Nothing founder Carl Pei on Ear 1 and building a hardware startup from scratch – TechCrunch

The veterinarian for the mobile phone industry talks about prices, features and risk prevention

Hardware on July 27th Manufacturer Nothing will unveil its first product, the wireless earbuds called Ear 1. Although almost no specific information about the product has been released, the company has managed to generate considerable excitement around the launch – especially for entering the already crowded market for wireless earbuds.

However, the hype is real – and reasonably understandable. Nothing founder Carl Pei has a good track record in the industry – he was only 24 years old when he co-founded OnePlus in 2013. The company did a clever job of capitalizing on the increased expectations and distributing information about the product like puzzle pieces.

We spoke to Pei ahead of the upcoming release for a glimpse into Ear 1 and the story behind Nothing.

TC: I know there was a time lag at the start. Did this have to do with COVID-19 and supply chain issues?

CP: It was actually due to our design. You may have seen the conceptual image of this transparent design. It turns out that there is a reason why there aren’t a lot of transparent consumer tech products out there. It’s really, really hard to make it high quality. You have to make sure that everything looks as good on the inside as it does on the outside. So here the team iterated, [but] You probably wouldn’t notice the differences between each iteration.

It might be finding the right magnets – since magnets are usually designed to penetrate a product and not be seen by the consumer – to find the best way to glue it. You never have to solve this problem when you have an opaque product, but what glue keeps the industrial design intact? I think the main problem was getting the design ready. And we’re super, super close. Hopefully it will be a product that people really look forward to when we bring it to market.

So there weren’t any major supply chain issues?

Not for this product category. With real wireless earbuds, we’re pretty good at doing it in my opinion. No major problems. I mean, we had the problem that we started from scratch – so no team and no partners. But step by step we finally arrived.

That seems to mean that you are at least thinking about the other products. Have you already started developing them?

We have many products in the pipeline. Earlier this year, we ran a community crowdfunding round that raised $ 1.5 million to our community. That was bought up really quickly. But as part of that funding round, we had a deck with some of the products in development. Our products are code-named Pokemon, so there are plenty of Pokemon on this slide [Editor’s note: The Ear 1 was “Aipom.”]. We have several categories that we’re looking at, but we haven’t really announced which ones they are.

Why were earphones the right first step?

I think this market is really crying out for differentiation. If you look at True Wireless today, I think after Apple released the AirPods, the entire market kind of followed suit. Everyone wears different clothes. We wear that for most of the day. Why don’t people want other designs?

We work with Teenage Engineering – they are great, super powerful designers. I think True Wireless is a place where we can really take advantage of that power. Also from a more rational business perspective, wireless earbuds are a super fast growing product category. I think we will have 300 million units sold worldwide in this category this year. And your first product category should be one with good business potential.

“Cry for differentiation” is an interesting phrase. If you look at AirPods and the rest of the industry, is the market primarily lacking in aesthetics? Is it features or is it purely stylistic?

If we take a step back and think about it from a consumer perspective, we feel like consumer tech is pretty boring overall. Before, kids wanted to be engineers and astronauts and all. But if you look at what children want to be today, then they want to be TikToker or YouTubers. Maybe it’s because technology isn’t as inspiring as it used to be. We talked to consumers and they are no longer as interested as they were a few years ago. When you look at what brands are doing in their communications, it’s all about features and specifications.