Kayvon Beykpour: belief

Transcript context

…When all the drama went down with Twitter and Elon ended up buying the company and after the eight months saga of legal back and forth ended up actually taking control of the company, there was that first two-day period where it was complete chaos at Twitter with the sink and Elon spreading his tentacles trying to find out who are the people that he wants to keep and what are the projects that are interesting. In the midst of all that, Scott ended up getting contacted and being asked, "Who should Elon talk to?" Scott recommended that Elon chat with me. So, the first time I ever met Elon was over at FaceTime where Elon was just very curious to ask, "Hey, you were at Twitter for a while. You seem to have done some things. What should I be digging into, and who I be talking to?" At the end of that conversation, we ended up arranging an in-person meeting where Scott and I went to Twitter HQ to actually meet Elon. I think this was day two of Elon having brought the sink in. So, we had this really bizarre, wild, but really fun experience of walking into Twitter HQ, and in my case, walking back to Twitter HQ for the first time after having been fired, which was a very strange experience for me, and we walked into the building. I was scurried through the back door because I didn't want to make a scene and make it ... There was a lot of rumors around is Kayvon coming back, and I just wanted to avoid all of that. So, it was just a very weird experience of being scurried through the elevator and through the back door and go to this massive conference room, which we had on the second floor of the 110th building. In that massive conference room, it was me, Scott, Elon, and then at the very, very end of the room, Walter Isaacson, who by the way, I had a hard time. I knew I recognized. I'd never met Walter in person, but I was like, "Is that Walter Isaacson?" But he said nothing the entire time, and we had probably a two-hour conversation talking about the past, the future of Twitter, the good, the bad, the ugly. At the very end of the conversation, Walter came up and introduced himself and was like, "Hi, I'm Walter. Can I get your information just in case I need to ask any follow-up questions?" And I was like, "Oh, shit. I guess that whole conversation was on the record. I don't know." So, it was a very surreal experience for a bunch of reasons, including just being weird for me since I was very conflicted about coming back to Twitter, even physically in the office. But I must say it was really fun. It was fun talking to someone. Obviously Elon, I'd never met him before, and he's one of the most successful entrepreneurs of our time. So, that was exciting to go into that meeting. t was really fun. It was fun talking to someone. Obviously Elon, I'd never met him before, and he's one of the most successful entrepreneurs of our time. So, that was exciting to go into that meeting. Also, I had been spending so much time dreaming about Twitter and trying to mold Twitter in a direction that I thought was compelling and working with a team of people to do that, and to meet someone who also had a similar ambition, but obviously, in different ways ... He had his own dream for Twitter ... but it was really bizarre and unique and surreal seeing that glimmer in someone else who was like, "Yeah, I also just bought this thing, so I can actually do whatever the Hell I want. And by the way, here's some crazy dreams I have for doing it." It was just a really ... As someone who had had their own dreams for the product, witnessing that it was really unusual and cool. I think that's probably what Scott meant when he said, "You should ask Kayvon about that," was that I think we both kind of recognized that something's about to happen here. Obviously, you have this very public spectacle of someone essentially having a takeover of a public company, but all of that stuff aside, also, you could tell Elon was scheming and cooking up, "What am I going to do with this?" It was cool to see that. That's an amazing story. I love the Walter Isaacson component of it. Do you feel like you made a dent on his approach and way of thinking? Obviously, he made a lot of big radical changes. Do you feel like you made a dent in his view of where Twitter should go?…

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