Christian Pillat

@BillAckman @X I paid someone one time to go away and will never do it again. Don’t just fight it, pursue damages.

I am reaching out to the @X community for advice with the likely risk of sharing TMI. I have been sufficiently upset about the whole matter that I have lost sleep thinking about it and I am hoping that this post will enable me to get this matter off my chest. By way of background, I started a family office called TABLE about 15 years ago and hired a friend who had previously managed a family office, and years earlier, had been my personal accountant. She is someone that I trusted implicitly and consider to be a good person. The office started small, but over the last decade, the number of personnel and the cost of the office grew massively. The growth was entirely on the operational side as the investment team has remained tiny. While my investment portfolio grew substantially, the investments I had made were almost entirely passive and TABLE simply needed to account for them and meet capital calls as they came in. While TABLE purchased additional software and other systems that were supposed to improve productivity, the team kept increasing in size at a rapid rate, and the expenses continued to grow even faster. While I would periodically question the growing expenses and high staff turnover, I stayed uninvolved with the office other than a once-a-year meeting when I briefly reviewed the operations and the financials and determined bonus compensation for the President and the CFO. I spent no time with any of the other employees or the operations. The whole idea behind TABLE was that it would handle everything other than my day job so that I would have more time for my job and my family. Over the last six years, expenses ballooned even further, employee turnover accelerated, and I became concerned that all was not well at TABLE. It was time for me to take a look at what was going on. Nearly four years ago, I recruited my nephew who had recently graduated from Harvard and put him to work at Bremont, a British watchmaker, one of my only active personal investments to figure out the issues at the company and ultimately assist in executing a turnaround. He did a superb job. When he returned from the UK late last year after a few years at Bremont, I asked him to help me figure out what was going on with TABLE. When I explained to TABLE’s president what he would be doing, she became incredibly defensive, which naturally made me more concerned. My nephew went to work by first meeting with each employee to understand their roles at the company and to learn from them what ideas they had on how things could be improved. He got an earful. Our first step in helping to turn around TABLE was a reduction in force including the president and about a third of the team, retaining excellent talent that had been desperate for new leadership. Now here is where I need your advice. All but one of the employees who were terminated acted professionally and were gracious on the way out (excluding the president who had a notice period in her contract, is currently still being paid, and with whom I have not yet had a discussion). The highest compensated terminated employee other than the president, an in-house lawyer (let’s call her Ronda), told us that three months of severance was not enough and demanded two years’ severance despite having worked at the company for only two and one half years. When I learned of Ronda's request for severance, I offered to speak with her to understand what she was thinking, but she refused to do so. A few days ago, we received a threatening letter from a Silicon Valley law firm. In the letter, Ronda’s counsel suggests that her termination is part of longstanding issues of ‘harassment and gender discrimination’ – an interesting claim in light of the fact that Ronda was in charge of workplace compliance – and that her termination was due to: “unlawful, retaliatory, and harmful conduct directed towards her. Both [Ronda] and I [Ronda’s lawyer] have spoken with you about [Ronda’s] view of what a reasonable resolution would include given the circumstances. Thus far, TABLE has refused to provide any substantive response. This letter provides the last opportunity to reach a satisfactory agreement. If we cannot do so, [Ronda] will seek all appropriate relief in a court of competent jurisdiction.” The letter goes on to explain the basis for the “unsafe work environment” claim at TABLE: “In early 2026, Pershing Square’s founder Bill Ackman installed his nephew in an unidentified role at TABLE, Ackman’s family office. [His nephew]—whose only work experience had been for TABLE where he was seconded abroad for the last four years to a UK watch company held by Ackman—began appearing at TABLE’s offices and conducting interviews of employees without a clear explanation of his role or the purposes of these interviews. During this period, he made a series of inappropriate and genderbased [sic] comments to multiple employees that created an unsafe work environment. Among other things, [his nephew] made remarks about female employees’ ages (“Tell me you are nowhere near 40”), physical appearance (“Your body does not look like you have kids”), as well as intrusive questions about family planning and sexual orientation (“Who carried your son? Who will carry your next child?”). These incidents were reported to senior leadership at TABLE and Pershing Square. Rather than being addressed appropriately, the response from senior management reflected, at best, willful blindness to the inappropriateness of [his nephew]’s remarks and, at worst, tacit endorsement.” The above allegations about my nephew had previously been brought to my attention by TABLE’s president when they occurred. When I learned of them, I told the president that I would speak to him directly and encouraged her to arrange for him to get workplace sensitivity training. The president assured me that she would do so. When I spoke to my nephew, he explained what he actually had said and how his actual remarks had been received, not at all as alleged in the legal letter from Ronda’s counsel. I have also spoken to others at the lunch table who confirmed his description of the facts. In any case, he meant no harm, was simply trying to build rapport with other employees, and no one, as far as I understand, was offended. Ironically, Ronda claims in her legal letter that TABLE didn’t take HR compliance seriously, yet Ronda was in charge of HR compliance at TABLE and the person who gave my nephew his workplace sensitivity training after the alleged incidents. In any case, Ronda, as head of compliance, should have kept a record or raised an alarm if indeed there was pervasive harassment or other such problems at the company, and there is no evidence whatsoever that this is true. So why does Ronda believe she can get me to pay her nearly $2 million, i.e., two years of severance, nearly one year of severance for each of her years at the company? Well, here is where some more background would be helpful. Over