You Either Die a Hero, Or You Live Long Enough to See Yourself Become the Villain

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Happy Monday, folks.

The World Cup finally came to an end yesterday, along with any debate over whether Messi is the best player of all time, as Argentina knocked off the defending champs in France in an instant classic that culminated in an epic penalty shootout. This is a startups newsletter, not a sports one (though you can check out my college football business one at Pigskin Economics 😉), so why am I telling you this?

Interestingly enough, the country that wins the World Cup generally experiences a .25% rise in GDP in the two quarters following the tournament. Considering the state of the Argentine economy with inflation approaching 100% and notable corruption incidents involving high-ranking officials, however, the nation might struggle to keep this balloon from hitting the ground.

Regardless, the rest of the world can finally get back to actually working rather than pretending to do so while their monitors are really streaming futbol. What's that? Christmas is this weekend?

I guess we'll try to be productive again next week.

I try to bring you the most interesting of startups every week. Unfortunately, there's only so much time in the day and typing my fingers can take. If you're looking for even more startup analysis, I highly recommend checking out my friends at StarKeys. This free weekly newsletter spotlights one early-stage startup every single week, giving you insights into the companies that are going to be huge tomorrow before your entire LinkedIn network does.

Just a year ago, Musk was the people's champion. He broke the mold that was the classic suit and tie CEO as he smoked weed with Joe Rogan, populated our Twitter feed with #dank memes, and even went on SNL to joke about Dogecoin. He even tried to sell homemade flamethrowers before he was legally required to stop.

More importantly, he seemed to be genuinely committed to helping humanity as he positioned Tesla as the future of sustainable mobility, launched satellite after satellite to provide internet access to remote populations, and most importantly, tried to dig tunnels under LA to save us from the lethal issue that is I-5 traffic.

Oh, how the times have changed.

Now, he frequents headlines for illegally firing workers, beefing with college students and politicians, and meeting with Putin and trying to negotiate peace deals without American government knowledge and which might favor Tesla's profitability. He is playing Hungry Hungry Hippos with America's attention.

While his endeavors were always motivated by money, there were still genuine benevolent undertones. However, there's been a noticeable shift in Elon's character arc, and it's not one that many are approving of.

We're all aware that he recently bought Twitter in an attempt to "preserve the public town square." This meant unbanning previously banned accounts, eliminating bots and fake accounts, and experimenting with a variety of company policies while trying to make the Bird as profitable as possible.

In doing so, he has become the villain.

A few months ago, UCF student Jack Sweeney made national headlines with his viral Twitter account @elonjet, an account dedicated to tracking the executive's private jet as it made 15 minute trips from city to very nearby city.

Elon once offered Sweeney $5k to shut the account down, claiming that having his location publicly posted was a threat to his security. This is understandable, as even though all of the information being posted was publicly accessible through flight logs (which is where Sweeney was pulling from anyways), most wouldn't go through the trouble of tracking the jet had the account not put the data on everyone's feeds.

Sweeney turned the offer down, and even after Elon took over the company, Musk publicly stated that he would not be banning the account.

That lasted all of a month as Musk suspended the account last week.

Musk also tweeted that one of his cars had been tracked and attacked as a masked individual pulled out in front of the car, stopping it in the middle of the street as the stalker jumped up on the hood of the car. Musk wasn't in the car, but even worse, one of his children was.

I can only imagine how terrifying this would have been for Musk, knowing that one of his kids had been put in danger. The responsible individual should be held accountable and seriously punished, and luckily, the driver of Musk's car had gotten a video of the assailant and the car with the license plates clearly displayed.

However, rather than taking this video to the authorities, Musk posted it on Twitter where billions of people could see the person and his license plate. In the tweet, he announced that legal action was being taken against Sweeney and other accounts that were posting his location online along with a public search query for the individual who had followed the car. For an individual who won't shut up about privacy and freedom, this public doxxing seems pretty hypocritical.

Elon also suspended another of journalists and reporters who have been critical of Musk and his recent business moves. The suspension apparently failed to prevent the blocked individuals from participating in Twitter Spaces (think live podcasts), and after he joined a large space with many of these journalists and realized the slip, the entire Spaces feature was temporarily shut down and removed from the app. Mysterious.

This leads us to our final victim of Elon's censorship winter cleaning: rival social media sites.

When Musk took over Twitter and many of the platform's users feared for their blue bird experience, many took to alternative platform Mastodon, a site many dub "decentralized Twitter." The app saw millions of users join in the first week of Elon's Twitter ownership.

