从无到有：创始人的旅程

你为什么想到用 Nothing 作为品牌名？

Why did you think about Nothing as a brand name?

我和团队 brainstorm 了很多不同的名字。我妹妹讨厌这些名字，她说它们都很尴尬。她二十出头，几乎是另一代人。有一次我一直在念叨名字，她说尴尬、尴尬、尴尬、尴尬。我就说，好吧，我就叫它 Nothing。她说，对，就这么办。

Team and I were brainstorming many different names. My little sister hated them and she said they were all cringe. She's in her early 20s, so almost a different generation. At one point I just kept rambling names and she said cringe, cringe, cringe, cringe. I was like, okay, I'm just going to call it Nothing. She's like, yeah, do that.

这很有趣。我们聊什么？大概是 Nothing。这是个好名字。你应该给你的公司起个名字，别再玩梗了，别再玩双关了。

This is fun. What do we talk about? Probably nothing. That's a good name. You should name your company no more memes, no more puns.

我们聊过，当时你还在 OnePlus，我想你当时还不确定自己要做什么。然后我再次见到你时，你比较确定自己想做什么了。我们又见面时，你说，我确定我要做什么了，我要融资。然后我们还见过面，那时你已经融到资了。经历了不同的阶段，我也走过其中一些旅程。这也不是我的第一家公司，我可以分享一些经验。但我很好奇，你为什么创办这家公司？你想通过这家新公司完成什么未竟的事业？

We spoke when you were still at OnePlus, I think, and you were not really sure what you were going to do. Then I met you again when you were really sort of sure what you want to do. And we met again when you were okay, I'm damn sure what I want to do, I want to raise some capital. And then we also met when you had already raised capital. There have been different stages, and I've been through some of this journey. It's not my first company as well, and I can share some of the experiences. But I'm curious to know, why did you start this company? What is the unfinished business that you are trying to accomplish with this new company?

我从小就是科技迷。我是学校里第一个拿到 iPod 的孩子。那时候，拿到 iPod 真的很麻烦，因为它用的是火线接口。我是 PC 用户，所以我得买一块 PCI 卡，装到电脑里才能用 iPod。我对科技就是这么狂热。我也是我认识的人里第一个买初代 iPhone 的。当时只有美国 AT&T 有售，你得自己买或者让朋友帮你买，付 450 美元的违约金，然后寄到你所在的地方，再越狱才能用。所以我会不遗余力地去尝试所有新技术，因为我对此超级兴奋。这种情况持续了好几年，比如第一台安卓手机、第一台 iPad。那时候感觉一切都在不断进步，你有一个值得期待的未来，总有更新、更好、更有创新性的东西出现。但在过去几年、五年、十年里，这种感觉在我内心逐渐消逝了。我和一些人聊过，我们有相似的想法。尽管这很难，你看，只有超大型公司在做这件事，过去十年很多初创公司都试过，但都失败了。我们知道这很难，但再看看周围，如果我们不试，还有谁会试？所以我们决定去做，做产品，做品牌，做我们自己想看到的产品，或者年轻时的自己想看到的产品。

I've been a tech fan since I was a kid. I was the first kid in my school to get the iPod. Back then, the iPod was a really annoying thing to get because it used the FireWire port. I was a PC user, so I had to buy another PCI card, install that into my PC to use the iPod. That's how excited about technology I was. I was also the first person I knew to buy the first iPhone. It was only available on AT&T in the US. You had to buy it or have a friend buy it for you, pay a $450 cancellation fee, and then get it shipped to wherever you are, and then jailbreak it, and then you can use it. So I would go to extreme lengths to try all the new technology because I was super excited about it. That continued for a few years, you know, the first Android phone, the first iPad. Back then, it felt like everything just kept improving all the time, and you had a future to look forward to where there's always new and better and more innovative things coming. In the past couple of years, 5 years, 10 years, gradually that feeling has been dying inside of me as well. I spoke to a few people, and we shared similar ideas. Despite this being really hard, I mean, look around, there's only super large companies doing this, and a lot of startups have tried in the last 10 years. Every startup who's tried has failed. We knew it was really hard, but then again, looking around, if we didn't try, who else would? So we just decided to go for it, make products, make a brand, make products that we ourselves would like to see, or a younger version of ourselves would like to see on the market.

这很有意思。我有个问题。你本可以选一个更容易的生意。为什么又做硬件？硬件在很多方面都很难，相比做软件科技公司。是因为你熟悉，还是你觉得有真正的机会让你超级兴奋？

That's pretty interesting. I have a question. You could have picked up an easier business. Why do hard hardware again? Hardware is hard on many fronts compared to, I would say, building a software tech company. Why is it just because of familiarity that you had, or you felt that there was a real opportunity that got you super excited?

这很难，但也容易。软件容易，但也难。我这么说是因为，我觉得硬件进入门槛真的很高，但一旦你进入并有了产品，获得用户群相对容易。我觉得现在软件，我想当 App Store 刚出来时，就像淘金热，最初的 app 立刻获得了分发。但现在，做软件已经民主化了，所以获得分发真的很难。我在软件分发方面没有经验。然后你看趋势，比如在最近的 WWDC 上，苹果推出了先买后付，这对一些公司造成了冲击。所以我觉得我和团队对此很熟悉，我们知道如何分发这类产品。如果我们达到一定规模，我们也有机会做硬核软件和服务。

It's hard, but it's also easy. And software is easy but also hard. The reason why I say that is, I think for hardware, the entry barrier is really huge just to enter. But once you enter and you have a product, getting a user base is relatively easy. I think now with software, I guess when the App Store just first came out, there was like a gold rush. The first apps immediately got distribution. But nowadays, making software is kind of democratized, so getting distribution is really hard. I have no experience in getting distribution for software. And then you see the trends, for instance, in the latest WWDC, Apple announced the buy now pay later, and it was kind of disruptive to a few companies out there. So I think me and the team were familiar with this, and I think we know how to distribute this kind of product. And if we reach some level of scale, then we also have the opportunity to do hard software and services as well.

我们会进入元话题，如何建立品牌。或者让我再深入一点。科技行业的大多数人和我们周围的很多初创公司，在围绕业务建立品牌方面都很糟糕。但品牌让业务变得容易。你已经多次做到这一点。我钦佩你们做的所有事情以及你们做事的方式。首先，你是如何把这种 DNA 带入自身的？你的起源故事是什么？因为你对此很敏锐，你懂。而且这不是雇一个人做营销。而是真正让每个决策、每个选择都正确。你是怎么思考的，你一直遵循的原则是什么？

We'll get to the meta topic, how to build a brand. Or let me just go one click further into this. Most people from the tech industry and a bunch of startups that we've seen around us are terrible at building a brand around their business. But brand makes it easy to do your business. You've done it consistently multiple times. I admire all the things that you guys do and the way you do it. First, how did you bring that DNA in you? What is the origin story for you? Because you are sharp at this, you get it. And it's not about hiring one person who does the marketing. It's about really getting every decision, every choice right. How did you think about this, and what are some of the principles that you've always followed?

我们周一或周二在办公室讨论了价值观。我的联合创始人之一 Lea 说，如果他对团队有一个愿望，那就是让每个人都有饥饿感。我想这也是我旅程的开始，作为西方社会的第一代移民。我没有周围西方朋友那样的玩具。我没有和其他人一样的每周零花钱。所以我想饥饿感从那时就开始了，就是得想办法。所以我尝试了很多事情。我 12 岁开始做网站。我 14 岁时拥有世界上最大的非法游戏下载网站之一。我只是想，我的 Instagram 账号是 get paid，想赚钱。所以有了从 12 岁开始的这种经历，不断尝试新事物，我想我对消费者想要什么、如何吸引他们有了熟悉感。但如果我要提炼品牌建设对我来说是什么，也许先解释它不是什么，或者如何做错，会更容易理解。我认为你不应该建立品牌的方式是，把品牌看作是你最后贴在公司上的故事。比如让产品人员做他们的事，让工程师做他们的工作，让销售和营销团队去弄清楚品牌是什么。那真的行不通。我认为最好的例子实际上是我们团队内部经常讨论的一个例子，就是耐克。他们卖的是大宗商品，但作为一家公司价值很高，消费者也喜欢他们。我不知道你们是否记得，但几年前，他们有一个广告，关于 Colin Kaepernick，对美国观众和美国公司来说非常有争议，因为这个人，他没有下跪。他是一名运动员，在比赛开始前，你应该在美国国旗前下跪，唱国歌。而不是双膝下跪……

