🍪 No payday for Elon

Happy Thursday, friends. This is Bite Sized Beta. We’re the sauce to your pizza - we bring that flavor and coverage to your tech news diet. 

Let’s get this party started. 

In the oven this week:

  • 💸 Elon gets screwed

  • 🗳️ Poll of the week: does Elon deserve $56B?

  • 🍪 Cookie crumbs: 5 bite-sized headlines 

  • 💬 Tweet of the week: the TLDR of all self help

  • 🍫 Chocolate chips: our 3 favorite finds of the week

  • 😂 Snickerdoodles: Thursday memes

FRESHLY BAKED

ELON GETS SCREWED

Imagine doing your annual performance review at work.

Your boss says you’ve done a great job this year.

You’ve massively exceeded expectations, and now a 20% bonus is waiting for ya. 

Yes!!

Come payday though, your company decides - you know what? 20% is too much for employee bonuses. We’re not doing that anymore. We’ll have to figure something else out, hang in there.

That’s right, dawg - sucks to suck! 

Well, you can stop imagining now ‘cause this just happened to Elon this week.

That’s right, his pay day is now a nay day. 

Let me explain. 

Back in 2018, Elon and the Tesla board agreed that he’d work 10 years without pay.

No salary, no bonuses, no equity, no nothin’. 

Elon’s a smart guy though. 

Why would he sign up for this?  

Because they agreed that at the end of that 10 years, he’d get the chance to collect a billion dollar payday if Tesla hit certain milestones tied to market cap and revenue. 

Yup, billion with a B. 

They agreed to 12 milestones, with his pay increasing the more milestones were hit.  

He’d only get the maximum payout ($55.8B) if Tesla went from a market cap of $59B to at least $650B:

Shareholders voted and approved the package. ‘Cause in the end, if Tesla hit $650B, they all win.

Well, Elon being Elon, hit all 12 targets. 

But after a Tesla shareholder (with just 9 shares of Tesla!) filed a suit against Tesla challenging the pay package, a Delaware judge voided it, calling it "an unfathomable sum." 

Now, both sides have to work together to come up with a new plan. 

Naturally, Elon responded in true fashion:

Here’s our take.

Normally, we’re not out here defending billionaires.

And $56B is truly an unfathomable amount of money. 

But you know what was more unfathomable at the time? 

Tesla hitting those 12 targets. 

Back in 2018, only three companies in the world were worth more than $650B: Apple ($908bn), Alphabet ($807bn) and Microsoft ($707bn).

Tesla was 14 years old at the time and had a $59B market cap, so a >10x outcome was far from obvious. 

Plus, it sets a bad precedent for other CEOs that actually want to align themselves with shareholder interests. 

Most CEOs don’t even care to try - just look at Sundar, who made $226M in 2022, all while Google’s stock price tanked ~40%. 

So is $56B insane? 

100%. 

But is it unfair that it got randomly struck down after the milestones had already been hit? 

1000%.

FROM THE COOKIE JAR

POLL OF THE WEEK: DOES ELON DESERVE $56B?

Sound off 👇🏽

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BITE SIZED HEADLINES

Meta absolutely crushed earnings: profits tripled and now it’s offering investors a dividend (i.e. “we have so much money we don’t even know what to do with it. Here - have some!”) Shared jumped 20%. How many times can we say Zuck is the man??

Snap suffered the opposite fate of Meta: they laid off 10% of its workforce and the stock crashed 30% after they released Q4 earnings this week (slowing user growth and lagging revenue). 

Youtube’s CEO shared their 4 big bets for the year, and can ya guess what’s first?AI obviously, but followed by embracing creators as studios, subscriptions, and safety.

THE BIG PIZOOKIE

TWEET OF THE WEEK

Boom. We can all drop the books now.

CHOCOLATE CHIPS

OUR FAVORITE FINDS

SNICKERDOODLES

THURSDAY MEMES

 😂 

 

That's all we got for ya this week, folks. See ya next Thursday!

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