🍪 The cringiest CEO interview of 2023

Good morning, friends. This is Bite Sized Beta. We’re like the meatballs on your pasta - we fill you up, and keep it meaty.

Let’s get to the good stuff.

In the oven this week:

• 🎤 The cringiest interview of 2023

• 🍪 Cookie crumbs: 5 bite-sized headlines

• 🗳️ Poll of the week: guess the stock

• 🍫 Chocolate chips: our 4 favorite finds this week

• 😂 Snickerdoodles: memes for the weekend

FRESHLY BAKED

THE CRINGIEST INTERVIEW OF 2023

Picture this - you’re sitting in English class, ready to doze off. Just as you’re settling into your seat, the teacher’s barking your name, telling you to get up to the front of the class.

You freeze.

Wtf??

The book report for that book I never read was due today AND I have to present about it to the class for 20 minutes?!

The panic sets in.

Your palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy.

There’s vomit on your sweater already, Mom’s spaghetti.   

So you get up to the front of the class with one goal: fill as much time as possible.

Break out the mental thesaurus. We’re going full on Miss South Carolina.

If you’ve ever reached peak cringe like this, just wait til you see Linda Yaccarino’s (X’s CEO) latest interview.

It’s a masterclass in what not to do as a CEO:

• Not knowing the basic facts about your business

• Talking in circles while saying absolutely nothing

• Trying so hard to prove you’re in control that it now looks like you’re 100% NOT in control

And it just may be the cringiest interview of 2023.

Here’s what happened:

Linda was scheduled to interview at Code Conference, when, hours earlier, she found out that they had booked a surprise guest to do an interview right before her.

Who was that surprise guest?

None other than Yoel Roth, Twitter's ex-head of trust and safety that was let go in the Elon takeover.

In his interview, he talked about getting doxxed, and receiving personal threats to his safety as a result of his position at Twitter.

Instead of staying cool and taking the whole thing in stride, Linda went passive aggressive.

She opens the interview by saying, “I’d be happy to respond. I think I’ve been given about 45 minutes [of notice].”

She then goes into her “response,” which is to tell everyone that she works at X, while Roth worked at Twitter, and ended it all with, “it’s a new day at X, and I’ll leave it at that.”

Soooo… I guess it’s all goodie in the hoodie??

Ok rocky start.

But, it gets worse.

The interviewer then asked her about Elon's plans to charge all X users a subscription fee.

Linda's actual response: "can you repeat?"

The classic buy-yourself-more-time-to-think-of-an-answer trick.

Like when you eat all the cookies and your mom asks you if you ate all the cookies.

After the interviewer repeats the question, Linda goes back and ASKS THE INTERVIEWER, “Did he say we were moving to it specifically or is thinking about it?”

Either she had no idea it was on the table, or could have been trying to be condescending.

Probably the former.

Either way, bad look.

She then ends the question by saying that she and Elon “talk about everything,” but never revealed whether the subscription fee was actually happening.

The question dodging got so bad that, at one point, the interviewer actually asked her if she was more of a COO and not a CEO.

She couldn’t even tell the interviewer how many active users X had.

After checking her phone, she eventually revealed that X had “between 200-250M daily active users, something like that”

Something like that?!

Yikes.

The cherry on top was when she started gesturing and waving her phone around while it was unlocked.

And what WASN’T on the home screen?

You guessed it - X.

The ultimate face palm moment. 🤦🏻

Ya can’t make this stuff up.

So friends, what did we learn from this?

• Elon’s definitely still in charge at X

• The best defense is a good offense

• Never unlock your phone during a publicly recorded interview

Here’s the full interview if you need a good laugh.

COOKIE CRUMBS

BITE SIZED HEADLINES

FROM THE COOKIE JAR

CHART OF THE WEEK: GUESS THE STOCK

An analysis was published this week on the most traded stocks of 2023, so we thought we’d turn it into a little guessing game.

*cue Jeopardy music*

Which company was the top traded stock on a whooping 92% of trading days this year?

CHOCOLATE CHIPS

OUR FAVORITE FINDS

• A short list of pure gold - life advice from Charlie Munger’s autobiography. My favorites: small leaks sink big ships, make friends with smart dead people, and only play games where you have an edge.

• From Harvard and Wharton researchers: the #1 way to sound smarter when making small talk

• Extended listening: Lex Fridman did a pod with Zuck... in virtual reality. Tune in to watch two monotone robots talk to each other in the metaverse!! But actually though, it’s pretty cool to see.

• While we were out: Bill Gurley did an epic talk on AI regulation and who benefits from it. A long one, but will 100% go down as one of the seminal talks in AI history.

SNICKERDOODLES

THURSDAY MEMES

^{Even Elon does girl math.}

 😂 

POLL OF THE WEEK

ANSWER

1. Tesla, 2. Apple, 3. MSFT

_{Like how we added X as a trick answer?}

What'd you think about this email?

• 🍪🍪🍪 Top notch!

• 🍪🍪 Meh... could use more milk

• 🍪 Undercooked, do better