Nothing：让科技重拾乐趣

你用什么智能手机？iPhone？也许是三星或谷歌 Pixel？对越来越多的消费者来说，答案是 Nothing。这是今天嘉宾 Carl Pei 创立的伦敦初创公司的名字。在我们的对话中，Carl 和我探讨了在 2025 年打造一个苹果挑战者需要什么。Nothing 的透明设计如何帮助它在如此竞争激烈的市场中突围，以及为什么 Nothing 的产品在印度找到了如此强大的客户群。我们还谈到了 Nothing 在通往十亿美元以上估值的路上经历的多次濒死时刻、成吉思汗的管理才能，以及为什么打造 AI 专用设备如此困难。我是 Mario，这里是 The Generalist。

What smartphone do you use? An iPhone, perhaps? Maybe a Samsung or a Google Pixel? For a growing number of consumers, the answer is nothing. That's the name of the London-based startup founded by today's guest, Carl Pei. In our conversation, Carl and I explore what it takes to build an Apple Challenger in 2025. How nothing's transparent designs have helped it to break through in such a hyper-competitive market and why nothing's products have found such a strong customer base in India. We also talk about nothing's multiple near-death moments on its way to a billion dollar plus valuation. Genghis Khan's managerial prowess and why building AI specific devices is so difficult. I'm Mario and this is the generalist.

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Carl，我非常高兴能请你来，和你聊聊你本人。你知道，我想过很多种开始这段对话的方式，但有一件事让我印象深刻：当我想到 Nothing，我想很多人想到 Nothing 时，都会想到透明设计。你们确实已经成为这种耳机、手机美丽设计语言的代名词，而且你们也经常谈论科技再次变得有趣。当我研究你的背景时，我偶然发现你的第一家公司是建立一个宝可梦 Game Boy 攻略网站。我想象在你写那个网站的年纪，Game Boy 应该是透明的 Game Boy。那种设计语言中的趣味感是源于那里吗？

Carl, I'm super excited to have you here and to chat about you and be here. You know, there's so many places that I've thought about starting this conversation, but one thing that came up for me was when I think about nothing, and I think when a lot of people think about nothing, they think about the transparent design. You guys have really become sort of synonymous with this really beautiful design language of the earbuds, the phones, and you also talk a lot about technology sort of being fun again. And when I was researching your background, one of the things that I came across was that your first company was like building a website for Pokemon Game Boy walkthroughs. And I imagine at the age you were when you were writing that, the Game Boy was the translucent Game Boy. Is that where that sense of fun comes from in the design language?

首先，那不算一家公司，因为我当时 12 岁。我其实不太知道公司是什么。我只是学会了为自己热爱的事物建网站，宝可梦绝对是其中之一。而且实际上，我们今天所有产品的内部代号都是宝可梦。

So first of all, it wasn't a company cuz I was 12. I didn't really know what a company was. I just learned to build websites about things I was passionate about and Pokémon was definitely one of those things. And actually all our products today internal code names are all Pokemon.

哦，那是个宝可梦图鉴。

Oh, that's a Pokédex.

嗯，但我的第一台 Game Boy 其实是透明紫色的。我之前没意识到这个联系。

Um, but my first Game Boy was actually the translucent purple one. I didn't make that connection until now.

好的。

Okay.

嗯，所以也许它在潜意识层面影响了我，但我们从未那样想过。

Um, so maybe maybe it impacted me in some subconscious way, but we never thought about it that way.

好的。这真的很有趣。那么，也许一个好的起点是 Nothing 是什么。因为我在其他采访中听你说过，历史上人们可能热衷于给你分类。你知道，一开始他们有点像，嘿，他们做耳机。现在也许是智能手机，但我感觉你对自己所做的事情有更宽广的理解。

Okay. That's really interesting. Well, maybe a good place to start is what nothing is. Because I've heard you say in some other interviews that people historically have maybe been keen to categorize you. You know, first you were sort of like, hey, they make earbuds. Now it's maybe smartphones, but I sense that you think of what you're doing in a more capacious way.