We talked about values on Monday or Tuesday in the office. Lea, one of my co-founders, said if there's one thing he wishes for the team, it's for everybody to have a sense of hunger always. I think that was also how I started on my journey, being a first-generation immigrant in a Western society. I didn't have the same toys as my Western friends around me. I didn't have the same weekly allowance as everybody else. So I think the hunger started from there, just got to figure things out. So I've been trying a lot of things. I started making websites when I was 12. I had one of the biggest websites in the world for illegal game downloads when I was 14. I'm just trying to, I mean, my Instagram handle is get paid, trying to make money. So with that kind of experience from since I was 12, just constantly trying new things, I think I got a sense of familiarity with what is it that consumers want, how do we attract them. But if I had to distill what brand building is for me, maybe it's easier to understand if I first explain what it's not, or the way to do it wrong. I think the way in which you shouldn't build brand is to view the brand as just the story you tack on to your company at the end of the day. Like let the product guys do whatever they do, let the engineers do their work, let the sales and marketing team figure out what the brand is. That doesn't really work. I think the best example is actually one example that we discussed a lot within the team, is Nike. They sell a commodity product, but they're worth a lot as a company, and consumers love them. I don't know if you guys remember, but a couple of years ago, they had this ad with Colin Kaepernick, very controversial for US audiences and US companies, because this guy, he didn't kneel. So he's a sports person, and before you start a match, you should kneel in front of the American flag and sing the national anthem. Instead of kneeling with both...

他只用一条腿跪地，因为他觉得美国的黑人少数族裔没有得到尊重，而当时唐纳德·特朗普还是总统，在推特上说这个人不爱国、非美国。耐克还让这个人当了广告的主要代言人。所以我就想，如果我是耐克的 CMO 或 CEO，营销团队说，嘿，我们想用这个极具争议的人，可能会让一半美国人因为我的这个广告而讨厌我的品牌——因为超过一半的人投票给了特朗普——你怎么做这样的决定？

He only kneeled with one leg because he felt that black minorities weren't being respected in the US, and Donald Trump back then was still president and was tweeting about this guy being unpatriotic and un-American. And Nike used this person as the main spokesperson in the ad. So I was like, wow, if I'm the CMO or CEO of Nike, and the marketing team is like, hey, we want to use this person that's super controversial and potentially have half of the US hate my brand because I launched this campaign—more than half of the people voted for Donald Trump—how do you make a decision like that?

我觉得对 99% 的公司来说，答案就是：绝对不行，别这么做。但我觉得耐克当时的情况是：好，我们的使命是什么？我们要激励人们，我们相信每个人都是运动员。当你的使命清晰了，决定就变得简单。通过这个广告，我会激励更多人想成为运动员吗？如果是，就播；如果不是，就不播。所以我觉得，建立品牌最好的方式，是把所有团队团结在一个更高层面的使命、愿景或宗旨上，然后确保每个团队都朝那个方向执行。因为品牌是消费者与公司接触的每一个触点——不只是广告物料，还有产品、服务，甚至是在某个地方碰到一个员工时的互动。所以我觉得，这是对一个简短问题的很长的回答。

I think for 99% of the companies, it's just like, hell no, don't do this. But I think what happened at Nike was like, okay, what's our purpose? We want to inspire people, we believe that everybody's an athlete. And I think when you have your purpose clear, then your decision becomes easy. By running this ad, will I inspire more people to want to become an athlete? If yes, let's run it. If no, let's not run it. So I think in the end, the best way of building a brand is to unite all the teams on a higher-level purpose or vision or mission, and then make sure that every team executes against that. Because a brand is every single touchpoint a consumer has with a company—not just their advertising material, but also the product, the service, and interacting or bumping into an employee somewhere. So I think that's a very long answer to a short question.

为什么人们很难理解品牌的重要性？我相信在你公司里，他们会说：我们为什么要把这个放进手机里？它没什么用，不创造任何价值，但你还是做了。为什么包装要这样设计？它也不创造价值。你打开我的手机，里面有一个保护壳，大多数手机都没有——你也送了。我们为什么需要它？人们会自己买壳。为什么要送给他们？我相信这类问题会不断出现。你怎么始终如一地回答这些问题，而不让一些团队滑入一种“只给功能价值”的亚文化？

Why is it hard for people to understand the importance of brand? I'm sure in your company they're like, why do we need to put this in the phone? It's not really useful, it doesn't really create any value, but you still do it. And why do you need to have this packaging this way? It doesn't really create value. You also opened up my phone and there was a cover that's not there in most phones—you're giving that as well. Why do we need it? People will buy their own covers. Why do we want to give this to them? A lot of these questions, I'm sure, keep coming. How do you answer them consistently and not let some teams drift into a subculture of becoming just give value only?

幸运的是，在 Nothing 内部，这个问题不存在。但我觉得有些社会、有些国家和经济体，处于不同的增长生命周期。一开始是非常功利主义的——功能利益是什么。但随着人们赚更多钱、中产阶级壮大，你会想要更高的意义、更高的目的，来认同你关联的产品或公司。我觉得这就是为什么在某些国家，品牌建设人才比其他地方更丰富。

Luckily, within Nothing, this problem doesn't exist. But I think some societies, some countries and societies, different economies are at a different life cycle of their growth. So it starts off very utilitarian—what's the functional benefit. But as people make more money and the middle class grows, you want a higher meaning, higher purpose to the products or the companies you associate with. I think that's why maybe in some countries, brand-building talent exists more in abundance than in others.

有道理。当你创立 Nothing 时，你们商定的价值观是什么？是在公司哪个阶段定的——第一个月，还是先发布第一个产品再写价值观？它们是怎么来的？

That makes sense. When you started Nothing, what were the values you agreed upon? And were they done at what stage of the company—was it in the first month, or we'll ship the first product then write the values? How did they come about?

是的，就是第一天。在产品、设计、任何事情之前，创始团队坐在一起，试图在价值观上达成一致。我觉得那可能是最重要的事情。从长远来看，最强的竞争优势可能就是公司文化。我们当时商定了四个价值观。我觉得今天它们仍然非常适用，而且没有想要改变的意思。第一个是“成为改变”。意思是主动负责、积极主动。你知道，我们是一家小公司，不是所有事情都会完美，我们面前有巨大的挑战。所以如果你看到问题，就直接跳进去改变它。没有人会一直跟着你、不断跟进。这有点像我们做的——这个行业有问题，让我们尝试成为改变，推动一些不同。

Yeah, it was like day one. Before product, before design, before anything, the founding team sat together and we tried to align on the values. I mean, that's probably the most important thing. That's like the strongest competitive advantage over the long run—probably the culture of a company. We have four values that we aligned on back then. And I think today they're still very much relevant, and there's no appetite to make any changes. The first one is 'Be the Change.' What this means is take ownership, be proactive. You know, we're a small company, not everything's going to be perfect, and we have a huge challenge ahead of us. So if you see a problem, you know, just jump in and change it. Nobody's going to be after you following up all the time. It's kind of like what we did—there's something wrong with this industry, let's try and be the change and drive some difference.

第二个是“产品自豪感”。因为我们是一家产品公司。我觉得有些人可能会困惑——我们品牌有很多热度，我们处于公关周期，他们擅长制造炒作什么的。但我觉得，炒作到底是什么？它是对伟大产品的期待。我相信这些人可能会交付伟大的产品，所以我才兴奋地了解更多、跟随这段旅程。所以那只是意味着你必须真正交付伟大的产品。我的意思是，苹果也一样——人们排队买苹果产品，因为他们有交付伟大产品的记录。如果苹果连续几代产品都很差，那排队就不会发生了。所以我们必须永远记住，产品是关键，无论如何。我觉得很多人在公司工作，他们并不真正关心他们发布的产品，员工也不为他们发布的产品感到自豪。所以这听起来是一个非常简单的原则，但践行它真的很难。我们取消过一些产品，尽管已经投入了很多沉没成本，因为在发布前我们问自己：如果我们在商店里看到这个，我们自己会想拿起它吗？整个房间都沉默了。然后我们就说，好吧，取消吧。没关系，我们把它当作一次学习。这就是“产品自豪感”。

The second one is 'Pride in Product.' Because we're a product company. I think some people might be confused—there's a lot of buzz around our brand, and we're in a PR cycle, and they're good at creating hype and whatnot. But I think, what is hype actually? It's anticipation for a great product. I believe these people might deliver a great product, that's why I'm excited about learning more and following that journey. So that just means you have to actually deliver great products. I mean, Apple too—people queue up for Apple products because they have a track record of delivering great products. If Apple makes a few generations of poor products, that's not going to happen. So we must always remember that product is the key, no matter what. And I think a lot of people work at companies where they don't really care about the product they ship, and employees are not really proud about the product they ship either. So it sounds like a very easy, simple principle, but living it is really hard. We've cancelled products where we already have a lot of sunk cost, because before launch we ask ourselves, if we saw this in the store, would we want to pick it up ourselves? And the entire room was silent. And then we just said, okay, let's just cancel it. It's okay, we take it as a learning. So that's 'Pride in Product.'

