Musk is the negotiator

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Text / Bi Andi

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Musk’s “price reduction” in acquiring Twitter is well known, and even Twitter shareholders can’t stand it.

Recently, Twitter shareholders filed a class-action lawsuit in the Northern District Court of California, accusing Musk of using the current messy acquisition transaction to manipulate Twitter’s stock price. Musk’s complaint about the so-called “robot account” is its “bot account”. part of a scheme to manipulate stock prices.

Even the recent incident of Musk’s fire on the ESG system on Twitter was initially based on Tesla, and then turned into a political manifesto for switching to the Republican Party. Finally, after being exposed to sexual harassment allegations, he went round and round and returned to the “horse”. Scrooge should buy Twitter”.

This seems a bit confusing, let’s try to figure it out: Musk is dissatisfied with the ESG system, and the Democratic Party has always been concerned about ESG issues and has relevant policies to support them. Musk then expanded the issue of the ESG system to the issue of political positions and announced Switch to the Republican Party, and forewarned: Political attacks on me will be frequent in the coming months.

Then, foreign media revealed that a flight attendant working for SpaceX claimed that Musk sexually harassed her scandal, which Musk attributed to a “political attack”; and Musk’s fans quickly discovered that Musk’s response to this matter was on Twitter. “Folded” on special platforms – the tweets are still there, but many people can’t see them. So, after a long circle, this matter fell back to “Twitter sucks, Musk is coming to buy it”.

True to Musk.

It has been more than a month since Musk suddenly made an acquisition proposal with a total price of 44 billion US dollars in mid-April, and Twitter has also been severely PUA by Musk for a month: first put forward an attractive offer, and then pull They bombarded Twitter with the problem of “fake accounts”, and even tweeted that if Twitter did not provide the real proportion of fake accounts on the platform, the transaction could not be advanced. Then, Musk praised WeChat again. In the end, Musk went to great lengths to use events and occasions to create an atmosphere of “Twitter needs Musk”.

Even when Musk and the Brazilian president met before, they were clearly talking about rural Internet links and detection measures in the Amazon rainforest, and balloons were released. “The Brazilian president said that Musk proposed to acquire Twitter, bringing a ‘breath of hope’.”

It’s like the scumbag who pursues it with rhetoric and dislikes you, and also says that Xiaoli next door is beautiful.

Twitter, which was alive and well, is now in a strange situation where the world finds it “not worth the price” and it is a failure not to be acquired by Musk.

The acquisition proposal originally seemed to be “sweet”, but the actual operation was to press on Twitter step by step and constantly lower the price. Musk’s move mainly against customers, which not only exposed his nature of paying attention to money, but also showed his superb skills as a negotiator.

In this negotiation hidden under the surface, Musk used his identity as the richest man and the resume of several companies to mobilize his huge influence of 90 million fans and activate the dissatisfaction of the majority of users with Twitter. Pushed Twitter into a negotiating dead end.

NASA, various state governments, other companies, their own employees… The objects of negotiation are different. Musk has a way to take advantage of or even expand his advantages, and is good at using his huge fan base to launch information warfare, occupy the high ground of public opinion, and make The object of negotiation is passive, so as to maximize his own interests.

A negotiator, Musk deserves it.

A

Just as Musk offered $44 billion to acquire Twitter as soon as he came up, touching the upper lip to the lower lip is the first step in Musk’s negotiation, and this is the bait.

If Musk is not the “buyer”, but the party to be bought, the attractive pie is likely to provoke the negotiators to fight first, and Musk can wait for the best solution.

This has to say about the “love story” between Musk and Texas. As early as 2011, Musk made a secret message to Texas, expressing his intention to build the “world’s first commercial vertical rocket launch pad” in Texas.

Whether it is space facilities or jobs and other monetary rewards, Texas has a fatal attraction. Texas Republican Governor Rick Perry and Brownsville Economic Development Council Vice President Gilberto Salinas came to SpaceX’s California headquarters to meet with Musk three weeks after receiving Musk’s offer. Thus began a three-year negotiation.

In that glass-walled conference room, Musk outlined his vision of sending humans to Mars, expressing interest in Texas but stressing that Texas is just “one of many places of interest.”