the last two months, I have been consumed with a major family medical issue – one of my older daughters had a massive brain hemorrhage on February 5th and has since been making progress on her recovery – and I am in the midst of a major transaction for my company which I am executing from a hospital room office next to her . While the latter business matter is publicly known, the details of my daughter’s situation are only known to Ronda because of her role at our family office. Now, let’s get back to the subject at hand. Unfortunately, while New York and many other states have employment-at-will, there has emerged an industry of lawyers who make a living from bringing fake gender, race, LGBTQ and other discrimination employment claims in order to extract larger severance payments for terminated employees, and it needs to stop. The fake claim system succeeds because it costs little to have a lawyer send a threatening letter and nearly all of the lawyers in this field work on contingency so there is no or minimal cash cost to bring a claim. And inevitably, nearly 100% of these claims are settled because the public relations and legal costs of defending them exceed the dollar cost of the settlement. The claims are nearly always settled with a confidentiality agreement where the employee who asserts the fake claims remains anonymous and as a result, there is no reputational cost to bringing false claims. The consequences of this sleazy system (let’s call it ‘the System’) are the increased costs of doing business which is a tax on the economy and society. There are other more serious problems due to the System. Unfortunately, the existence of an industry of plaintiff firms and terminated employees willing to make these claims makes it riskier for companies to hire employees from a protected class, i.e., LGBTQ, seniors, women, people of color etc. because it is that much more reputationally damaging and expensive to be accused of racism, sexism, and/or intolerance for sexual diversity than for firing a white male as juries generally have less sympathy for white males. The System therefore increases the risk of discrimination rather than reducing it, and the people bringing these fake claims are thereby causing enormous harm to the other members of these protected classes. So what happened here? Ronda was vastly overpaid and overqualified for the job that she did at TABLE. She was paid $1.05 million plus benefits last year for her work which was largely comprised of filling out subscription agreements and overseeing an outside law firm on closing passive investments in funds and in private and venture stage companies, some compliance work, and managing the office move from one office to another. She had a very good gig as she was highly paid, only had to go into the office three days a week, and could work from anywhere during the summer. Once my nephew showed up and started to investigate what was going on, she likely concluded that there was a reasonable possibility she would be terminated, as her job was in the too-easy-and-to-good-to-be-true category. The problem was that she was not in a protected class due to her race, age or sexual identity so she had to construct the basis for a claim. While she is female and could in theory bring a gender-based discrimination claim, she reported to the president who is female and to whom she is very close, which makes it difficult for her to bring a harassment claim against her former boss. When my nephew complimented a TABLE employee at lunch about how young she looked – in response to saying she was going to her 40-year-old sister’s birthday party, he said ‘she must be your older sister’ – Ronda immediately reported it to our external HR lawyer. She thereby began building her case. The other problem for Ronda bringing a claim is that she was terminated alongside 30% of other TABLE employees as part of a restructuring so it is very difficult for her to say that she was targeted in her termination or was retaliated against. TABLE is now hiring an external fractional general counsel as that is all the company needs to process the relatively limited amount of legal work we do internally. In short, Ronda was eminently qualified and capable and did her job. She was just too much horsepower for what is largely an administrative legal role so she had to come up with something else to bring a claim. Now Ronda knew I was a good target and it was a good time to bring a claim against me. She also knew that I was under a lot of pressure because on March 4th when Ronda was terminated, my daughter had not yet emerged from consciousness, she was not yet breathing on her own, and my daughter and we were fighting for her life. I was and remain deeply engaged in her recovery while at the same time I was working on finishing the closing for the private placement round for my upcoming IPO. Ronda also knew that publicity about supposed gender discrimination and a “hostile and unsafe work environment” are not things that a CEO of a company about to go public wants to have released into the media. And she may have thought that the nearly $2 million she was asking for would be considered small in the context of the reputational damage a lawsuit could cause, regardless of the fact that two years of severance was an absurd amount for an employee who had only worked at TABLE for 30 months. She also likely considered that I wouldn’t want to embarrass my nephew by dragging him into the klieg lights when her claims emerged publicly. So, in summary, game theory would say that I would certainly settle this case, for why would I risk negative publicity at a time when I was preparing our company to go public and also risk embarrassing my nephew. Notably, she hired a Silicon Valley law firm, rather than a typical NY employment firm. This struck me as interesting as her husband works for one of the most prominent Silicon Valley venture firms whose CEO, I am sure, has no tolerance for these kinds of fake claims that sadly many venture-backed companies also have to deal with. I mention this as I suspect her husband likely has been working with her on the strategy for squeezing me as, in addition to being a computer scientist, he is a game theorist. My only advice for him is to understand more about your opponent before you launch your first move. All of the above said, gender, race, LGBTQ and other such discrimination is a real thing. Many people have been harmed and deserve compensation for this discrimination, and these companies and individuals should be punished for engaging in such behavior. Which brings me to the advice I am seeking from the X community. I am not planning to follow the typical path and settle this ‘claim.’ Rather, I am going to fight this nonsense to the end of the earth in the hope that it inspires other CEOs to do the same so we shut down this despicable behavior that is a large tax on society, employment, and the economy and contributes to workplace discrimination rather than reducing it. Do you agree or disagree that this is the right approach?