第三个是“在多样性中茁壮成长”。这里我们不是指象征性的多样性——你拍张照片，里面有各种类型，就像联合国一样。那不是我们说的多样性。多样性是真正的精英主义，消除语言、文化和地理上的偏见，只是试图找到具有不同职能技能的最佳人才，来帮助我们建设公司和品牌。比如，我们很多工业设计团队在欧洲、瑞典、英国，但很多硬件工程师在中国，因为过去 20 年，很多外国公司、美国公司在那里制造，这造就了一代真正有技能的人才。那么我们如何真正识别世界上不同领域的最佳人才并整合他们？我相信这才是真正的多样性。这就是第三个价值观。

The third one is 'Thrive on Diversity.' And here we don't mean token diversity—you take a photo and there's all types, like it's like the United Nations. That's not what we mean by diversity. Diversity is true meritocracy in removing biases around language, culture, and geography, and just trying to find the best people with the different functional skill sets to help us build the company and the brand. So for instance, a lot of our industrial design team is in Europe, in Sweden, in the UK, but a lot of our hardware engineers are in China, because over the past 20 years, a lot of foreign companies, American companies, have been manufacturing there, and it's just led to a generation of really skilled talent. So how do we really identify the best people in the world at different things and integrate them? That's what I believe is true diversity. So that's the third value.

第四个价值观有点刺耳——是“生存”。有些员工看到会说，哦，我们是不是没钱了？是不是不行了？其实恰恰相反。因为一方面，你可以有伟大的梦想和愿景，但如果你的公司不在了，你甚至无法尝试去实现它。所以有时候，你知道，“产品自豪感”、“成为改变”、“生存”——它们会冲突，但归根结底，你必须存在，才能有另一次机会或另一天去尝试改变你想改变的东西。这就是我们的四个价值观。

The fourth value is kind of jarring—it's 'Survive.' Some employees will see it and say, oh, are we running out of money? Is it not going to work? It's kind of the opposite. Because on one hand, you can have a great dream and great vision, but if your company is no longer around, then you're not going to be able to even try to accomplish that. So sometimes, you know, 'Pride in Product,' 'Be the Change,' 'Survive'—they come at a clash, but at the end of the day, you have to be around to have another chance or another day to try and change what you want to change. Those are our four values.

很酷。我想谈谈“产品自豪感”这部分。我实现同样的事情有不同的方式。我注意到的是：那些拥有……

Pretty cool. I'll talk about the 'Pride in Product' piece. I've had a different way of realizing the same thing. What I've noticed is the following: people who have...

需要掌声，或者理解什么会引发掌声。通常，了解这些的人是值得认识的。所以在早期，我们的领导团队中有很多背景有趣的人，比如音乐、诗歌、唱歌、DJ 等。因为他们天生就非常强烈地知道，这个行不通。这很难解释。他们很难解释为什么某些事情会成功，而另一些不会，但这是一种内在的直觉。这在每个创意领域都是如此，对吧？你会发现，如果你去找一位伟大的音乐总监，播放一首歌，问他：这会火吗？他们很可能预测得准。但如果你问他们为什么，我觉得他们无法真正解释。我对此思考了很多。直觉不是随机的，它是你一生中经历的一切、所有的经验，只是此刻你无法用逻辑的方式表达出来。这并不意味着它是错的，或者我们不应该倾听它。

Need for applause or understand what will cause applause. Usually are good people to know. So in our early days, we had a lot of people who had interesting backgrounds in music, poetry, singing, to DJing in the early leadership team, because they naturally know very strongly this is not going to work. And it's hard to explain. It's very hard for them to explain why certain things are going to work and not work, but it's something that somehow innately is known. And it's true for every creative field, right? You will notice that if you go to a great music director and play this thing and you say, is this going to be a hit or not? They're more likely to be predicting that. But if you ask them why, I don't think they can really explain. I thought about this a lot. Gut feeling is not random. It's everything you've been through in your entire life, all the experiences you had, but it's just at this moment you're not able to articulate it in a very logical way. It doesn't mean that it's wrong or it's not something we should listen to.

我们来谈谈决策。你一开始并没有做手机，而是从一款价格较低的产品起步，后来才做手机。这是有意识的策略吗？因为如果直接推出手机，可能会引起轰动，更快进入新闻周期和公关周期。为什么选择那条路？这个决定背后的初衷是什么？

Let's talk about decisions. You did not start with a phone. You started with a product that was, let's say, of a lower price point, and then you have kind of done phone later on. Was it a conscious strategy? Because you would have just been a big bang launch with a phone directly and get into the news cycles and PR cycles faster. Why take that path? What was the genesis behind that decision?

我认为这关乎认清自己所处的位置，回到生存的话题。团队中很多人来自非常大的公司，拥有大量资源，不仅是资金，还有供应链资源，因为如果你想做硬件产品，供应链是关键之一。所以如果用丛林或食物链来类比，我们很多人曾经是狮子，但现在从零开始，我们必须认识到我们不再是狮子了，我们是蚂蚁，必须从食物链的底层开始。所以我认为，如果从第一天就尝试做非常复杂的东西，那会非常非常困难。即使我们做了，我也不认为会顺利。就连做耳机都遇到了很多麻烦。没有工厂愿意和我们合作。他们说：“哦，你是一家初创公司，我从没听说过你，从没听说过这家公司。市场似乎已经饱和，这么多玩家，我们为什么要和你合作？”最后，我们不得不和可能是世界上最差的工厂合作来生产我们的耳机。那家工厂因为之前的问题被多家公司列入黑名单，后来也破产了。我们按照一定的规格设计产品，工程师创建产品，工厂必须复制，但他们无法复制所需的流程和步骤。这导致我们产品初期出现了一些问题。所以我们的客服团队夜以继日地更换设备。我们最终做的是在工厂旁边租了两套公寓，派了 15 名工程师过去。他们每周 7 天在工厂车间，持续了几个月，每个工位都有人，监督每一个流程，确保他们遵循我们的程序。这就是我们解决问题的方式。那家工厂有多差，可想而知。所以现在想象一下，如果我们试图做手机。当我们想做手机时，我们再次去找供应链，他们说：“过去 10 年里，所有试图做手机的人都失败了。有 Razer 手机，有 Nextbit，还有 Andy Rubin 筹集了 3.3 亿美元推出 Essential，也没成功。我们和 Andy Rubin 合作亏了很多钱。我们为什么要相信你？而且由于疫情，半导体供应链紧张，我们已经欠大合作伙伴很多组件了。我们为什么还要谈这个？”所以我们意识到，我们从底层开始，就要做蚂蚁该做的事。所以我们选择从耳机开始，因为那仍然是一个增长相当快的品类，制造起来也简单得多。我们觉得可以用这款产品的销售表现、市场表现来证明自己。这也能帮助团队开始协作，因为我们是一个全新的团队，大多数人彼此不认识，所以需要熟悉、磨合。这就是我们做耳机的原因。幸运的是，在出货数十万台之后，那些曾经不想和我们合作的工厂现在又回来争取我们的业务了，因为归根结底，供应链是为了赚钱。幸运的是，利用这一成功，我们说服了更多供应链端的智能手机合作伙伴愿意与我们合作。所以我认为你必须认清自己所处的位置。在最近的一次内部全员大会上，我说：“我们现在不再是蚂蚁了，我们是蜗牛。”所以前进了一步。