The Mastodon Twitter account was sent to the account list in the sky, followed up yesterday with an outright ban on other social media platforms' Twitter presences. Plugging of a user's other social media profiles were also banned, drawing the ire of many a wannabe Insta-fluencer.

Musk's Twitter tenure has been short but certainly not short of news. To many, myself included, this time has appeared to be a disaster for the app. The negative headlines regarding workplace culture, the disastrous "verification" tests and paid tiers, and the hypocritical treatment of censorship policies might have caused Twitter to spike in the news and create a short term excitement around the platform (which he has been very vocal to point out...), but is this good for the app and its users in the long run?

Then there's his responsibility to his other companies. Since taking over Twitter, Tesla's stock has cratered roughly 30%, a result of investors' lack of confidence in his ability to pat his head and rub his stomach multitask. As CEO of the company, Elon has a responsibility to his employees and his shareholders. He's visibly neglecting those duties, hurting the car company's value and performance as he continues to tweet barbs at AOC.

The company is struggling to deliver on promised vehicle numbers and products altogether, recalling faulty vehicles, and killing innocent crash dummies with failing self-driving systems. It's a company flailing in the wind, and Elon seems too busy decorating Twitter dorm rooms to address Tesla's serious operational issues and fulfill its promise of creating sustainable mobility.

Then there's Neuralink which is in hot water for killing monkeys. A federal probe has been launched into its potential animal abuse violations, and its own employees are rising up against its inhumane practices. There are calls for the FDA to bar the company from ever receiving approval because of these actions, and the increased scrutiny has inspired rivals like Bill Gates to explore brain implants of their own.

Even The Boring Company, his "let's dig a tunnel" side hustle, is struggling as an increasing number of local officials call out the billionaire for making promises to operate in their localities only to pull out and ghost them before actually doing anything. In many cases, Musk even used questionable tactics to get regulatory approval to operate there in the first place.

Perhaps the only company of his that didn't try to lick a freezing pole is SpaceX which recently launched a mission which should reach the Moon next year. Even it has seen some negative press as of late, though, as residents of towns with SpaceX operations complain about corrupt approval procedures which were instituted just for Musk.

So my question is this: when did Elon become the villain?

Though he has always had his critics, the majority of people seemed to hold him in such a high standing just a year ago. His quirky antics and relatable hobbies made him a man of the people, but now even r/elonmusk, the subreddit dedicated to all things Musk, has given up defending the man as he becomes a hypocrite engaging in the very same censorship tactics and attention seeking that he had criticized all so he can crush some woke agenda.

Perhaps the fall from grace has been more of a tumble down a hill, as there were signs of a less than admirable figure all along. Whether it was rumors of affairs with influential business leaders' wives, pumping up stocks and crypto, or coming out as anti-Bitcoin after already talking about it as the future and announcing that Tesla would be accepting it as payment, Musk has always embraced controversy.

However, the real transition has been that towards pure hypocrisy.

He's suspending accounts for criticizing him after buying the platform to protect free speech, putting in place a review council to decide on banning accounts (just like the one that was already existent), and going on the defensive for anti-Bitcoin takes, even using false evidence to back up his claims when the BTC maxis have called him out on his BS.

Musk is entitled to his own opinions. He can value free speech and that Bitcoin is bad for the environment and whatever else he believes in. But one can begin to wonder whether he really stands for anything at all when his stances seem to change with the direction of the wind.

Before I could even press publish, there was ANOTHER update. As he has grown fond of doing, he announced that he would be making ANOTHER major company decision based on the outcome of a Twitter poll sent out to his hundreds of millions of follower.

The question: Should Musk step down as head of Twitter?

The results:

TBD whether Musk will in fact abide by these results, but perhaps he is showing a bit more introspective capacity than I had given him credit for. Tesla investors sure hope so; following the results of this poll, the car company's stock is up roughly 5%.

Maybe this means Musk will get back to building cars, brain microchips, and digging tunnels. However, at least for now, he's stuck beefing with 20 year olds and politicians on Twitter, slowly becoming the very individual he has so vocally detested before.

Scheduling update: this is the final newsletter of the year.

I launched this newsletter excited to share my passion for startups with the world, and after just a few months, I've managed to find a community of likeminded, curious people who have allowed me to learn even more from them than I could ever hope to write for them. For that, I appreciate all of you, and I'm pumped to continue to explore together next year.

See you then, have a happy holidays, and maybe touch some grass or something.

Cheers to another day,

Trey

P.S. Interested in the business of college football? Make sure to check out Pigskin Economics, a once-per-week breakdown of the biggest topics going from the sideline to the executive suite.