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Carl Pei, CEO at Nothing: Building a smartphone company is nearly impossible ant Nothing did it
Description
Building a consumer hardware company in Europe is brutally hard. Capital-intensive, unforgiving, and dominated by giants, it’s a category most founders avoid entirely.
At Slush in Helsinki, I spoke with Carl Pei about why Nothing chose to take that risk anyway, what most people underestimate about hardware, and how design, pragmatism, and long time horizons shaped the company’s path.
The Scaling Europe show is presented by Deel – check them out here:
https://get.deel.com/ruynb7o4lfjk
Timestamps:
0:00 - Introduction to Scaling Europe show
1:11 - Challenges of consumer hardware companies
2:50 - Importance of a full stack approach
4:44 - Differentiation through design strategy
6:11 - Challenges of scaling manufacturing processes
7:00 - Future of operating systems and AI integration
9:10 - Founder’s journey in upgrading skills
9:43 - Importance of numbers in fundraising
10:24 - Vision for future revenue growth
12:45 - Future of physical AI and data scale
14:34 - Discussion on monopoly and lock-in decisions
15:06 - Challenges of being too big or too small17:00 - Building a tech business in Europe
19:01 - Importance of hiring young, ambitious talent