I think it's about recognizing where you are, back to the topic of survival. A lot of the team came from really big companies with a lot of resources, not just in terms of money but also supply chain resources, because supply chain is one of the keys if you want to create hardware products. So if you think about it in a jungle or the food chain analogy, a lot of us were lions, but now starting from scratch, we got to recognize that we're not lions anymore. We're ants. Got to start from the bottom of the food chain. So I think if we were to try and create something really complicated from day one, it would have been really, really hard. And even if we did, I don't think it would have gone very well. So many troubles even creating the headphone. No factory wanted to work with us. They said, 'Oh, you're a startup company. I never heard about you. Never heard about this company. The market seems pretty saturated, so many players. Why should we work with you?' In the end, we had to work with probably the worst factory in the world to produce our headphones. That factory is on the blacklist of several other companies because of issues they've had, and that factory has since gone bankrupt. So we design our products according to a certain spec. Our engineers create the product that the factory has to replicate, and the process and the steps that they have to replicate, they couldn't. It led to some issues with our product in the beginning. So our customer service team was working around the clock to replace devices. What we ended up doing is rented two apartments next to the factory, put 15 engineers there. They were on the factory floor 7 days a week for a couple of months, manning every station, overlooking every process to make sure that they followed our procedure. That's how we fixed the problem. That's how bad the factory was. So now imagine if we tried to make a phone. When we wanted to make a phone, we went out to the supply chain again. They were like, 'In the past 10 years, everybody who's tried to make a phone failed. You had the Razer phone, you had Nextbit, you had Andy Rubin who raised $330 million, launched Essential, didn't work. We lost a lot of money on working with Andy Rubin. Why should we trust you? And it was a supply chain crunch for semiconductors due to COVID. We owe our big partners a lot of components already. Why should we even have this discussion?' So we got to realize that we started at the bottom, and then do the right thing for an ant. So we chose to start with headphones because it was still quite a fast-growing category, much more simple to make. And we figured that we could use the sales performance, our market performance of that product, to prove ourselves. It could also help us get the team to start working together, because we had a brand new team. Most people didn't know each other, so just to get familiar, to gel. So that's why we made the headphones. And luckily, after shipping hundreds of thousands of units, the factories who didn't want to work with us are now back trying to compete for our business, because at the end of the day, the supply chain is to make money. And luckily, using that success, we're able to convince more smartphone partners on the supply chain side to want to work with us. So I think you got to realize where you are. And in a recent internal town hall or all-hands, I said, 'Now we're not an ant anymore. We're a snail.' So one step up.

很高兴知道。你已经完成了许多进化跳跃。我有个问题，再次回到产品上。这款手机非常独特。设计很棒，而且你还加入了一个很棒的功能，虽然人们可能会说它没用，但似乎是个很棒的功能，就是手机背面的 LED 灯。这让它非常值得炫耀，适合发 Instagram。这个洞察是什么？是你从一开始就知道的，还是你们偶然发现的？背景是什么？

That's good to know. That's a lot of evolutionary jumps done for you. I have a question on, again back to the product. The phone is quite unique. There is this great design, and you've also managed to put this great feature, which seems like people can ask you, it's useless feature, but it seems like a great feature to have, is the LED lights behind the phone. And it kind of makes it very brag-worthy and Instagrammable. What was the insight? Was it something that you knew from day one, or is it something that you guys stumbled upon? What was the background about that?

首先，我认为所有功劳都归于我们的设计团队。有一天他们说：“嘿，我们要做这个。”我们说：“好吧，看起来很酷，那就做吧。”洞察是，现代智能手机基本上就是一块屏幕，其余部分都浪费了。那么，我们如何在手机背面做一些仍然有用的东西呢？Glyph 的灵感来自白炽灯泡。我们如何利用光来构建一些功能，比如最常用的功能？这就是想法的来源。然后他们试图说这是日文或中文的“爱”字，但那是因为它看起来不像。那不是“爱”的写法。是的，这就是背景故事。我想我也读到过评论，认为这有点噱头。我的看法是，这是一种全新的智能手机交互方式。我们有很多想法，但手机刚推出时只选择发布几个，随着时间的推移，我们会逐渐增加，以免让用户不知所措。所以我认为，随着功能元素越来越好，你能用它做的事情越来越多，“噱头”的讨论会逐渐消失。比如我们在考虑的一件事是，底部的感叹号。它实际上是一个很好的进度条。现在它是你的……

First of all, I think all the credit goes to our design team. So one day they were like, 'Hey, we're going to make this.' And we were like, 'Okay, looks cool, let's do it.' The insight was, the modern smartphone is basically a screen, and the rest of the sides are kind of wasted. So how can we do something still useful on the back of the phone? And the inspiration behind the glyph was filament light bulbs. How can we use light to start building some functionality, like the most commonly used functionality? That's where the idea came from. And then they tried to pitch that this was the Japanese or Chinese character for love, but that's because it doesn't look like that. That's not how you write love. Yeah, that's the backstory. I think I also read comments that people think it's a little bit gimmicky. The way I think about it is, you know, this is a brand new way of interacting with a smartphone. We had a lot of ideas, but we chose to only ship a few when the phone just came out, and over time we will gradually add to it, so as to not overwhelm the user. So I think over time, as the functionality element gets better and better, there's more and more things you can do with it, the gimmick conversation will fade away. Like one of the things we're thinking about is, you know, the bottom exclamation mark. It's actually quite a nice progress bar. Right now it's a progress bar for your...

充电的时候，手机就像被填满一样，但它也可以作为很多其他事情的进度条，比如你的 Uber。当你的 Uber 快到时，它就慢慢填满，这样你就不必总是打开屏幕。这挺有意思的。为了虚荣而存在的虚荣，应该出现在产品里吗？还是说，你总得为某个虚荣功能找一个实用主义的理由？

Charging, so as you charge the phone, it kind of fills up, but it can be a progress bar for a lot of other things, like your Uber. When your Uber is arriving, it just fills up, so you don't have to always turn on the screen. That's pretty interesting. Should vanity, for the sake of vanity, exist in a product? Or should you always have a utilitarian justification for a vanity feature?

如果你希望它纯粹为了虚荣，我尊重这一点，但这不是我们这里做事的方式。我们坚信功能设计，所以每样东西都必须有功能。即使它看起来更酷，也需要有功能元素。比如在 Ear One 上，外壳上有一个凹槽或小坑。当然，它很酷，你可以把它当指尖陀螺玩，但实际上它的功能是固定住两个耳机，让耳机和手机上的 Pogo 针连接更稳定。好吧，字形灯看起来确实很酷，但正如我之前所说，我们正在它背后构建越来越多的功能。有些品牌可以专注于装饰，但那不是我们做的。

If you want it to just be for vanity, I respect that, but that's not what we do here. We really believe in functional design, so everything needs to fill a function. Even if it looks cooler, there needs to be a functional element to it. So on the Ear One, there's a dip or a dimple on the case. Sure, it's cool, you can use it as a fidget spinner, but actually the functional element is that it holds the two headphones down to create a more stable connection between the earbud and the Pogo pin on the phone. Okay, the glyph looks really cool, but as I said earlier, we're building more and more functionality behind it. Some brands can focus on ornament, that's not what we do.

跟我们讲讲你处理过的两大危机吧。你们整个公司基本上是在疫情期间诞生的，对吧？这是真的吗？

Tell us about the two biggest crises that you've dealt with. You were, the whole company was pretty much born during COVID, right? Is that a true statement?

基本正确，大部分旅程都是在疫情期间。

Mostly right, most of the journey has been during.

所以我猜那个因素应该已经过去了，但你们处理过的其他两件最可怕或最大的事情是什么？

So I'm assuming that that factor would have already kind of played out, but what are some two other scariest or the biggest things that you guys dealt with?

