Pei: OnePlus was created to sell D2C using Oppo's supply chain
Carl Pei · How Nothing Founder Carl Pei Built A Multi-Million Dollar Smartphone Brand In Just 2 Years · Y Combinator · Aug 13, 2024 · at 3:50
Carl Pei, co-founder of OnePlus and founder of Nothing, explains the founding thesis of OnePlus while working inside Chinese smartphone manufacturer Oppo.
0:00 / 0:16exact quote · 16.4s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“There were new companies like selling products online that were really disrupting via D to C, so that was the original vision for OnePlus. Like, how can we take the OPPO supply chain advantages Huge scale, low cost, good quality, and sell products online, and be really disruptive.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Carl Pei
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.”