That left both officials excited and nervous in Texas — the second most populous state in the country and Boothville, one of the poorest metropolitan areas in the country. The region has the lowest median household income of any U.S. state at about $32,000, compared with the national average of about $53,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Salinas, who was responsible for recruiting local companies, recalled how he felt at the time: “If we don’t go all out for a project like this, what is there to do our best?”

For the next three years, Musk has maintained a negotiating relationship with Texas of “eating in the bowl and watching the pot”. On the one hand, Musk is thoughtful and has made donations to local campaigns and other events many times. When officials visit SpaceX’s California headquarters, he is willing to entertain them with nearly $7,000 for three days.

But on the other hand, Musk has been holding the stick in the left hand to the sugar in the right. Even in a 2012 hearing on oversight spending at the Capitol in Austin, Texas, Musk said Texas was the preferred candidate, but SpaceX was “absolutely looking at other locations.”

The concept of competition is deeply ingrained in the minds of Texas officials, and Brownsville, Texas Democratic Representative Rene Oliveira, who later consulted mainly with SpaceX people, also told lawmakers that Texas must participate in the conflict. Among other states’ competition: “Florida has $20 million to recruit space-related companies this fiscal year.”

When Texas Governor Perry announced in 2014 that SpaceX’s rocket launch pad had been built somewhere in South Texas, Texas offered Musk $2.3 million in incentives and the Cameron County Spaceport. The Development Corporation provides $13 million to support the infrastructure needed for the spaceport.

Texas even made changes to local laws to support SpaceX’s ambitions, including closing public beaches during launches and legal protections from noise complaints.

Perhaps he tasted the sweetness from this negotiation. Later, Musk used the means of competition to promote negotiation in the state government, and it became more naked.

In 2014, the same year Texas officially won SpaceX’s rocket launch pad project, Musk’s other company, Tesla, was building its first large-scale battery factory.

Musk simply asked for $500 million in cash up front, and as a result, several states launched a price bidding war. In the end, Nevada won, with $1.3 billion in transferable tax credits and 20 years of various other tax cuts.

In 2016, New York State followed suit, not only approving a $750 million incentive program to build a solar panel factory in Buffalo for Musk’s Solar City, but also directing $500 million from the Treasury Department to Solar City.

At that time, Musk had just acquired the photovoltaic company Sun City, and ambitiously declared that he would build Buffalo into the largest photovoltaic module production base in the Western Hemisphere.

B

There are no new tricks at the negotiating table, and Musk is well aware of this. When Musk is inevitably on the passive side of the negotiating table, he will promptly sell his interests in order to quickly defeat his competitors.

Remember the space war between Bezos and Musk that made a lot of noise last year?

In that competition, the “seat” at the negotiating table was NASA. At that time, NASA wanted to do a lunar spacecraft project and extended an olive branch to private companies. There are three companies participating in the bidding, namely Musk’s SpaceX, Bezos’ Blue Origin, and Dynetics.

In the end, SpaceX got an exclusive contract from NASA in April, worth $2.9 billion. Bezos’ subsequent performance can only be described as “disappointed” and directly sued NASA and SpaceX, hoping to overturn this decision.

Bezos’s anger is that he thought there would be back-and-forth negotiations for the bid, but NASA made a final decision and chose SpaceX with the lowest offer – Blue Origin’s offer was $5.9 billion, more than twice that of SpaceX.

In Bezos’s protest after the incident, it was full of “I can bargain, why don’t you?” depression.

The lawsuit also confirmed the fact that Bezos lost on the starting line of negotiations.

According to NASA lawyers, the reason why Blue Origin offered such a high price must be the confidence gained from the 2020 contract: At that time, the three companies received a development fund, and Blue Origin’s highest was $579 million. SpaceX had the lowest at $135 million.

The $579 million bonus for Blue Origin in 2020 started from the “negotiation” of the $879 million offer, and finally Blue Origin gave NASA a $300 million discount.

This time, Bezos also wanted to negotiate a good price from a high offer. Unexpectedly, NASA would not play with him, so he went directly to Musk, who offered a “sincere” offer.

In this bid, Musk is the weaker party. Compared with the pressure on the state government when building bases and factories, he knows very well that he needs to impress NASA, not that NASA needs to win him over.