我认为这完全取决于我们谈论的时间跨度。只要你在不断进步和进化，被误解完全没问题。而且被误解不是别人的错。基本上他们看到你做什么，因此你就是那个东西，所以这很正常。所以我们对此没有任何问题。但我认为，如果我们考虑更长期的未来，比如 20 年的时间跨度，我们希望让科技变得有趣，以激发人类创造力。让科技变得有趣这部分对人们来说比较清楚。比如科技产品正变得越来越同质化。

I think it all depends on what time horizon we talk about. It's super fine to be misunderstood as long as you keep progressing and evolving. And it's not other people's fault that you're misunderstood. It's basically they look at what you do and therefore you are this thing and so it's normal. So we don't have any problems around that. But I think if we think about a more longer term future, say 20 year time horizon, we want to make tech fun to inspire human creativity. And make tech fun part is kind of clear for people. Like tech products are becoming more and more homogeneous.

是的。

Yeah.

越来越缺乏活力。每一代产品都和上一代非常相似。激发创造力这部分可能对人们来说还有点困惑或模糊。我的看法是，作为人类，我们的超能力之一是创造力。无论是在个人层面，还是在物种层面。

Less and less dynamic. Every generation is pretty similar to its predecessor. The inspired creativity part might still be a little bit confusing or vague to people. The way I see it is that as humans, one of our superpowers is creativity. Like both on an individual level, but also on like a species level.

我说的创造力是指解决问题的能力。我们希望创造不仅有趣而且有助于这个创造过程的产品。但这不仅仅是写作、艺术或设计。它是在更广泛的意义上解决问题。比如，我认为我们的软件工程师也是创造者，因为他们通过代码以新颖的方式解决问题。如果我们能做到这一点，我认为这对社会有净收益，因为如果人们能更好地锻炼和实现他们的想法，那应该是净正面的。长期来看，我不知道需要多少年，或者我们是否能在有生之年看到，我们应该能够发现其他类型的智能生命。希望到那时，人类能与外面的任何其他智能体竞争。我认为创造力的肌肉是解锁这一切的关键。

And by creativity, I mean the ability to solve problems. And we would love to create products that are not only fun but help this creative process. But it's not just kind of writing or art or design. It's solving problems on a broader sense. Like I see our software engineers as creatives as well because they're solving problems in novel ways through code. If we're able to do this, I think that has a net benefit on society because if people can exercise and manifest their ideas in a better way, it should be a net positive. Longer term, I don't know how many years it'll take or if we're going to see it in our lifetimes, we should be able to discover other types of intelligent life. And hopefully by then, humans are pretty competitive with whatever whoever else is out there. And I think that creative muscle is the key to unlocking that.

你会经常思考世界的遥远边界、太空、智能生命吗？

Do you think a lot about the far frontiers of the world, space, intelligent life?

是的，既包括非常遥远的事物，也包括当下非常细微的事情，细微到让我的团队感到恼火。我觉得我可以很容易地放大和缩小。是的，我甚至在中学时就谈论这类非常遥远的事情，当时我周围的人真的无法和我对话。

Yeah, both like very far but also like very in the present like minute things that are so minute that it annoys my team. I feel like I can zoom in and out quite easily. Yeah, I was talking about these kind of things like very far things even in middle school and people around me couldn't really have a conversation with me.

他们就是只想聊宝可梦或火影忍者之类的。

They just kind of wanted to talk about Pokemon or Naruto or whatever.

嗯。

Yeah.

那你是怎么产生这种想法的？是科幻之类的东西影响了你吗？还是说这似乎就是自然而然出现的？

Where did that come from for you? Was that like, I don't know, science fiction a thing that fed into that? Just something that seemed to come naturally?

我不知道。你知道，我小时候很难入睡。

I don't know. You know, I had a very hard time sleeping as a kid.

嗯。

Yeah.

我总是在想，还有什么，比如在我所在的公寓或房子、我的房间之外是什么，然后有国家，有地球，有行星。你能放大到多远有尽头吗？我一直在想这些，你知道的。

I was always thinking about what else like what's beyond like I'm in this apartment or house in my room, but like then you have countries, then you have Earth, then you have planets. Is there an end to how much you can zoom out? Like I kept thinking about that, you know.

