Elon Musk had a 'hilarious' way of asking if an ex-Twitter exec wanted to work for him

• Elon Musk had a strange way of phrasing a job offer to a former Twitter exec.
• Kayvon Beykpour, ex-head of product, recalled Musk's "hilarious" offer on Lenny's Podcast.
• Beykpour said Musk asked if he wanted to "swipe right" and "hang out and work on the product."

Elon Musk had an interesting way of phrasing a job offer, according to a former Twitter exec who met with him after he purchased the social media company.

Kayvon Beykpour, the former head of product at Twitter, recalled his first in-person meeting with Musk on an episode of Lenny's Podcast released Sunday.

Beykpour said he was let go from Twitter by former CEO Parag Agrawal right before Musk bought the company in 2022, but says Musk made him an offer of sorts to keep working on the platform. Beykpour first joined Twitter in 2015 when it acquired his video live-streaming company, Periscope, for $86.6 million.

Beykpour says he first met Musk over FaceTime before they arranged an in-person meeting at Twitter's headquarters. During a two-hour conversation with Musk there, they discussed "the past, the future of Twitter, the good, the bad, the ugly."

Beykpour notes biographer Walter Isaacson was also present in the room, silently observing all the while, before approaching him at the end of the conversation to ask for his contact information for potential follow-up questions. (Isaacson published a biography on Musk last year.)

During one of their conversations, Musk asked if Beykpour would be interested in continuing to work on product at Twitter.

"Elon was very cool about it," Beykpour said. "He actually used this phrase at the end of our conversation which I still find hilarious. He was just like, 'Do you want to just like come — You seem like you care about the product and you don't have dumb ideas. Do you want to come hang out?'"

Musk asked Beykpour to "swipe right on whether you want to be here," the Periscope cofounder said.

"I was like, 'What would my job be?' And he was like 'Dunno, just like hang out and you can swipe left or swipe right.' He used the swipe right, swipe left Tinder metaphor and I thought that was kind of hilarious coming from him," Beykpour said.

"He was like, 'We don't have to make this a thing. Just like do you want to hang out and work on the product with us?'" he added.

Musk famously swiped left on a majority of Twitter's staff after buying the company. Musk has said Twitter laid off more than 6,000 employees, roughly 80% of its workforce, since he bought it. Several former execs at the company, including former CEO Parag Agrawal, have filed a lawsuit alleging Musk owes them more than $128 million in severance. A former HR boss at Twitter says the company failed to pay $500 million in severance to laid-off staff.

Beykpour ultimately declined Musk's offer.

"I sort of ended up deciding that actually, I'm just ready to move on," he said. "I've spent enough time at this company, at this product, trying to shape it into something that I was passionate about, and I think it's someone else's turn, especially Elon. If you buy it, it's your turn. You can do whatever you want with it."

Today, he's "building something in the consumer space" after starting a company with some cofounders late last year, he added on the podcast.

Beykpour did not immediately respond to a request for comment.