Subscribe to my newsletter The Split for new episodes emailed every week: https://www.thespl.it/ Chris Bakke has founded and sold three companies for between $25-100 million to Zillow, Indeed, and most recently Twitter / X. He shares how he convinced Elon to buy his company, what it's like working for Elon, exactly how the Twitter algorithm works, and all his meme making secrets. — — — — Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (02:52) Inside Twitter’s acquisition of Laskie(05:38) Why Twitter / X works so well for recruiting(08:11) A sneak peek at upcoming Premium features(13:58) How the X algorithm works(20:48) Why “dwell time” is the most important metric(24:07) What it’s like reporting to Elon(27:40) Elon’s crazy ability to context-switch(29:16) Why you should consider selling your company for $25-100 million(35:39) The reasons large M&A deals are so rare(42:07) Surviving inside Big Tech as a founder(46:23) Chris's philosophy on company building(51:23) Why “Time in Market” is so underrated(53:44) YC’s “sandwich incident”(55:44) How to use memes for marketing(58:55) Chris’ 100+ page Google Slide meme library(1:01:46) His top three favorite meme templates(1:03:48) His favorite proprietary trade secret at X(1:05:03) Turning down jobs at Coinbase and WhatsApp — — — — Twitter jobs: https://twitter.com/jobs — — — — Where to find Chris Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChrisJBakke LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bakk3/ Where to find Turner: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak/ Newsletter: https://www.thespl.it/