@MarceloLima Short

$NOW "Think about a company growing more than 20 percent sub revenue, expanding margins and being able to close headcount at an even level year over year. That's a pretty stunning accomplishment because I'm already operating at the rule of 56. I want to take it into the 60s." 👀

@chamath Why will this actually be useful in 6 months?

Our cracked team just used Software Factory to rebuild and replace Jira in a little more than a month. We first spent 3.5 weeks planning. This is Software Factory’s superpower. It allowed our lead PM, Designer and Architect to thoughtfully describe and detail exactly what they wanted. Software Factory then did the heavy lifting in filling in the blanks and allowing our senior tech folks to sharpen the direction of what they wanted. Then in 2.5 weeks 2.5 junior devs built a replacement. This will launch as an updated Planner module inside of Software Factory on Tuesday. It’s beautiful, clean and super useful. Try it here: 8090.ai

@mcuban @realDonaldTrump Welcome back to the Republican Party

Gotta be honest. The @realDonaldTrump EO on healthcare and in particular, drug pricing could save hundreds of billions. Here is how: 1. Divorce formularies from PBMs. Require them to come from independent organizations with no economic incentive from the formulary Make them about wellness, not pay for play like a grocery store endcap. This ends rebates and allows for net pricing. It also allows for better care and wellness. 2. Require PBMs to provide ALL claims data to employers, states and manufacturers. The manufacturers need this to provide better results. It’s insane they don’t have this data to analyze and improve patient results. Plus they current pay 5 to 10 pct of the retail price to get that data so they can do just that. Make it so it’s required and they can save 10pct of RETAIL pricing , which they can use to lower pricing. This also stops the 340b double dipping problem. 3. Remove the specialty tier and the requirement to buy from any specified pharmacy. There is nothing special about specialty drugs. They call them special to jack up the price. And of course have them divest any that they do. 4. Require that all pharmacies get fully reimbursed for brand drugs and get rid of the Generic Cost Ratio which allows distributors to jack up pricing on generics with the threat of chargebacks and more.. We need independent pharmacies to thrive 5. Remove confidentiality clauses. They prevent companies from talking to manufacturers. It’s insane that your company can’t talk to a GLP1 manufacturer (as an example) to help you put together a wellness plan and get you a better price 6. Stop biosimilar substitution calls. PBMs know that they need to find new sources of margin. They do it by white labeling their own biosimilar versions. That’s fine. But because that’s where all the margin is, they will put a low cost biosim on the formulary, and when they get a script for the lower cost option, they will have someone call the prescribing doctor to switch to their more expensive version they make more money on. And because employers and manufacturers don’t get their data. They never know Put me in coach ! I’m here to help.