Full of sincerity to customers, Musk is not so friendly to rival Blue Origin. He made fun of Bezos on Twitter, joking: “It turns out that Bezos’ full-time job after retirement is to sue SpaceX.”

In the end, in the serious business competition, Musk not only won the order according to the situation, but also killed people, making Bezos completely become a cheapskate at the level of public opinion.

And what happens when employees try to negotiate with boss Musk?

A widely circulated story is that Mary Brown, Musk’s assistant for 12 years, wanted to talk to Musk about a raise. Probably because he thinks that he has worked hard and deserves better compensation, but the boss Musk doesn’t think so.

Since it was a negotiation, Musk had to figure out the role of his opponent and himself first, so he first gave Mary a two-week leave. During this time, Musk also did not let anyone else take over her job, and after two weeks, Musk concluded that the negotiation was not necessary at all.

So, after returning from vacation, not only did she not get a raise, but she was ruthlessly fired by her boss, Musk.

Whether you’re a state government looking for money and job opportunities, or your father, NASA, or an employee who wants to negotiate with your boss, or a third-party company you’re interested in, Musk always has a way to negotiate. The table changes shape, fast or slow, or simmering or simmering, and you will be taken down.

C

Musk’s invincibility in negotiations actually has a premise, that is, the credibility brought to him by his own business success, as well as the personality charisma under the combination of stubbornness, outspokenness, and human heart.

After Musk won Texas in the negotiations, it did bring a lot of benefits to Texas. By 2021, Starbase already has 1,700 local employees with a combined salary of more than $80 million. Immediately after the StarShip exploded, Musk tweeted that he would donate $30 million to Cameron County and the city of Brownsville for the construction of schools and downtown.

The painted cake was eaten, and Musk and Texas were considered “locked to death”. In an interview with the media in 2021, the mayor of Brownsville 7 years ago still remembered what Musk said to him: “Mr. Mayor, one day you will read in the history book that a man left Brownsville. to Mars.”

So much so that when Musk chose the location of the fifth Gigafactory in 2020, Texas was very welcome. At that time, Musk also sent a voting tweet, and more than 80% of the votes were in favor.

In April of this year, the Tesla Gigafactory in Texas had held an opening event, and Musk wore a western cowboy hat with the Texas logo and danced for a while.

When success and charisma are not guaranteed, it is difficult for Musk to continue as a negotiator as a negotiator.

Signs of this are already emerging. Although Texas is deeply convinced by Musk, Berlin, Germany may be more cautious next time it negotiates with Musk.

Thinking that in order to lead Tesla to conquer the European market from Berlin, Musk also tried his best to negotiate.

Unlike releasing bait in the continental United States to tear the states apart, there is no less backtracking on Musk in Berlin. When questioned by local environmentalists for cutting down forest land, Musk promised to plant three trees in the future for every tree cut.

The progress of production was stuck in the review process. While complaining about the bureaucracy of the other party, he rushed to Germany overnight to communicate with local officials.

However, when the Berlin factory actually opened, the situation was not optimistic.

Although Tesla’s Berlin factory is advertised as an annual output of 500,000 vehicles, it is actually still in the stage of “capacity climbing”. According to JPMorgan Chase’s forecast, the real production of 500,000 vehicles will have to wait until 2025.

In addition, the unemployment rate in Germany is not high, and Tesla’s Gigafactory in Berlin is not recruiting enough people. The original plan was to recruit 12,000 people. In fact, the current number of regular employees is only 3,000, which is still far behind.

Coupled with the fact that domestic German car brands are relatively “playable”, Tesla has not been able to exert any advantages in Germany.

The production capacity is not up, and job opportunities are not an imminent problem in Berlin. In addition, the local environmentalists who still bite the Tesla factory are frequently attacking. For both Germany’s Berlin and Musk, this negotiation is a win. , but has not seen good results, and it will also hit the outside world’s trust in Musk’s pie.

As for charisma, although Musk said the sex scandal of “harassing flight attendants” was purely a political attack, everyone who eats melons understands how quickly a person’s personality collapses, and the more dazzling the personality, the more it collapses. danger.

Musk is a well-deserved negotiator at the moment, but no one can say how long this expert can be.

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