- Elon Musk took control of Twitter in a $44 billion deal last month.
- Since then he’s fired almost all its senior leadership and half the workforce.
- Behind the scenes, Musk has reportedly been installing a team of close allies.
Hours after Elon Musk finalized his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter he began firing its top executives.
Within two weeks, Twitter had lost almost all of its senior leadership and about half its workforce.
But behind the scenes, Musk has reportedly been cobbling together a small team to replace them.
“Elon has an inner circle of friends and family that he keeps close,” Tim Higgins, author of “Power Play: Elon Musk, Tesla, and the Bet of the Century,” told the Evening Standard.
The billionaire often drafts these friends into new business ventures with some already appearing at Twitter, Higgins said.
Picked from Musk’s inner circle of allies, friends, and ex-colleagues, these are the people reportedly helping him fix Twitter.
Jason Calacanis
Earl Mcgehee/Getty Images
Investor and podcaster Jason Calacanis is a longtime Musk ally.
According to texts released during Musk’s legal battle with Twitter, he even expressed his desire to be Twitter’s CEO.
Calacanis wrote in a text exchange with Musk: “Put me in the game coach! Twitter CEO is my dream job.”
Not quite CEO, Calacanis’ Twitter bio at one point stated he was the “Chief Meme Officer” at Twitter and the “World’s Greatest Moderator.”
Internally at Twitter, he is listed as a software engineer, two sources familiar with the changes told Insider’s Kali Hays.
Calacanis has also flaunted his involvement with the company in tweets, polling users about the features they’d like to see and flagging a meeting with Twitter advertisers.
Alex Spiro
APU GOMES / Contributor /Getty Images
Spiro first worked with Musk when he defended him in a defamation case in 2019.
Since then, Spiro played a key role in Musk’s abandoned legal attempt to back out of the Twitter deal.
The celebrity lawyer who has worked with stars such as Jay-Z and Eminem is now managing the government relations, policy, and marketing teams at Twitter, according to four of The Washington Post’s sources.
Spiro was also acting as de-facto head of legal, sources told Insider, and was reportedly involved in the layoff plan that cut about one in two staff.
Sriram Krishnan
YouTube
Unlike the others, Krishnan has worked for Twitter before.
The software engineer left the company last year for the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
Three days after Musk’s acquisition, Krishnan tweeted that he was temporarily “helping out” Musk after the takeover.
Krishnan’s role and closeness to Musk are both unclear. He has been supportive of the billionaire in the past, calling him an “inspirational person and an iconic founder”.
Online speculation about a friendship between the two was stoked in February 2021, when Musk appeared on a talk show hosted by Krishnan and his wife on Clubhouse.
David Sacks
Reuters
Sacks is part of the “Paypal mafia,” a group of influential founders who worked on the payments app. The group’s alumni include LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, Sacks, and Musk himself.
Since his time as COO and product lead on PayPal, Sacks has gone on to start Craft Ventures, a venture-capital firm.
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Now, Sacks is said to have been dragged in – at least temporarily – to help Musk with Twitter. Sources told Insider he was listed on Twitter’s company directory as a staff software engineer and was assigned a company email address.
Sacks has disputed the reports that he’s actively involved, saying on Twitter he had “no official role” but was “doing what investors try to do in Silicon Valley, which is be helpful at the margins.”
Jared Birchall
Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Birchall is the head of Musk’s family office and manages the billionaire’s personal wealth. He has been described as Musk’s “fixer” and right-hand man.
The former Goldman Sachs analyst has worked with Musk for more than six years. In 2018, he was even listed as chief executive, CFO, and president of Neuralink, Musk’s neural interface technology company.
Bloomberg reported that Birchall played a key part in securing the financing for Musk’s Twitter purchase.
Over the past week, Musk’s right-hand man has also been among the team strategizing inside Twitter, per The Washington Post.
Spiro, Calacanis, Sacks, Birchall, and Krishnan did not respond to requests for comment from Insider.
