But now, we have a robust idea of what Twitter’s numbers would look like under the Tesla CEO’s management. Over the weekend, The New York Times published a report about Musk’s pitch deck to investors — and the goals described in it are pretty ambitious.
Rocket fueled user growth
931 million. That’s Musk’s target for user numbers by 2028. That’s huge by any measure. But for reference, let’s take a look at the current numbers for Twitter. The company’s Q1 2022 results suggest it has 229 million daily active users (DAUs) with a growth of 15.9% year-on-year. Even if this growth rate continues, Twitter will only hit 550 million users by 2028. The company will have to grow its user base at an annual rate of 26% year-on-year from now on to reach the mark of 931 million. That’s a tough ask, given platforms like Facebook and Netflix are finding it hard to increase their audience. Even Snap, a company that’s doing better than Facebook and Twitter, grew its user numbers by only 18% in Q1 2022. What’s more, since it’s a Musk pitch deck, there’s a 69 (million) joke in there. That’s the number of paying users he’s targeting by 2025.
Lofty revenue goals
Musk’s pitch deck aims to get Twitter to reach a yearly revenue figure of $26.8 billion by 2028. For comparison, the company’s revenue last year was $5 billion. The former PayPal CEO wants Twitter to stop relying entirely on ads for revenue. He wants these to account for $12 billion by 2028 — almost 45% of the revenue. Currently, it represents roughly 90% of the company’s business. The NYT report notes that Musk expects $10 billion in revenue from subscriptions by 2028. He also wants payments — offerings like shopping and tipping creators — to generate $1.3 billion by that time.
Everything else
There are a few other things Musk wants to do with Twitter’s business, but the details are a bit hazy at the moment:
Create a mysterious product called X, that will have 104 million subscribers by 2028. Twitter’s current workforce is around 7,500 people. Musk wants to increase that to 9,225 by 2022-end, slash it to 8,332 by 2023, and increase it again to 11,072 by 2025. Such specific numbers will require micromanagement and precise hiring. A tweet by Musk over the weekend indicates that his vision would largely involve hiring more engineers. Raise the average revenue per user to $30.22 by 2028 — up from $24.83 last year.
All of these goals are incredibly ambitious, and it’ll require a radical shift at Twitter to achieve them. There are many roadblocks ahead, like international laws, and increasing regulation over big tech companies all over the world to achieve sustainable growth. You can read the full NYT report here.
