What makes you think it's an excel mistake? I didn't see anything particularly suggestive in the article itself, so perhaps you know more than is mentioned?
I'm unfamiliar with a spirit-medium con and a Feng Shui conflict. Do you mean just a 'medium sized con game' and Feng Shui meaning that things just didn't line up in the ultimate vision?
>> This discovery even led the company to change its ARR calculation method to reflect reality more accurately and also take into account scenarios of reduced usage of its solutions by customers.
It sounds like they were using an ARR model that failed to take into account partial usage, in a significant way.
Due diligence usually refers to the review of the asset you're trying to acquire. There weren't any significant surprises about Twitter's state. Elon's issue was Elon.
Elon specifically waived the ability to withdraw because of post-signing due diligence in his offer to twitter's board. It's one of the (many) reasons he had little ability to get out of the deal once he changed his mind.
As I just argued, due diligence wouldn't have uncovered any surprises. It's merely that Elon could have used the process to ascertain what consequences the acquisition would have for his own assets (compatibility/marketing audit) and what his ideas would lead to.
It potentially could have. For example, post-signing he had a big fight with twitter's lawyers over the right way to measure bot accounts. If he could prove it was much higher than twitter's SEC filings, he might have been able to withdraw from the deal if he kept the due diligence condition.
I sometimes view security firms as I view Wordpress security plugins. Back when I did Wordpress consulting I went through most security plugins and realized they were pretty much scams. Obfuscate some names and hashes and show some checks. They would run as part of your app, so your servers would need to be beefier. But you’d soon realize putting your server behind a waf, and hardening your server and db and generally following best practices got you 100% there. But novice developers felt very safe with these plugins and every website I fixed that had them was a mess. They didn’t understand what the plugins were doing, only that they showed green checkmarks. Security firms like to show green checkmarks.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 108 ms ] threadIf it was indeed a spirit-medium con (who could say otherwise), I wonder if it is one for the ages.
If it was indeed a Feng Shui conflict (many might say it was), I wonder if it is one of the more consequential ones.
I'd love to know more.
It sounds like they were using an ARR model that failed to take into account partial usage, in a significant way.
As I just argued, due diligence wouldn't have uncovered any surprises. It's merely that Elon could have used the process to ascertain what consequences the acquisition would have for his own assets (compatibility/marketing audit) and what his ideas would lead to.