嗯，这很好，因为我确实想谈谈你的一些起源。我一直觉得，听到那些真正令人印象深刻的创始人和企业家早期受到的影响，无论是明显的还是不明显的，都很有意思。嗯，你的父母都是阿尔茨海默症研究者，对吧？

Well, this is great because I actually do want to talk about some of your origins. I always think it's really interesting to hear how really impressive founders and entrepreneurs sort of the things that influenced them from early on that are maybe obvious and not obvious. Um, both of your parents were Alzheimer's researchers, right?

嗯哼。

Mhm.

在推特上，你做过那种“我在飞机上很无聊，问我任何问题”的事情。你谈到了我认为是什么激励着你，你给出的答案是死亡。嗯，我注意到很多创业者都有这种对自己必死性的敏锐感知。我有点好奇，是不是因为你的父母实际上一直在思考某种退化，这在你身上造就了那种敏感？那种敏锐的意识从何而来？

In this Twitter sort of uh you did like one of those things where you're you know I'm bored on a flight ask me anything question. Uh you talked about I think what motivates you and the answer you came up with was death. Uh and something that I've noticed with a lot of entrepreneurs is this like really acute sense of their own mortality. And I sort of wondered if having two parents that are actually like constantly thinking about degeneration of some kind like created that sensibility in you. like where does that acute awareness come from?

是的，我大概六七岁的时候，我一直在想，你知道，从空间的角度看，外面是什么，从时间的角度看，外面是什么，而且很明显，生命是有限的。所以我很难接受这个想法。我甚至有一次告诉我妈妈：“嘿，你为什么生了我？现在我得死了。”诸如此类。但我想，如果我是一块石头呢？石头不能永远活着，实际上也不是永远，因为一旦宇宙爆炸，它就不存在了。但我觉得这些作为成年人来说都没有意义。但我想我的思维非常活跃。然后有史蒂夫·乔布斯在斯坦福的演讲，他谈到死亡是生命最好的发明，每天对着镜子问自己，如果今天是我生命的最后一天，我还会做今天要做的事情吗？我实际上仍然经常想这个。比如一周几次，我半夜醒来，心想：“哇，生命是有限的。我已经，你知道，36 岁了。”

Yeah, I was like six or seven and I kept thinking about you know both from a space perspective like what's beyond but also from a time perspective what's beyond and it was very clear that you know life is finite. So, I just had a really tough time uh uh grappling with that idea. And I even uh one time told my mom, "Hey, what like why did you uh give birth to me? Like now I have to die." Like that kind of stuff. But um and I imagine like you know what if I could be a rock? A rock can't live for forever or actually not forever because once the universe explodes then it's not there anymore. But but I think none of that really makes sense as a grown-up. But I guess my mind was very active. Then there was this Steve Jobs uh speech uh at Stanford where he talks about death as being the best dimension of life and uh looking himself in the mirror every day to ask himself, you know, if this was the last day I would be alive, would I still do these things that I'm about to do today? I still think about it quite a lot actually. like a couple times a week I wake up in the middle of the night and be like, "Wow, life is finite. I'm already, you know, 36."

我也是。

Me, too.

哦，很好。是的，时间在……

Oh, nice. Yeah, time is uh

时间在流逝，然后想，哦，我还有这么多事要做，我还能活多久？所以，这个念头不断浮现。

it's it's taking and like, oh, I I still got to do all these things and uh how much time do I have left? So, it keeps coming up.

36 岁。你觉得你达到了对自己的期望吗？嗯，你知道，是有点落后于你想要达到的水平，还是超出了你的预期，你比你希望的更好地利用了时间，还是还没有？

36. Do you feel like you're at par of what you expect for yourself? uh you know a little behind where you where you want to be given what you expect you know further than you you know have you made better use than you'd hoped or or not yet.

我觉得我对现状相当满意，我想这可能是 30 多岁人的一个共同主题。我不知道你的经历是怎样的。

I think I'm pretty at peace with where things are and I think maybe that's a theme for people in their 30s. I don't know what your experience is.

是的，我想是这样。

Yeah, I think that's right.

嗯，但当我更年轻的时候，17 岁时，我告诉自己我必须在 25 岁前退休。

Um but when I was younger, when I was 17, I told myself I need to be able to retire by 25.

嗯，所以那没有发生。

Um so that didn't happen.

是的。嗯，所以也许与我 17 岁时的期望相比，我是个失败者。

Yeah. Um, so maybe I'm a failure compared to my expectations as a 17-year-old.

