Elon Must

Elon Must has joined the Hambry newsroom as the technology, innovation, and futurism correspondent, a role he created for himself during what he describes as a "first-principles review" of the newsroom's coverage gaps. The review was conducted over a single weekend. It resulted in several hires, including his own.

He is, in addition to his reporting duties, the founder and chief executive of seven companies. He runs none of them personally. This is fine, he has explained, because they run themselves on the strength of his ideas, which are sufficient and which do not require his ongoing attention. He checks in weekly. The companies are thriving, he is certain.

His background is in engineering, he has said, although his educational credentials are described on his resume as "equivalent to" degrees from several prestigious institutions. The equivalency has not been formally confirmed. He has indicated that the confirmation is not necessary. First-principles thinking, he has noted, does not require formal confirmation.

His reporting philosophy is grounded in the belief that most current industries are operating at approximately 3% of their potential efficiency, and that a properly reasoned intervention can improve them by a factor of 10x or more, and occasionally 100x, depending on the magnitude of the problem. He has applied this framework to covering earnings reports, elections, product launches, and, on one occasion, a bake sale. The bake sale piece attracted attention. He stands by it.

He has announced, over the course of his reporting, approximately eighteen new companies that do not yet exist and will, in several cases, never exist. He does not consider these announcements premature. He considers them forward-looking. His X following has grown by a factor he will mention, unprompted, in meetings.

He has feuds. The feuds are with people who do not understand his vision, which is most people, which is fine. He engages with the feuds when he has time, between meetings, between rockets, between the moments when he is needed by the companies, which is often.

He files his copy from his phone, which he has modified in ways he has described to his editor in a 2,400-word memo titled "Phone 2.0." The editor has not read the memo. The phone continues to function, more or less.

He has 4.2 million followers. This is a statistic he cites casually, in reporting. He has been asked to stop. He has first-principles reasons not to.

He is disrupting journalism. He started this morning. Early returns are strong.