我觉得其中一个是融资非常困难。上一轮融资，我们在二月份宣布了一轮融资。我们在十二月份签署了投资意向书，十月份开始融资。我本以为那会是一个两周的过程，但事实并非如此。我们大概接触了 50 个不同的投资人。每天要和三四个投资人谈，被问各种问题，比如这为什么会成功？竞争对手很多。每个人都试过，你失败了。你想做什么？你只是打算重复你以前做过的事吗？就这样，日复一日地被质疑，真的很耗神。一周之后，我开始做噩梦，梦见自己站在公司面前，告诉大家，就这样了，结束了。我们没有拿到融资。谢谢，我们试过了，但没成功。那真的非常非常艰难。我常常凌晨四点醒来，再也睡不着。我觉得我的解决办法可能不是对每个人都最好的。我开始给最亲近的朋友发短信，然后我们连续三个晚上去泡夜店，那是一种很好的压力释放。

I think one was having a really hard time raising a round. The previous round, so we announced a round in February. We signed the term sheet in December, started raising in October. I thought it would be a two-week process, but it wasn't. Speaking to, like, we spoke to maybe 50 different investors. Every day, speak to like three to four investors every day, get questioned on everything, like why would this work? There's a lot of competitors. Everybody's tried, you failed. What are you trying to do? Are you just going to do what you did before? Like that really just days and days of just being challenged. It's kind of draining. And after a week of that, I started getting nightmares, like nightmares of being on stage in front of the company and telling everybody, this is it, no more. We didn't secure funding. Let's, thanks, we tried but it didn't work. So that was really, really difficult. I would wake up at like 4 a.m. and just unable to go back to sleep. I think my solution was maybe not the best solution for everybody. I just started texting some of my closest friends and we went out clubbing for three nights, and it was good, released some pressure.

你有没有告诉你的团队，你们处于资金不足的境地？

Did you tell your team that you were in the situation of not having enough runway?

领导团队知道，是的。好吧，但幸运的是最后成功了。我们找到了真正的信徒，我们挺过了那段时期。

The leadership team, yeah. Okay, but luckily it worked out in the end. We found true believers and we survived that time.

你经历了这些阶段，在很短的时间内走到了现在。你最害怕什么？

You've been through these stages and you've kind of come this far in a very short period of time. What are you most scared of?

我们制造的每一款产品都必须大获成功。在我们这个行业就是这样。所以我认为 Phone One 在全球引起了巨大的轰动。我们今天早些时候在 Flipkart，也打破了很多他们的记录，比如获得了 1000 万个“通知我”，是他们之前记录的两倍多，还有大量的搜索。这很棒，但真正的考验是产品首次发货、人们开始收到产品的最初几周。当有几十万人在使用时，他们会喜欢这个产品吗？如果他们喜欢，他们会告诉朋友，然后我们就安全了。但现在我们处于这个中间阶段。很多人很兴奋，很多人已经买了，但很多手机还在送往客户的路上。所以这就是让我紧张的地方。所以在公司内部，我们正在收集大量反馈，尤其是在软件方面，不断推送更新，以确保当大量用户开始激活产品时，它会成为他们真正喜欢的东西。

Every product we build has to be a hit. That's how it is in our industry. So I think the Phone One has gotten a tremendous amount of buzz all over the world. We were at Flipkart earlier today and broke a lot of their records as well, like got 10 million notify mes, more than double the amount that they've ever got before, tons of search. And it's great, but the real test is the first couple of weeks when you first ship the product and people start receiving it. When you have like hundreds of thousands of people using it, do they love the product? If they love the product, they're going to tell their friends about it, and then you know we're safe. But now we're in this kind of middle period. A lot of people are excited, a lot of people have bought it, but a lot of phones are still on the way to the customer. So that's what's making me nervous. So internally within the company, we're collecting a lot of feedback, especially on the software, keep pushing updates to ensure to improve the chances that when people in large quantities start activating the product, it will be something they really love.

印度是一个重要的焦点市场。印度消费者和印度以外的消费者有什么区别？印度消费者有什么独特特质，尤其是在购买硬件方面？你不仅可以谈谈你在 Nothing 的经历，也可以谈谈你在 OnePlus 的经历。有哪些反直觉的洞察？

India is a big focus market. What is the difference between Indian consumers and the consumers outside India? What are the unique traits of Indian consumers, especially when it comes to buying hardware? And you can talk about not just your Nothing experience, but also your OnePlus experience. What are the insights that are counterintuitive?

反直觉？我觉得这里的人非常懂技术，所以他们真的看重产品的价值。在一些市场，比如印度尼西亚，我觉得他们只看产品的价格。他们不太了解里面的东西，所以只要产品便宜，你就可以卖高利润的产品。但在这里，人们非常精明。他们知道里面所有组件的细节以及应该花多少钱。而且这仍然是一笔好交易，因为也许你的 CPU 稍差，但你的相机稍好。所以我认为这就是为什么我们的一些宣传在这里效果很好的原因。我们试图打造一种真正均衡的体验，不一定拥有最高的 CPU，但也要有出色的相机、出色的做工，整体体验，你知道，非常流畅的软件体验。所以我认为这可能是关于印度市场，我心中最大的决定性因素。另一个原因是，这里说英语的人很多，西方和这里的信息差距很小。所以我认为很多消费者，他们想成为全球性运动的一部分，而不一定是本地性的。

Counterintuitive? I think people here are very tech-savvy, so they really look at the value of a product. In some markets, like Indonesia, I think they only look at the price of a product. They don't really know what's inside, so you can sell a really high-margin product as long as it's a cheap product. But here, people are very savvy. They know all the details about all the components that go in and how much it should cost. And this is still a good deal because maybe your CPU is a bit worse, but your camera is a bit better. So I think that's maybe why some of our messaging has worked really well here. We try and build a really balanced experience, not necessarily to have the highest CPU, but to also have great camera, great build quality, the total package, you know, really smooth software experience. So I think that's probably the biggest defining thing I have in my mind about the Indian market. I think another one is because of how many people speak English here, there's very little gap between the information in the West and here. So I think a lot of consumers, they want to be a part of a movement that's global in nature, not necessarily local in nature.

我们在 Nothing 确实是这样带领人们的，我们基本上，我想我们在全球大概 30 到 40 个国家推出了。太棒了。这是一个新品牌，人们以前没有尝试过这个品牌。这款手机不一定便宜。如果非要归类的话，我会说它属于高端类别。你们是如何创造合适的市场环境，来获得这 1000 万个“通知我”的？这说不通啊。发生了什么？发生了什么？或者告诉我们其中的门道。

We're definitely taking people on a like that at Nothing, where we basically, I think we launched in maybe 30, 40 countries worldwide. Amazing. It's a new brand, and people have not tried this brand before. The phone is not necessarily a cheap phone. It's in the, I would say, in a premium category, if one has to put it. How did you guys create the right kind of market environment to have this 10 million notify me? It doesn't make any sense. What happened? What happened? Or tell us the craft.

我觉得如果你看看市场，理论上有很多竞争。有所有这些分析师，他们制作这些榜单：这个品牌有 20% 的市场份额，那个品牌有 15%，每个季度都会小幅上升或下降。但我认为实际上，竞争并不多，因为除了苹果，其他所有品牌，嗯，这些百分比在人们心中并不真正存在，因为它们都一样。产品一样，品牌不代表任何东西。它们代表的是，这是我放进手机的处理器，这是索尼的相机，这是别的什么。所以如果我们把市场上所有这些其他 Android 产品放在桌子上，也许这里的观众更懂技术，如果我们带一个普通消费者来……

I think if you look at the market, there's a lot of competition theoretically. There's all these analysts, they create these lists: this brand has 20% market share, this brand has 15%, and every quarter it moves up a little bit or moves down a little bit. But I think in practical terms, there's not a lot of competition, because apart from Apple, all the other brands, well, the percentages, they don't really exist in people's minds, because they're all the same. The products are the same, the brands don't stand for anything. They stand for this is a processor I'm putting into the phone, this is the camera from Sony, this is whatever. So if we were to put all these other Android products on the market here on the table, and maybe the audience here is more tech-savvy, if we brought a regular consumer...

如果我们用胶带遮住 logo，我觉得他们很难分辨出哪个是哪个。所以从这个角度看，我不觉得竞争有多大。我觉得我们做的事情引起了很多人的共鸣。行业一直挺无聊的，我们想让事情重新变得有趣，而外面的人都很无聊，所以他们开始跟着我们踏上这段旅程。这当中有很多挑战，但也有很多非常有成就感的经历。比如，我们从社区那里筹集了很多资金。第一次我们只是公布了公司名字——‘嘿，我们要做点事’——人们就投了。第二次我们有了产品路线图，但全是宝可梦代号。我们的社区展现了很大的信念和信任，再次投入。所以我觉得那是最有成就感的时刻之一。这确实验证了人们相当无聊，他们想看到 Nothing 团队这群人给行业带来一些改变。

If we put tape to hide the logos, I think it's really hard for them to identify what's what. So from that perspective, I don't think there's a lot of competition. I think simply what we're doing resonates with a lot of people. It's been kind of boring; we want to make things fun again, and people are bored out there, so they started to follow us on this journey. There have been a lot of challenges, but also a lot of really rewarding experiences. For example, we raised a lot of money from our community. The first time we did it, we just announced the name of the company—'Hey, we're going to do something'—and people invested. The second time, we had a roadmap of products, but they were all Pokémon code names. Our community showed a lot of belief and faith and came in again. So I think that's one of the most rewarding parts. It really validates that people are quite bored and they want to see this group of people, the Nothing team, bring some change in the industry.

