce friendly.
Are you talking about enabling people to buy things?
That goes with payments as well. It is very easy to buy things if you have money in your account on the social networking site. Having an effective payment system makes it easier to buy stuff.
I think there is a lot of opportunity at the social networking site. I would like to thank you.
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