或者你可能意识到，实际上退休会非常痛苦，你只会做你正在做的事情。

Or you maybe realized like actually retirement would be like totally miserable and you would just do exactly what you're doing.

是的。我也这样对自己说，来安慰自己，比如

Yeah. I also say that to uh comfort myself like

如果我退休了，我仍然会做同样的事情，因为现在……

if I retired I would still do the same thing cuz now it's

我玩得很开心，就像旅行、去豪华酒店和度假村，还有

I'm having fun and just like traveling going to luxury hotels and resorts and

吃米其林星级餐厅的食物，喝好酒，这些很快就会变得无聊。

eating you know Michelin star restaurant food and drinking great wine that will get boring pretty quickly.

是的。是的。我想我记得实际上这是从研究你中得知的。你确实在离开那家公司之后、创办 Nothing 之前，试过大约 10 天这种生活，对吧？

Yeah. Yeah. I think I remember actually this was this was from from researching you. You did sort of try and do that for like 10 days after uh leaving the company before nothing, right?

是的，因为我在那里工作了 7 年，我开始时只有 24 岁。那就像我的 20 多岁，就这样在工作中度过，大部分时间我们每周工作六天。我觉得我在职业上、工作上做了很多，但如果我能休半年假，环游世界呢？这听起来是个好主意，但是的，过了一段时间就变得非常无聊。比如一周后，我就想：“哇，这总是一遍又一遍地重复。”比如醒来，

Yeah, I cuz I worked there um for 7 years and I was only 24 when I started. That was like my 20s and just kind of gone in work and we worked like six days a week for most of the time. I felt like I had done a lot career-wise, work-wise, but what if I could to take like half a year off, travel the world? And uh it sounded like a really good idea, but yeah, it just got really um really boring after a while. Like after a week, I was like, "Wow, this is the same thing over and over again." Like wake up,

嗯，想清楚去哪里吃晚饭，去游泳池，读一本书。嗯，我感觉到这个，我实际上感到超级有压力。

uh figure out where to have dinner, go to the pool, read a book. Um, and I felt this uh I felt super stressed actually.

是的。

Yeah.

处于那种环境中。就像时间在滴答作响，而我什么也没做。所以对我来说，工作比延长假期更放松。我当时不知道，但一周后我发现了。

Being in that environment. It's like time is ticking and I'm just doing nothing. So for me it's it's it's more relaxing to work than to be on an extended holiday. I didn't know it at the time, but a week later I I found out.

嗯，我理解。嗯，我想我可以，我可能能坚持超过 10 天。我怀疑，但不会长太多。嗯，我想一旦你在泳池边待了几天，你确实会达到一个点，你会想：“好吧，你知道，嗯，接下来呢？”你在瑞典、美国之间长大，你是在中国出生的吗？

Uh I understand that. Uh I think I can do I could probably do it longer than 10 days. I I suspect, but not not that much longer. Uh I think once you do a few days by the pool, you do sort of hit a point where you're like, "Okay, you know, uh what's next?" You grew up sort of between Sweden, the US, and and were you were you born in China?

我在中国出生，四岁时离开，

I was born in China, left when I was four,

搬到美国两年，然后去了瑞典。

moved to the States for two years, and then to Sweden.

在美国的两年听起来在某种程度上相当有塑造性。也许

And the two years in the States sounded like they were like quite formative in a way. And maybe

也许是的，也许事后看来。所以，我们住在史泰登岛。我小时候不知道那不是最好的地方，但随着我长大，人们告诉我：“哇，那真是个粗野的地方。”但我没有很多糟糕的记忆。嗯，我记得唯一的糟糕记忆是一个美国孩子，可能比我大两岁。他很大。他坐在我身上。那是我唯一记得的事情。

maybe Yeah, maybe in hindsight. So, we uh we lived in Staten Island. I didn't know that it was not the best place when I was a kid, but now as I've grown up, people have told me, "Wow, that's a really rough place." But I don't have a lot of bad memories. Uh I remember the only bad memory is like u an American kid um maybe two years older than me. It's like very big. It was sitting and he was sitting on me. That's kind of the only thing I remember.

哦，天哪，

Oh gosh,

那很糟糕。

that was bad.

