Linkedin Founder Reid Hoffman: Elon Musk has some good ideas for improving Twitter
Long-time Elon Musk confidante and LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman says his friend has a lot of good ideas on tap to fundamentally change Twitter for the better should the billionaire's deal go through.
"So there's some things I've talked about [with him], which I can't say here," the noted venture capitalist and "The Startup of You" author said on a new episode of Yahoo Finance Presents (video above). "One of the things he already has tweeted about — and Twitter being a good means for doing this — is bringing more validation of human identity onto the platform. And I think that is actually a good thing. And I think that vision as part of what he's thinking about on Twitter is clearly a very good idea."
Hoffman and Musk are part of the infamous "PayPal Mafia" — or as Hoffman prefers: the PayPal Network — a group of game-changing co-founders of the payments platform that also includes Peter Thiel and Affirm (AFRM) Founder Max Levchin.
While Musk has been mum on specifics on a turnaround plan for Twitter (TWTR), some details have begun to come to light.
The New York Times got hold of Elon’s pitch-deck for Twitter, and it’s solid fodder. Musk has a vision to quintuple Twitter’s sales to $26.4 billion by 2028 on a user base of 931 million (compared to 217 million to end last year).
The vision of Musk for Twitter could soon be on full display.
Musk acquired a 9.2% stake in Twitter in early April before striking a deal to buy the social media platform for $54.20 a share, or about $44 billion, a few weeks later. Musk has said that the platform should be less reliant on advertising sales and better police content.
Other big-name investors reportedly backing the bid include Oracle Founder Larry Ellison as well as the crypto platform Binance. Hoffman declined to say if he would be investing in Twitter to help Elon.
"I think I would help him along with anything he asked me for help with," Hoffman said.
Hoffman added that betting against Musk fixing Twitter would be foolish given his achievements.
"Elon could arguably be the entrepreneur of our generation. I mean, amazing," the billionaire said. "And amazing across multiple fronts — space-flight, neurological things, electric cars, everything just wow. Just simply wow. And all happening at the same time."
Brian Sozzi is an editor-at-large and anchor at Yahoo Finance. Follow Sozzi on Twitter @BrianSozzi and on LinkedIn.
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