我要换个问题问你。你在这家公司到底做什么？你的角色是什么？

I'm going to switch to a question about you. What the hell do you do in the company? What's your role?

我也经常想我在 Cred 到底做什么。是啊，是啊，我也很想听听你的回答，除了发那些 Instagram 故事之外。我做什么？我觉得大部分事情都不是我的功劳，因为都是别人做的。我觉得我做的是找到最优秀的人，并努力营造一个让他们能一起工作、协作的环境。如果他们吵架了，我得去劝架，想办法解决。

I often wonder what I do in Cred too. Yeah, yeah, I'm curious to hear your answer as well, apart from posting all those Instagram stories. What do I do? I think I can't take credit for most of the things that happen because they're all done by other people. I think what I do is find the best people and try to build an environment where they can work together and collaborate. And if they fight, I need to break up the fights and figure out how to solve that.

那你每周要处理多少次这种劝架的情况？

So how often do you get into a fight resolution situation per week?

哦，大概一个月一次吧。好吧，没那么频繁。但我觉得因为我们的挑战太大了，我们需要不断从整个行业引进最优秀的人才。人才密度已经相当高了。几个月前，之前负责 Dyson 设计的那个人加入了我们，还有很多行业资深人士——比如这里的 Manu，三星的副总裁——加入了我们，负责印度业务。但同样的事情在世界各地都在发生。所以我觉得引进最优秀的人才应该是我主要的关注点。

Oh, maybe just once a month. Okay, not that frequent. But I think because our challenge is so big, we need to keep bringing in the best people from all around the industry. The talent density is already quite good. The guy that used to run design at Dyson joined us a couple of months ago, and a lot of industry veterans—like Manu, here, VP at Samsung—joined us to lead the India business. But the same story is happening all across the world. So I think bringing in the best people should be my main focus.

平庸人才的特征是什么？我相信你一生中雇过不少这样的人，也犯过这种错误。现在你已经有了一套内置的筛选机制，肯定有一些模式。那些特征是什么？

What are the traits of mediocre talent? I'm sure you've hired a bunch of them in your life and made that mistake. There must be some patterns that now you have become a built-in filter for. What are those traits?

这有点回到直觉。我现在没法提炼出来，但让我想想。或者给我看一些平庸人才可能表现出的症状。一个症状是不了解细节。你负责某件事，就应该知道每一个细节。也许我不会问你，但如果我问了，而你不知道，那可能就没做好。如果你在更高级的职位，你应该能带来很多优秀的人。如果你做不到，那肯定有问题。我觉得你越优秀，就越能和高级人才合作，不会产生冲突。我觉得优秀的人真的很喜欢和优秀的人一起工作。事情会变得非常容易，就像职业运动员和另一个职业运动员合作一样。我觉得主人翁意识——完全的主人翁意识——就像这是你的公司。我们都在共同建设这个。我觉得这非常重要。我觉得工作和空闲时间之间非常严格的界限，往往是一个非常不好的信号。这没问题，我的意思是，对一些公司，尤其是大型企业，这没问题——你只需要齿轮。但我们这么小，我们需要那些想一起建设的人。这就是我现在能想到的。

It goes back a bit to gut feeling. I'm not able to distill it right now, but let me see. Or show me some symptoms that the mediocre talent is likely to show. One symptom is not knowing the details. You're responsible for something, you should know every single detail. Maybe I'm not going to ask you, but if I do, then if you don't know, then probably not doing a great job. If you're in a more senior position, you should be able to bring a lot of great people with you. If you can't, there must be something wrong. The better you are, I think the better you're able to work with high-level talents and not have conflicts. I think great people really enjoy working with great people. Things become very easy, like a pro athlete working with another pro athlete. I think ownership—total ownership—like this is your company. We're all building this together. I think that's really important. I think a very strong separation between work and free time is more often than not a very bad sign. It's cool, I mean, for some companies, especially huge corporates, it's fine—you just need cogs in the wheel. But we're so small, we need people who want to build together. That's what I can think of right now.

这很好，这是一个非常好的清单。很想听听你的见解。我觉得非常相似。我只想谈谈细节这件事。一位 Google 的资深领导用一种非常有趣的方式给我解释过，说如果你看到一个人带着宠物散步，很容易假设他们是这个宠物的主人或父母。但也可能只是一个遛狗的人。唯一能分辨的方法就是知道：你了解这只狗的所有怪癖吗？这个人会引起这只狗的反应吗？这个人会让狗去和他玩，还是狗不吃东西？虽然你没见过这种行为，但宠物主人凭直觉就知道他们拥有的产品会有什么行为。这就是你刚才说的例子——不仅仅是拥有细节，还要准确预测它们会如何表现。没错，判断力。我忘了说这个，但确实，经常正确是优秀人才的标志。我在平庸人才身上看到的另一个特征是完全没有好奇心。他们就是不好奇，而且他们的好奇心有护栏。他们不会随意对事物产生好奇。为什么我们不能向 Nike 学习来推出一个手机品牌？绝对可以，或者推出一个支付产品。你总能从中学习。但大多数人都有自我设定的界限。第二个是极不擅长接受帮助。他们就是不知道如何接受帮助。他们认为这有失身份，或者为此感到羞耻。我注意到，当你告诉他们接受帮助时，他们会觉得被冒犯。我就想，你为什么不想作弊呢？用作弊模式玩人生，直接向那些已经经历过那种体验的人学习，而不是自己去经历那种体验。把事太个人化——他们非常容易被冒犯。极其容易被冒犯。这不客观；他们接受反馈的能力很差。实际上，我观察到一个一致的特征：出于某种原因，我们也讨厌给平庸的人反馈。我们不愿意给他们反馈，因为你感觉这毫无意义，而且他们不会以正确的态度接受。但这就是我能想到的全部。不过你的清单其实相当有趣。另一件事是关于认可——认可从哪里来？很多人有这种外在的东西——别人欣赏他们——那时他们才知道自己做得不错，而不是他们自己确信自己做得不错。他们的衡量系统就是不对——内在与外在。这就是我的清单，但我没有为此准备，所以这只是即兴的。

This is good, this is a very good list. Love to hear your insights. I think very similar. I just want to talk about the detail thing. One of the senior Google leaders explained this to me in a very interesting way, saying that if you see a person walking with a pet, it's very easy to assume that they are the owner or the parent of this pet. But it can also just be a pet walker. The only way you find out is to know: do you know all the quirks about this dog? Will this person cause a reaction from this dog? Will this person make the dog go and play with this person, or will they not eat? Although you've not seen this behavior, a pet owner knows through gut what's going to be the behavior of the product that they are owning. This is the example of what you just said—it's not just owning detail, but also predicting accurately how they do that. That's right, judgment quality. I forgot to say that, but yes, being right very often is a sign of great talent. Other thing I have seen in mediocre talent is just complete lack of curiosity. They're just not curious, and they have guardrails to their curiosity. They will not go randomly be curious about things. Why can't we learn from Nike to launch a phone brand? Absolutely we can, or launch a payment product. You can always learn from that. But most people have self-defined boundaries. Second is terrible at taking help. They just don't know how to take help. They think it's beneath them or they are ashamed of it. I have noticed that when you tell them to take help, they feel offended. And I'm like, why wouldn't you want to cheat? Play life on cheat mode and just learn from somebody who's already been through that experience, versus go through that experience yourself. Taking things very personally—they're very easy to offend. Insanely easy to offend. It's not objective; they take feedback poorly. Actually, I have seen one consistent trait: for some reason, we also hate giving feedback to mediocre people. We resist giving feedback to them because you feel that it's pointless, and they will not take it in the right spirit. But that's all I can think about. But your list was actually quite interesting. Another thing is about validation—where does the validation come from? So a lot of people have this external thing—other people appreciating them—that's when they know they've done a good job, versus them knowing for sure that they've done a good job. Their measurement system is just off—internal versus external. That's my list, but I did not prepare for this, so this is just off the top of my head.