是的，那听起来不太好。

Yeah, that doesn't sound great.

是的。嗯嗯，是的，我想考虑到你所思考的事情，你可能在任何环境中都是一个不寻常的孩子，但我想如果我必须在地球上挑选几个地方，可能特别不会充满思考遥远未来的年轻孩子，史泰登岛可能是个不错的选择。

Yeah. Uh uh yeah, and I imagine also probably you're an unusual kid in in almost any environment given the things that you were thinking about, but I imagine if I had to pick a few places on Earth that maybe especially might not be filled with young kids who are thinking about the far future, Staten Island might be a good choice.

是的，也许吧。但实际上，我的性格非常不同。

Yeah, maybe. But actually, my personality was very different.

嗯，我非常健谈，非常外向。

Uh I was very talkative and very extroverted.

哦，真的吗？所以我父母不得不去学校，你知道，和老师坐在一起，听老师说我上课时有多健谈、多捣乱。但后来我们搬到瑞典，也许是因为我搬得太频繁，而且当时我不懂语言，我变得更安静了。

Oh, really? So my parents had to go to school and uh you know sit with the with a teacher and hear about how talkative I was disruptive I was in class. But then when we moved to Sweden maybe because I was like moving around too much and I didn't know the language back then I became more quiet.

啊，哇，真有趣。

Ah wow fascinating.

那种特质一直伴随着你，还是现在你发现自己处于两者之间？

And that sort of stayed with you or now do you find yourself somewhere in between?

我现在处于中间。就像，嗯，这就是所谓的 MBTI。

I'm in between now. I'm like, um, this is what is called MBTI.

哦，迈尔斯-布里格斯类型指标。对。

Oh, the Myers-Briggs. Yeah.

对。我有点，嗯，介于内向和外向之间。每天都不一样。

Yeah. I'm kind of, um, in between on introverted and extroverted. It changes depending on the day.

哦，真的吗？好吧。我想我上次测的时候是 INTJ。

Oh, really? Okay. I think last time I did it, I was an INTJ.

对，我想我也是 I 或 ENTJ。

Yeah, I think I'm I or ENTJ as well.

哦，不错。

Oh, nice.

对。

Yeah.

我永远不知道我该对它有多重视，但推敲一下还是挺有意思的，对吧？我读关于你背景的文章时，有几篇谈到你小时候对瑞典的成长氛围非常敏感，也对中国经济增长的速度和规模很敏感，这些文章的写法几乎让人觉得一个孩子意识到这些是很正常的事。我很好奇，你当时是怎么注意到这些的，就像，嘿，中国正在发生一些非常不同的事情，那不是我瑞典这里的世界的一部分。

I can never tell how much I should put stock in it at all, but it is sort of interesting to like push against, right? There were a few articles when I was reading about your background where they talk about how you as a child were like very aware of the atmosphere you're growing up in Sweden but also like the amount of growth and yeah the speed of of sort of economic growth in China and the way these articles are written it almost presents it as if that's like a totally normal thing for a kid to be aware of. I'm curious like how that actually was on your radar that you were sort of like, hey, something's very different happening in China that is not part of my world here in Sweden.

嗯，我想你会在媒体上看到。比如我每天上学，路上有免费报纸，可以在通勤时阅读，你会看到关于世界各地经济增长的新闻。所以那时候，中国经常出现。然后，你知道，我们会在餐桌上讨论。所以它总是一个主题，比如，嘿，有很多增长正在发生。我对此非常好奇。

Um, I think you would see it in the press. Like I went to school every day and on my way to school, we had this free newspaper that we can read during the commute and you would see news about the growth of economies around the world. So back then, China came up pretty often. And then, you know, we would speak about it at the dinner table. So, it was always kind of a theme like, hey, there's a lot of growth happening. And I just got really curious about it.

你夏天会回中国探亲吗，还是不怎么回去？

Were you going back to China to see family in the summers or not really?

呃，大概每两三年一次。

Uh, like maybe once every 2-3 years.

嗯。

Mhm.

对。但那是在一个非常受控的环境里，从机场到我们要拜访的亲戚家，我并没有真正自己去探索。

Yeah. But that was in a very, uh, kind of controlled environment going from the airport to the whoever relative we were visiting, and I didn't really get to explore it on my own.

