The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 11 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
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.”
Pei: 90% of Nothing's first 5,000 Ear (1) units had charging defects
“For the first batch of year ones 90% of them couldn't charge properly. And at that time, I think we had shipped like 5000 units”
Pei: Nothing's cult reputation simply reflects low brand awareness
“I think it simply just means that our brand awareness is too low.”
Pei: Products should have a defining feature sketchable after two seconds
“For every product you make imagine if a user sees it for like two seconds, and then has to sketch a defining feature of the product. So we try and build each product with something iconic that people can immediately remember and attach themselves to.”
Pei: Hardware startups must sequence products to build manufacturing credibility
“If you want to do it, I think you should go ahead, but maybe think about like the sequencing of things. Like in our example, like we had to get the earbuds to sell really well before going into the phone. Like how can we build credibility to the next thing?”
Pei: OnePlus was created to sell D2C using Oppo's supply chain
“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 …”
Pei: Foxconn historically took inventory risk for phone startups and got stuck
“Foxconn and their competitors, they took on the inventory risk for the startups as well. So when the startups made a big projection in terms of the unit sales and they couldn't deliver, they were fine. Foxconn was stuck with inventory.”