The Elon and Cathie Wood Retweets That Doubled His Following
The Story
On December 16, 2022, less than a year into his Twitter journey, Yossi posted a thread that “would change everything” (Source 1).
Cathie Wood, founder of ARK Investments, retweeted it with her own thoughts. Elon Musk saw her post and commented on it (Source 1).
“40 minutes later, Elon must have still been thinking about this because he retweeted it and commented” (Source 1). The post went on to accumulate over 20 million views (Source 1).
Yossi did not just enjoy the moment. “He added multiple calls to action (CTAs) underneath the original thread” pointing to his newsletter and other resources (Source 1).
The follower delta was immediate. “His following skyrocketed at this point” (Source 1). “Within weeks, he had grown from 118k followers to 210k followers to start off January 2023” (Source 1).
The newsletter compounded too. “He jumped from 12,000 subscribers at the end of November 2022, to over 25,000 subscribers at the end of December” (Source 1). “Love him or hate him, Elon has influence” (Source 1).
In his own retelling, he describes a similar earlier inflection: a Zero Hedge retweet of a “the car market is slowing down. You heard it here first. You won’t see this on the news” post (Source 2). That, plus this Elon-Cathie cascade, marked the transition from anon hobby to real platform.
Lesson for Creators
Virality is a tax holiday: short, unpredictable, and you have to capture it before it ends. Most creators bask in the dopamine and let the traffic disappear. Yossi turned the viral thread into an owned-audience asset by editing in newsletter CTAs underneath the original post. The thread was the ad, the comment chain was the funnel. If you don’t have a place to send a viral wave, the wave breaks on the shore and leaves nothing.
Related
- A Year Below One Thousand Subscribers — another inflection point but driven by a different mechanism
- Capitalize on Virality — the broader pattern of turning attention into owned audience
- The Sponsor Deck Tweet That Sold Out Months of Ads — different tweet, similar lesson about capitalizing on a single high-leverage post
- Smart Threads and Dumb Memes - The Barbell Strategy — the format that gives a thread a chance to go viral in the first place
- Thompson’s Law - Viral Is Just Broadcast — Tom Orbach: the framework that explains the Elon/Cathie retweet mechanic