然后听起来你可能跳过了几年学，因为你 15 岁就离开了高中。

And then it sounded like you probably missed a few years of school because you left high school at 15.

我离开高中时，呃，可能 17 岁。

I left high school at uh maybe se maybe 17.

好吧。对。所以大概 16 岁左右。那是你后来去中国住了一段时间，去了解那里经济上发生了什么的时候吗？

Okay. Yeah. So or 16 something like that. Was that when you went you sort of then went to go live in China for a period of time to sort of understand what was happening there economically.

对。所以那时候，在我 12 岁做了那个宝可梦网站之后，我一直在做很多网站。

Yeah. So back then, so after that Pokemon website when I was 12, I just kept making a lot of websites.

那是我真正想学习如何在线赚钱的地方。

That's where I really wanted to learn how to make money online.

那是你第一次在网上赚钱的方式吗？

And was that the first way you made money online?

宝可梦网站没赚钱，但有一些流量。嗯，但我也做了很多其他网站。而第一笔真正的钱，回头看不多，但我卖掉了火影忍者，另一个动漫网站，卖了 4200 美元。

The Pokemon site didn't make any money but it got some traffic. Um, but I created a bunch of other websites as well. And the big, the first like real money I made, looking back it's not a lot, but I sold Naruto, like another anime website, for $4,200.

哦，哇。

Oh wow.

对一个 15 岁的孩子来说，那是一大笔钱。

For like a 15-year-old that was a lot of money.

对。完全同意。

Yeah. Totally.

而且那时候钱比现在值钱。所以我一直对商业非常感兴趣，而且，你知道，听到所有关于中国经济增长的新闻，我就想亲自去看看。真的亲眼看看。在没有父母的情况下探索。他们非常担心，比如，你的计划是什么？你有 12 个月的计划吗？你每个月会在哪里？你要做什么？但我不知道怎么做计划。就像我就要去探索。你知道，我没去过那里。所以，我怎么能做计划？所以，我没做计划。

And back then money was worth more than now. So I was always really interested in business and, you know, having heard all the news about the Chinese economy growing, I just wanted to go and see it for myself. Like really see it for myself. Explore without my parents being there. They were super worried like, what's your plan? Like do you have a 12-month plan? Where are you going to be every month? What are you going to do? But I didn't know how to make a plan. Like I'm just going to go and explore. You know, I haven't been there. So, how can I make a plan? So, I didn't make a plan.

我就去了，见了人，开始做事。所以你 17 岁左右到了广东，只是想着，嘿，我要看看这里实际情况如何，我能做什么。

I just went and met people and started doing stuff. And so you arrive in Guangdong when you were se 17 or so with just, hey, I'm gonna see what this is like on the ground and what I can do being.

对。

Yeah.

在那里，嗯，我当时所在的城市，珠海。那不是大城市。有一个电子市场。所以我每天去市场看有什么新设备，然后开始讨价还价。我买了一些自己测试。然后我开始卖它们，比如出口。嗯，我不知道怎么开公司。我不知道怎么做国际银行转账。我真的是用我的瑞典银行卡去 ATM 取现金。所以，我穿着短裤，因为那里很热。你可以看到我口袋鼓鼓的，装满了现金，去电脑市场讨价还价，买完东西搬箱子回公寓。然后我会拍视频，比如开箱视频和教程视频。产品怎么用，有哪些功能，这些视频是我在 eBay 和后来自己网站上销售的主要销售材料。

And there, um, in the city I was in back then, Bel Juhai. It's not a big city. There was an electronics mall. So I just kind of went to the mall every day to see what the new gadgets were and started haggling on the price. I bought a few for myself to test them out. Then I started selling them, like exporting them. Um, I didn't know how to start a company. I didn't know how to do international bank transfers. I literally went to the ATM with my Swedish bank card and withdrew a bunch of cash. So, I was wearing shorts cuz it's pretty hot there. You could see me like with a huge bulging pockets full of cash full of money going to the computer market haggling and buying stuff carrying boxes to my apartment. Then I would shoot videos like unboxing videos and tutorial videos. This is how the product works like these are all the features and those videos were the main sales material when I was selling them on eBay and later on my own websites.