@realEstateTrent As a parent of a 2.5 and 1 year old with multiple businesses between my wife and I my advice is…. Learn to enjoy and embrace the mess and chaos of it. I think we’ll miss it when it’s gone.

Been chatting with my wife about an issue I want to solve, but am a bit stumped -- so thought I would ask the question here, and maybe get some ideas: We both work full-time, and have two young kids at home. Our nanny leaves at 5pm, and then I get home a bit after that. We play with the kids for about an hour (while my wife makes them dinner), have dinner, and then we each give one of them a bath, and help put them to bed. By then it's around 7pm, we're both completely exhausted. We would like nothing more than to enjoy some downtime the rest of the night after a long day, but the work is just beginning. The kitchen and dining areas are now a mess from dinner, the dishes need to be done, and food needs to be prepared for the kids for the next day. By the time all of it is done, it's after 9pm, we are beyond exhausted, and the day is essentially over. We have a cleaner that comes to the house twice a week, but of course wraps up well before 6pm. What do other people do to solve this issue? How do you win back your free time after the kids go do bed, without leaving a mess overnight and ensuring they have food ready for the next day?

@musk_news13 Its 1

The constant notifications and ability to check real time location only fuels anxiety in my opinion. I understand the point of it but it’s really not for everyone. It’s another thing to worry about and can turn something harmless like someone’s phone dying or a stop at a gas station into your partner imagining a worst case scenario.

Anybody in a serious relationship should be comfortable sharing their location with the other person. If they don’t, they’re up to no good. No exceptions. I haven’t heard a single valid argument against this.

@daltonbrewer @elonmusk I bet this survey cost less than $75 million 🤣

NEWS: 70.7% OF PEOPLE SAID THEY WOULD BUY A TESLA AGAIN IN A GERMAN POLL WITH OVER 450,000 PARTICIPANTS It’s time to end the lies and deception of legacy media $TSLA

@trentjhughes Find a business doing $1 million plus, have the owner seller finance 20%, keep the 10k and finance the rest through the bank.

$10k to start a business that can do $1m in revenue within 2 years... What would you build?

@AllyTaft @adamwathan 100%

@adamwathan 6sense

What tool that your company spends at least $1000/yr on do you hate the most?

8/ Which of these trends excites you most? Are you ready to adapt? Let’s discuss! 👇

5 Biggest Trends in Franchising to Watch for in 2025 and Beyond 1/ Franchising is evolving fast. 🚀 Here are the 5 biggest trends shaping the franchise industry in 2025 and beyond. 🧵

7/ Franchising in 2025 isn’t just about selling products or services. It’s about: Leveraging data 📊 Empowering franchisees 🤝 Aligning with consumer values 🌍

6/ 5️⃣ Sustainability & ESG Initiatives Consumers care about more than the product—they care about the impact. Franchises leading with: Eco-friendly practices 🌍 Community engagement 💡 Transparent ESG reporting 📊 …will win loyalty and stand out.

/ 4️⃣ Flexible Franchise Models The demand for flexible franchise opportunities is growing. Micro-franchising lowers entry barriers. Multi-unit ownership offers scaling potential. Franchisees want models that fit their lifestyle and goals.

4/ 3️⃣ Collaborative Community Apps Franchisees crave peer-to-peer collaboration. Platforms that allow real-time sharing of best practices, challenges, and solutions are on the rise. Strong community = strong network.

3/ 2️⃣ AI & Automation From predictive customer insights to automated workflows, AI is redefining how franchises operate. AI-driven marketing personalizes campaigns for local markets. Automated reporting saves hours for franchisees. Efficiency = scalability.

2/ 1️⃣ Data-Driven Decision Making Franchisors are adopting advanced analytics to track performance, optimize operations, and guide franchisees. BI tools normalize data across locations. Real-time insights enable better coaching. Data isn’t optional anymore—it’s a requirement for success.

@elonmusk Best part. “Jennings: We reported it on this network. CNN host: it’s inaccurate and you know it”

Listen to the end of the clip lmao

@DougBillings @elonmusk and @VivekGRamaswamy ?

I just got off the phone. Interesting conversation. MSNBC will be purchased by 2 of your favorite people and a couple of others who will soon will be. Believe it. For the Republic! Cheers.