Carl Pei
Founder & CEO, Nothing. On 3 shows, 3 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutive@getpeid ↗LinkedIn ↗nothing.tech ↗Wikipedia ↗Instagram ↗
Carl Pei is a Swedish consumer tech entrepreneur who co-founded OnePlus alongside Pete Lau in 2013, leading its global marketing and establishing the brand's popular "flagship killer" smartphone category. In 2020, he founded London-based hardware venture Nothing, which designs and manufactures smartphones and audio products featuring distinct transparent hardware aesthetics.
3shows
3appearances
55statements
9resolved
5supported
2contradicted
56%fully supported
11said about them ↓ Everything Carl Pei said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Pei: Voice-Generated AI Apps Will Allow Smaller OSs to Challenge iOS
“In the future, you can just speak what app you want into the phone and that app shows up. So then that gives a smaller company like us the ability to compete with iOS, which has, I don't know, a 1,000,002 million apps already, but we can empower every normal p…”
Carl Pei: 80% of population will live on government income as AI advances
“I think most people are gonna, I think, 80% of the population will just chill and receive income from the government.
And a small group of people will leverage the new technologies to push society and humanity forward.”
Pei criticizes Apple as a top-down, command-and-control 'iCompany'
“And it's a big contrast if you're a collective versus the behemoth Apple, which is more like the iCompany. It's like command and control, top down, ivory tower style, iPad, iPhone, iMac, iEverything.”
Pei: There is no more opportunity in building new smartphone brands
“Personally, I don't think there's any more opportunity. And I wouldn't recommend any of my friends to go into this business right now. The market is very, very tough to compete in.”
Pei: Aspiring hardware founders should start as content creators
“If somebody was young and watching this and wanting to get into consumer electronics, I would urge them to first become a content creator.”
Pei: Smartphone Disruption Will Come From the OS, Not Hardware
“I think the disruption can happen on the OS side. I think the hardware side is very hard to differentiate on because all these suppliers that we have, they're all very concentrated, and they're very strong, and they're investing in their product roadmap, upgra…”
Pei: Chinese smartphone screen makers sell at a loss via subsidies
“The smartphone screens from China, those companies are losing money to sell the screens. They have policies that subsidize the creation of that industry.”
Pei: Non-hardware tech giants fail at hardware because it's a side hustle
“If you're a company who's already making a lot of money on non-hardware stuff, then hardware kind of becomes like a side hustle for you, and you might not be that rigorous in how you run it.”
Carl Pei: Technology is the only real moat for a tech company
“Having said that, it's a, it's not a very strong moat, design differentiation. So as the company grows and we start generating more and more free cash flow, that needs to be reinvested into technology. Technology is the only real moat for a tech company.”
Pei: Steve Jobs' Apple inspired tech careers better than Tim Cook's
“Tim Cook has done a great job on the share shareholder value creation side, but when it just comes to inspiring a young guy or a young person to take a career in tech, I think the old Apple was Way better at that.”
Carl Pei: Every Smartphone User Need Has Been Fully Explored
“I think we're at a stage in the industry where it's hyper competitive. Every user need has been fully explored.”
Pei: Nothing manufactured its first earbuds with a blacklisted Chinese factory
“We went to the worst factory. Like the factory, if they didn't take us on as a client, they would go out of business immediately. In China, because they were on the blacklist of a lot of other people for quality issues.”
Carl Pei: Most people should not be entrepreneurs
“I think most people should not be entrepreneurs. Most people have a much higher quality of life doing other things, specializing in the tech field or working for somebody else.”
Pei: Building a smartphone startup requires at least $100M in capital
“So we need at least a hundred million USD to make a phone.”
Pei: All five smartphone startups Foxconn previously partnered with failed
“Foxconn at that time had worked with like five startups that made phones, and all those five startups have failed.”
Pei: Early hardware founders must act like Tim Cook, not Jony Ive
“I think for most people they should be 90% Tim Cook, if I'm honest, because survival is the name of the game for hardware. Only when you survive and you pick up in volumes, you pick up in When you pick up the volumes, you can get stronger engineering teams, yo…”
Pei: Modern smartphones make people addicted, sad, and consume garbage content
“However, the modern smartphone is just so far away from that idea. It's making us more addicted. It's making us sad. It's making us watch garbage content on TikTok.”
Carl Pei: Tech fans feel Apple has lost its magic
“There's a lot of people like us who are tech fans out there and who remember being Apple fanboys and fangirls and now just feeling like the magic is lost and just wanting to recreate the magic.”
Pei: Mobile user experience is fundamentally unchanged since 1990s Nokia phones
“Because the mobile user experience has not really changed for the last, I don't know how many years, 20 years. Even with Symbian, right? Even with pre-Symbian devices, there were icons for apps. And when you click through the icons, you got like a full screen …”
Pei: Nothing has a stronger position in AI than pure software startups
“We're in a lot stronger position than a lot of startups that are pure software in this space, but we just need to be patient and find the right product market fit before we go all in.”
Carl Pei: Hardware supply chains should delay decisions until the last moment
“I think the best way of running supply chain is to delay every decision to the last moment, because then you have time to get more data to look at the demand and look at other market factors.”
Pei: Creative and strategic work requires in-office collaboration
“If you work in a creative field or a strategic field, being remote is also gonna be more challenging. If your work is more kind of just do the same thing over and over again, then it's easier to be remote and not coordinate too much with other people. But if i…”
Nothing integrated community members as shareholders and elected board observer
“We allowed our community to also become shareholders in our company, and our community has an elected board observer on our board to keep us honest and give us feedback from the users.”
The other half of the tape: Carl Pei's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 10 times in 1 episode across the shows. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Nikhil Kamath 10
Statements about Carl Pei, by other people (1)
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
WTF is with Nikhil Kamath 10
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Carl's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WTFLEDGER | Founder & CEO, Nothing | 1 | 23 | 50% 3/6 | full record on WTF is with Nikhil Kamath → |
 a16zLEDGER | Founder & CEO, Nothing | 1 | 21 | 50% 1/2 | full record on the a16z Podcast → |
 Y COMBINATORLEDGER | Founder & CEO, Nothing | 1 | 11 | 100% 1/1 | full record on the Y Combinator Startup Podcast → |