哦，哇。有意思。所以，你已经有了一些营销意识，你知道，我觉得你在很多地方都能看到。你有点意识到，你知道，会有这些不同的销售辅助材料需要包含。

Oh wow. Interesting. So, you already sort of had some of that marketing sensibility that, you know, I think you see a lot with nothing. You sort of were aware that, you know, there's going to be these, you know, these different sales collateral that I need to include.

对。我想事后看来，我真的是把钱押上了，对吧？是的。如果没成，如果我买了这些东西卖不出去，那我就惨了。

Yeah. And I guess in hindsight, I really put my money on the line, right? Yes. Like if it didn't, if I bought all this stuff and I couldn't sell it, then I'm pretty screwed.

作为同一个 Twitter AMA 的一部分，呃，我想有人问你最喜欢的创业者，你说是成吉思汗，我觉得这是个非常有趣的回答，也体现了一种野心。你小时候是个非常好胜的孩子吗？

As part of this same Twitter AMA, uh, someone I think asked you your favorite entrepreneur and you said Genghis Khan, which I thought was a really interesting answer and speaks to a sort of level of ambition. Were you a really competitive kid?

也许恰恰相反。

Maybe even the opposite.

回头看，我可能是个相当烦人的孩子。嗯，我对一切都非常不屑，比如，哦，这课很无聊。哦，如果你想拿好成绩，你只需要每节课举手问两三个问题，然后课后排队假装对课感兴趣。所以我有点看穿了

Looking back, I'm I was probably quite an annoying kid. Um, I was very dismissive of everything like, oh, this lesson is very boring. Oh, if you want to get good grades all you have to do is raise your hand and ask like two or three questions every lesson and then you stand in line after the lesson to pretend to be interested in the class. So I kind of saw the

你看穿了它

you saw through it

看穿了游戏。

saw the game.

对。

Yeah.

而我只是选择不去做。嗯，那是我当时的想法。有点不成熟，但，呃，所以不好胜。我不太在乎成绩，而且，呃，我觉得高中时成绩不太好。在瑞典，没有像 SAT 那样的考试，对吧？每门课都有成绩，然后三年平均。所以我快毕业时，我想，哇，我得提高成绩了。我只在最后两周集中精力，既努力学习，也尝试，但也有一些窍门。呃，我们带一些老师出去喝酒，这让我们和老师关系更好，也帮助润滑了车轮。嗯，所以我不知道怎么总结。我觉得我更像一个傲慢的孩子。我花了很多时间，嗯，做我自己的网站，不去上学，玩游戏。

And I just didn't choose to do it. Um, that was my thinking back then. It's kind of immature but, uh, so not competitive. I didn't really care about my grades and, uh, I think in high school my grades were not very good. And in Sweden you have to, there's no test like SAT, right? It's your every course has a grade and then you average it out over three years. So I was about to graduate. I'm like wow I got to shape my grades up. And I only kind of focused in the last two weeks both by studying hard and trying hard but then there were also like hacks. Uh, we took some teachers out for drinks and that gave us a better relationship with the teacher and kind of helped grease the wheels a little bit. Um, so I don't know how to summarize it. I was more kind of more arrogant kid I think. And I spent a lot of time, um, doing you know doing my own websites and not going to school and playing games.

我会先出门，然后我父母去上班，我就溜回家，整天泡在电脑前。

I would leave first and then my parents would go to work, then I would just circle back home and be on the computer the entire day.

然后他们回家的时候，你本来也该放学了，所以没人发现，对吧？真有意思。

Then they'd come home after you were supposed to be back from school anyway, so no one's the wiser, right? That's so funny.

你在中国的经历，是怎么让你觉得“嘿，出口电子产品挺好玩，但这不会是我一生的事业”的？

What happened while you were in China such that you reached a point where you were like, 'Hey, it's fun to export electronics, but actually this isn't going to be my life's work.'

我父母不喜欢。

My parents didn't like it.

好吧。

Okay.

他们一直说：“嘿，你没有学位。你不上大学。你现在做的只是小事，没什么大不了，不正经。为什么不去上学？”他们反复这么说。嗯，也许他们是对的。

They kept saying, 'Hey, you don't have a degree. You're not going to university. What you're doing now is just a small thing. It doesn't really matter. It's not serious. Why don't you go to school?' They just kept repeating that. And yeah, maybe they're right.