但你在 Cred 做什么？在我们交谈之前，他问我你是怎么获取 meme 的。所以他想知道你的渠道。

But what do you do at Cred? Before we spoke, he asked me how you source your memes. So he wants to know your dealer.

有些渠道来自团队，有些来自其他地方。但网络效应太强了，现在有人给我私信发好 meme——他们说，‘你必须发这个。’我就想，你给了我我的心。但我做的是，我试图让团队全职保持雄心壮志。这非常难。

Some of the dealers are from the team, some of them are from other places. But the network effects are so strong that now I have people who DM me with great memes—they're like, 'You have to post this one.' I'm like, you get my heart for giving that to me. But what I do is I'm trying to make the team ambitious on a full-time basis. It's very hard.

在印度，我们很容易变得非常快乐和满足。社会被训练得容易满足，对现状感到满意，不去突破极限。这是我做的第一件事。第二，我主要通过持续的反馈来帮助人们成长，主要是告诉他们做了什么。有些人会以正确的心态接受并成长。我观察到，那些对反馈感兴趣的人，随着时间的推移，需要的反馈会越来越少。很奇怪，他们的循环周期会缩短，不会再犯同样的错误。有些人则完全不接受反馈，完全抓不住重点。我做的最后一件事是，不断以清晰的视角想象公司 3 到 5 年后的样子，并不断向团队传达这个愿景。我看到了这个愿景，也看到了那个机会，而且它非常大。大多数时候，团队很难看到同样的愿景，所以主要是说服人们去看到它，因为你的直觉告诉你这一点，而你没有任何数据。所以很多时候我会收集一些数据点，让人们更容易看到，因为不能总是凭直觉驱动。虽然你有过很多次正确的历史，但你不能总是带领一支高人才密度的团队说：“相信我，我知道这能行，我们干吧。”因为他们不会建立自己的直觉。他们也需要参与进来并做出判断。我意识到这一点，我也在推特上说过：除非你持续把自己的财富、声誉和健康置于风险之中，否则你无法在生活中建立实质性的东西。是的，只有当你把这三样东西置于风险之中——显然健康不是最好的赌注，但声誉和财富——除非你把这些东西置于风险之中，我最惊讶的是，印度很多年轻人，在没有任何声誉的时候，却担心声誉。全世界都是这样。我认为有些东西出了问题。也许是社交媒体对他们造成了影响，让他们在还没有建立任何东西的时候就担心声誉和地位，并因此不敢冒险。他们没有在推动事物的极限和边界，这仍然是一个巨大的、令人着迷的现象。我的意思是，至少我记得我成长在一个没有社交媒体需要追赶的时代，所以我现在才过度补偿。但关键是，我不需要担心要保护声誉。我只想学习，我只想在最短的时间内尽可能多地获取经验，我当时非常急切。而我看到人们如此小心翼翼、谨慎、害怕、回避冲突，而所有的声誉技能恰恰来自于建立这些东西并经历那个过程。

In India, it's very easy for us to become very happy and content. The society has been trained to be content and be okay with things and not push limits. That's one thing I do. Second, I mostly try to compound people by constant feedback, mostly telling them what they have done. Some of them take it in the right spirit and compound with it. I've seen naturally that people who are interested in feedback, over a period of time, need less feedback. It's weird, their cycles just shorten and they don't repeat the same mistakes. Some people just don't carry the feedback at all, they just miss the point. The last thing I do is constantly imagine the company 3-5 years out with complete clarity and constantly disseminate that to the team. I see this and I can see that opportunity, and it's so big. Most of the time it's hard for the team to see it the same way, so it's mostly persuading people to see it, because your gut is telling you that and you don't have any data. So a lot of times I'm collecting some data points to make it easy for people to see it, because it can't be just gut-driven all the time. Although you have the history of being right a lot, you can't just keep leading a team of high talent density by saying, 'Trust me, I know this is going to work, let's do it,' because they will not build their gut. They have to also put this in and call. I realized that, and I tweeted about this also, that you can't build substance in life unless you consistently put your wealth, reputation, and health at stake. Yeah, only when you are putting these three things—obviously health is not the best thing to put at stake, but reputation and wealth—unless you're putting these things at stake, what I am most surprised about though is a lot of young people in India are worried about reputation when they have none. All over the world, I think there is something that has gone off. Maybe it's social media that has done this to them, that they worry about their reputation and status when they have built nothing of it yet, and they're not taking risks because of that. They are not pushing the limits and boundaries on things, and that remains a big fascinating thing. I mean, at least I remember I grew up in a time when I had no social media to keep up to, and that's why I overdo it now. But the thing is, I did not have to care about having a reputation to protect. I just wanted to learn, I just wanted to capture as much experience as possible in the shortest possible time, and I was in a big hurry. And I see people are so careful and cautious and scared and avoiding confrontation, when all the reputational skills come from just building some of these things and going through that process.

好了，我要切换到团队的一些问题了。这是 Surbi 和 Devans 的问题：在推出产品时，你的决策框架是什么？你有哪些运营原则？我知道你已经涵盖了一些，但还是想听听。

Anyways, I'm going to switch to some questions from the team. So this question from Surbi and Devans: What is your framework to make decisions when it comes to launching your products? What are some of your operating principles? I know you've covered some of them, but would love to still hear some of it.

嗯，回到动物王国里昆虫的比喻，我们首先需要认识到，我认为很多公司和我们有着相同的终极愿景——一个完整的生态系统，甚至可能是遥远的未来环境计算。但到达那里的方式不同，而我们进入这个行业非常非常晚。有些品牌已经有 10 年、20 年甚至 45 年的历史了。所以如果你既晚又弱，你能做什么？因此，在产品方面，我们有意识地采取了快速跟随者策略，这意味着我们从不创造新品类——至少现在不会，因为我们太弱了。我们让别人尝试新事物，让他们浪费时间、浪费金钱，也许他们成功了，那很好。他们创造了品类。我们在别人创造的品类中找到漏洞或机会，然后以差异化的方式楔入我们看到机会的地方。我认为这就是最初的框架。所以机会必须足够大：智能手机市场，每年出货量超过 15 亿部；真无线耳机，每年超过 3 亿副。我们只涉足这些品类。

Well, going back to being an insect in the animal kingdom, we first need to recognize that I think a lot of companies share the same end-state vision that we do—a complete ecosystem or even maybe ambient computing far into the future. But there are different ways of getting there, and we're very, very late to the industry. There are brands that are 10 years, 20 years, even 45 years old out there. So if you're both late and you're weak, what can you do? So for products, we've consciously taken a fast follower strategy, which means we never create a new category—at least not now when we're so weak. We let other people try new things, we'll let them waste time, waste money, and maybe they're successful, that's fine. They create the category. We find the loophole or the opportunity in the category that other people have created, and we wedge ourselves in with a differentiated approach where we see opportunity. I think that's the framework in the beginning. So the opportunity has to be big: smartphone market, 1.5 billion plus shipments a year; true wireless headphones, more than 300 million a year. We only touch these categories.

我喜欢这个回答。我要跳到更多问题，因为看起来我已经问了一些了。Nes 问：你如何选择，或者说你当初是如何选择公司创始成员的？框架是什么？我知道有些人是之前和你一起工作过的。

I love it. I'm going to jump to a few more questions because it seems like I've already asked some of them. One question is by Nes: How do you choose, or how did you choose, the founding members for your company? What was the framework? There were some people I knew that you worked with them before.

是的，我们做的事情非常困难，因为这是一个全栈团队。你不仅需要软件或硬件，还需要供应链、设计、营销、区域团队等等，还有服务。所以从一开始我们就必须有一个非常强大的创始团队。我们有八位联合创始人，这是一个非常大的创始团队。但我认为这就是我们业务的性质。如果我们创建另一种类型的公司，我们本可以用更小的创始团队凑合。而且这些人中的大多数我都共事过很长时间，我们彼此了解很久，所以已经有了信任。你知道他们擅长什么，不擅长什么，我也知道自己擅长什么，不擅长什么，这样才能找到一个互补的团队——不是每个人都兴趣相同或想法相同的团队，而是能互相弥补弱点的团队。

Yeah, so what we're doing is very difficult, because it's like a full-stack team. You need not just software or hardware, but you need supply chain, you need design, you need marketing, you need regional teams, etc., service. So we had to have quite a robust founding team from the very beginning. And we're eight co-founders; it's a very big founding team. But I think that's just the nature of our business. If we created another type of company, we could have made do with a smaller founding team. And most of these people I worked with for a long time, we're known for a long time, so there's already a trust. And you know what they're good at, what they're not good at, and I know what I'm good at and not good at, to try and find a complementary team—not a team where everybody has the same hobbies or thinks in the same way, but cover each other's weaknesses.

