Twitter CEO Elon Musk has said he will resign from his role at the social media company. However, his promise came with a condition – finding someone “foolish enough to take the job.”
Musk tweeted the announcement on Tuesday night after he asked his over 120 million Twitter followers if they thought he should step down as the leader of the company. The survey attracted over 17 million votes, and more than 57% of respondents to the poll shared on Sunday voted for him to step down.
I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job! After that, I will just run the software & servers teams.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 21, 2022
When he started the poll, he had promised to abide by the result.
Later that Sunday, the business magnate tweeted, “As the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it.” When a user suggested he had already selected a new CEO, he responded that he does not have a successor in place yet, stating, “No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive.
He later made another tweet saying, “Those who want power are the ones who least deserve it.” While he made a series of tweets referring to the results of his survey, he didn’t share the next steps until Tuesday.
Musk, who purchased Twitter for $44 billion in October, said in his Tuesday announcement that once he finds someone to run Twitter, he will focus on the software and hardware angle of the company.
The proposed position change sounds like the serial investor will maintain direct control over the company even as someone else gets the CEO title. Either way, he is already searching for a potential new CEO, and according to FOX Business, he has his eyes on the “PayPal Mafia,” especially tech investor Joe Lonsdale.
A Wall Street CEO in constant communication with Musk told the outlet that the billionaire Twitter CEO would most likely want Lonsdale or someone from the “PayPal Mafia,” a group of former PayPal employees and founders who have gone on to establish or develop other tech companies including Tesla, Yelp, Youtube and Yammer.
“Most business leaders would not want to work for Elon. His friends from PayPal know him well and possibly understand him,” the unnamed CEO said.
