CEO Carl Pei tells us how nothing became Nothing
Even though he was one half of the team that founded OnePlus and made it a successful smartphone manufacturer, Carl Pei still had to go out with hat in hand to raise money for his latest venture, Nothing. The 34-year-old explained that the team decided to make smartphones "Because that's all we knew. That's the industry we came from. It's actually the biggest or one of the biggest consumer products in the world." Pei says a billion smartphones are sold each year and they have replaced the PC or the laptop as the most important device we use.
Based on this, Pei said that he knew that if he could start another smartphone business and were able to grow it to a certain scale, Nothing would have a lot of opportunities to make money on software and services. The hardware would distribute the software. Pei said that he had never personally had to raise money before and as he met with friends he was given all sorts of advice including advice from one person who told him not to use the pitch deck he created.
The pitch deck is the presentation in the form of slides that gives detailed information about the company you're raising money for. This one acquaintance told Carl to scrap the deck and just talk to the potential investors. Pei heeded the advice which he admitted was the right thing to do since he later said that the pitch would have gone worse had he used the deck. "The deck was indeed terrible," Pei said.
If you recall what was going on in February of 2021, there was speculation that the executive was going to call the name of the firm Essential after buying the Essential name from Andy Rubin, the so-called "father of Android," who founded Android, Inc. in 2003. Two years later Rubin helped sell the company to Google and also helped pivot Android from being a typical mobile operating system into one designed for touch screened phones after the unveiling of the iPhone in January 2007.
Rubin eventually helped launch the Essential Phone which featured a notch containing the selfie snapper and sensors. This allowed the device to have a larger screen-to-body ratio. After buying the Essential trademark from Rubin, Pei realized that they were buying someone else's name and decided to call the new company Nothing. And while the Essential Ph-1 looked nothing like rival Android phones at the time, the said can certainly be said for Nothing's phones with their unique Glyph interface.
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