下一个问题实际上是关于这个的：在旅程中，你最喜欢哪个部分，你最擅长哪个部分？这是 Sh 问的。

The next question is actually around that: Which part of the journey do you enjoy the most, and which part are you best at? This is from Sh.

哦，最擅长的？嗯。我最喜欢什么？我觉得当你在外面看到有人使用你的产品时，很少有感觉能超越那种。尤其是如果他们不认识你，这意味着你的品牌在成长，越来越多的人在接触它。我不喜欢什么？我认为痛苦或困难的时刻只是旅程的一部分。所以你的日程表里有一个具体问题：你最害怕参加哪种会议？没有。好吧，那就把它们去掉。你要么去掉它们，要么接受它们作为旅程的一部分。

Oh, best at? Hmm. What do I enjoy the most? I think when you see somebody out in the wild using your product, there are a few things that can really beat that feeling. And especially if they don't recognize you, which means your brand is growing and more and more people are touching it. What do I not enjoy? I think painful times or difficult times are just a part of the journey. So I have a specific question in your calendar: which are the type of meetings that you dread going to? None. Okay, remove them. You just got to remove them or accept them as a part of the journey.

好的，Anu 有一个问题：你从创业和挑战三星、iPhone 等旗舰手机中学到了什么？到目前为止的教训是什么？如果我能补充一点：你觉得这个品牌的表现是超出你的预期还是符合你的预期？

Okay, there is a question from Anu: What are your learnings from starting up and challenging flagship phones like Samsung and iPhone? What are the learnings so far? If I can add something, is this: do you think the brand is doing better than your expectation or met your expectation?

如果你两年前问我，两年后会不会达到这样的 X、Y、Z 水平，你会很高兴，我会欣喜若狂。如果你今天问我有多高兴，我可能会说十分之六，因为我们还能做更多。

If you asked me 2 years ago, in 2 years if it will be like this X, Y, and Z, which you'd be happy, I would be over the moon. If you ask me today how happy are you, I'd probably say six out of 10, because there's so much more we can do.

嗯，有道理。V 有一个问题，还有好几个人也问了：如何制造热度？

Mhm, that makes sense. There's a question from V, and multiple people have asked: How to create hype?

我认为是期望和质量。如果你持续交付高质量，人们就会对你产生更多期望。

I think it's expectations and quality. If you're consistently delivering quality, people will have expectations on you to deliver more.

有一个趋势是，大多数发烧友品牌最终都会变成它们想要颠覆的产品。比如，你变成了你试图干掉的东西。你怎么对抗这一点？这是不可避免的吗？

There's a trend where with most enthusiast brands, they eventually become the products they set out to undercut. For example, you become what you tried to kill. How do you fight it? Is it inevitable?

我很想成为苹果那样的万亿美元公司，甚至更多。这个问题问得好。

I would love to become Apple, a trillion-dollar company, trillion plus. That's a good one.

来自 Rahul 和 M 的问题：你的人生哲学是什么？

There's a question from Rahul and M: What's your life philosophy?

我的人生哲学是什么？我一直忙于工作，没怎么想过哲学。但有一个思想流派对我帮助很大，那就是斯多葛主义。它不是说要没有情绪，而是如何更理性，更好地享受生活。你能影响的事情，就去影响它；你不能影响的事情，就忘掉它。举个例子，我们生活中大部分痛苦来自他人——讨厌的人、白痴。所以如果我们接受这个事实，就没有理由为此烦恼。就像你在街上走，狗在叫，你不会对狗生气，因为叫是狗的天性。让人讨厌也是很多人的天性。所以接受就好。

What's my life philosophy? I've been very busy working, I haven't really thought much about philosophy. But one school of thought that's helped me tremendously is Stoicism. It's not about not having emotions, but how to be more rational and kind of enjoy life much more. The things that you can impact, impact them; the things you can't, forget about them. One example is most of our pain in life comes from other people—annoying people, idiots. So if we just accept that as a fact, then there's no reason to be annoyed by that. Just like if you're walking on the street and the dog is barking, you're not going to be annoyed at the dog because it's in the dog's nature to bark. It's in people's nature—a lot of people's nature—to be annoying. So just accept that.

这个回答不错。这是一个可以伴随你一生的哲学，你永远都学不完。

That's a good one. It's a good philosophy that can last your lifetime, and you'll never be done with it.

团队的问题问完了。在结束之前，我要问你最后一个问题：你为什么想到用“Nothing”作为品牌名？它是怎么来的，Nothing 会发展成什么？因为感觉这是一种有趣的叛逆方式——它也可以有很多含义。你的思考过程是怎样的，你是怎么想到的？

I'm done with the questions from the team. I'm going to ask you the last question before we wrap: Why did you think about 'Nothing' as a brand name? How did it come about, and what does 'Nothing' manifest into? Because it feels like an interestingly rebellious approach—it can also mean many things. What was the thought process, and how did you arrive at it?

我和团队 brainstorm 了很多不同的名字。你能告诉我们过程中第二和第三名是什么吗？我觉得它们都很好，但我妹妹讨厌它们，说它们都很尴尬。她二十出头，几乎算是另一代人。有一次我一直在随口说名字，她一直说“尴尬、尴尬、尴尬”。我就说，好吧，我就叫它 Nothing。她说，对，就这么办。所以差不多就是这样来的。但后来我深入想了想，其他名字有：一个是 Next——现在想想有点尴尬。另一个是 Stone，像石头——半尴尬。还有一个其实是 Essential。我们真的很喜欢 Essential 这个名字，因为它在英语里有很多含义，但它已经承载了别人的遗产，所以我们就想，算了，我们做自己的吧。我觉得 Nothing 也很酷。想象一下告诉你 15 岁的自己：“你长大后会创办一家叫 Nothing 的公司。”那个人会说：“太棒了。”而且它很好记，也很有双关意味。我看到一条推文：一个小孩问他爸爸：“爸爸，我生日想要 nothing。”爸爸说：“好啊，太好了。”“不，我其实想要 Nothing 智能手机。”“哦，天哪。”同时，它也有更深层的含义：如果我们能实现我们的目标和愿景，当周围的技术都变得无缝时，它就会淡出你的视线。你不需要时刻想着它，所以那种感觉就变成了一种“无”的感觉。

The team and I were brainstorming many different names. Can you tell us which ones were number two and number three in the process? I thought they were all really good, but my little sister hated them and said they were all cringe. She's in her early 20s, so almost a different generation. At one point I just kept rambling names, and she said 'cringe, cringe, cringe, cringe.' I was like, okay, I'm just going to call it Nothing. She's like, yeah, do that. So that's kind of how it came about. But after thinking about it more deeply, other names were: one was Next—it is a bit cringe thinking about it now. Another one was Stone, like a rock—semi-cringe. Another one was actually Essential. We really liked the name Essential because it has a lot of meaning in the English language, but then it's kind of got somebody else's legacy involved, so we were like, okay, let's just do our own thing. I think Nothing is also really cool. Imagine telling your 15-year-old self, 'When you grow up, you're going to start a company called Nothing.' That person will be like, 'Oh hell yeah.' And it's easy to remember, it's very punny. I saw this tweet: this kid was asking his dad, 'Hey dad, for my birthday I want nothing.' Dad was like, 'Yeah, that's so good.' 'No, actually I want the Nothing smartphone.' 'Oh damn.' And at the same time, it does have a deeper meaning: if we're able to accomplish our purpose and vision, when technology all around us is so seamless, it kind of fades away. You don't have to think about it all the time, so the feeling becomes a feeling like nothing.

太棒了。非常感谢你参加这次访谈。非常有趣。谢谢大家在场并耐心等待。这真的很有意思。

Awesome. Thank you so much for doing this. Lots of fun. Thank you guys for being around and being patient about this. This was good fun, man.

很有意思。你们要送手机给大家吗？不用了，我没事。谢谢大家。

Was fun. Are you going to give away phones to people? No, I'm all right. Thanks, guys.