Twitter-Don't Bet Against Elon Musk!!

      Many years ago I bought Tesla shares at $18.00 US each. Elena insisted that I sell the shares because Tesla would never make any money. This morning Tesla shares are selling for $902.00 US each. Tesla is the largest car manufacturer by market capitalization in the world. At times, it hits $1 trillion US dollars. There is a saying: "Those who bet against Elon Musk often come to regret it."

    There is a lot of fear and worry about what Elon Musk will do when he takes control of Twitter. I got to meet Elon almost 26 years ago. At the time, he was studying for a Ph.D. in material engineering at Stanford University. He drove a 20-year-old Jaguar. He lived in a run-down two-bedroom apartment in Palo Alto, California, with his first wife Justine and his brother Kimbal.

   I spent 90 minutes talking to him. He is painfully shy and incredibly sensitive. He is obviously quite bright. He is an engineer at heart. I found that he was not mean or cruel. He was not arrogant. He was not overly aggressive.

     A long email friendship between Elon and I ensured. It ended with the launch of his first satellite into earth orbit on a Falcon One rocket. I have a framed copy of a Musk email to me right near my workstation.

   Over the years I have read a few biographies of Elon and read a lot of articles about him. One sentence would summarize his whole philosophy in life as follows:

"When I die, I want to leave the world a much better place than it was when I was born." Elon's political philosophy is simple. He is neither a Democrat nor a Republican. He is a centrist and a libertarian.

         When he takes control of Twitter, get ready for a lot of innovation and fresh new ideas. Yes, free speech will be at the center of his leadership. He will have constraints. He borrowed $44 billion US dollars to finance the purchase. He will have to earn a lot of money with advertising to pay off the debt. He will have to keep the lender happy. If he goes out on the fringes and the platform becomes a vehicle for fake news, propaganda, and extreme politics, he will start to lose money and have a very unhappy lender. He will make mistakes and have missteps. Please give him the benefit of a doubt and keep an open mind.