碰巧瑞典最好的商学院开了一门新课程，知道的人很少。我的成绩进不了主课程，但能进这门新课，因为是第一年招生，竞争不大。

And it just happened that the best business school in Sweden was opening up a new course, and very few people knew about it. So my grades wouldn't have gotten me into the main course, but it got me into this new course because it was the first year the program ran and there wasn't enough competition.

但到头来，听起来这也许不是打发时间的好方式，因为你似乎对这门课评价不高，对吧？听起来它没让你为未来做好准备。

But in the end, it sounded like it was probably not the right way to spend your time anyway, because you didn't seem to think too highly of it as a course, right? It didn't prepare you for the future, from the sounds of it.

但我确实觉得有点条理是好的。因为如果我继续在网上卖东西，也许过段时间野心就会停滞。但回想起来，在现实世界中获得一些条理可能是有益的。

But I do think it was good to get some structure. Because if I had continued just selling stuff online, maybe the ambition level would have plateaued after some time. But getting some structure in the real world might have been good in hindsight.

我对那所学校很失望，因为我想：“嘿，这是最好的商学院，瑞典最好、欧洲最好、世界最好之一。如果我在这里学习，就能很好地面对未来。”当时，我看到的商业三大趋势是：电子商务的兴起。那是 2007、2008 年。电商在增长。2008 年，我觉得已经占零售总额的 10%，而且增长率相当高。

I was quite disappointed in that school because I thought, 'Hey, this is the best business school, one of the best in Sweden, one of the best in Europe, one of the best in the world. If I study here, I'll be well equipped to face the future.' And back then, the three big trends I saw in business were: the rise of e-commerce. This was 2007, 2008. E-commerce was growing. In 2008, I think it was 10% of total retail already, and you could see a pretty high growth rate.

第二是科技公司的崛起，因为当时如果你看全球最有价值品牌的前 50、前 100，名单上所有新公司都是科技公司，比如亚马逊和谷歌。

The second thing was the rise of tech companies, because back then if you looked at the top highest value brands in the world, top 50, top 100, all the new companies on that list were tech companies like Amazon and Google.

所以我觉得那是主要趋势。

So I felt like that was a major trend.

然后是中国经济，因为我刚在那里待了一年。我亲眼看到。事情在发生。我期望学到关于这三个主题的东西，但三年后，我们完全没涉及。

And then was the Chinese economy, because I had just spent a year there. I could see it firsthand. Things were happening. I expected to learn something about these three topics, but three years later, we didn't touch upon them at all.

所以我想：“嘿，你们不是应该让年轻人为美好未来做好准备吗？我们应该成为商人。这些是主要趋势。”但我们学的都是很老的东西，比如统计学、宏观经济学、微观经济学这些仍然不错的基础，但未来呢？

So I was like, 'Hey, aren't you supposed to set up young people for a good future? We should become business people. These are the main trends.' But instead we learned very old things, like still good foundations like statistics, macroeconomics, microeconomics, but what about the future?

嗯，让我感兴趣的是，你花了三年读那个项目，然后在快要拿到学位的时候几乎退学了。这让我好奇，你是不是在某种程度上很固执，或者你有一种原则，觉得“这对我不值，所以我几乎不想为了拿文凭而拿文凭”？因为从实用角度看，那时已经有沉没成本了。我应该把它读完。但有些东西对你来说说不通。

Yeah, it was interesting to me that you spent three years going through that program and then you seemed to drop out almost at the very last moment before you would get your degree. And it made me wonder, are you a really stubborn person in some way, or was there some principle that you felt like, 'This wasn't valuable to me, so I almost don't want to get the diploma for the sake of it'? Because pragmatically at that point, there's almost some amount of sunk cost. I should just finish it out. But something about that didn't make sense to you.

我还没找到合适的词。是傲慢吗？是自信吗？

I haven't found the right words. Is it arrogance? Is it self-belief?

也许两者都有，对吧？

It maybe both, right?

也许吧。这要追溯到中学时期，我不太尊重体制。大学也是这样。我一直相信事情迟早会解决。我为什么需要这个？然后是傲慢的部分：如果我出名了，学校不应该得到荣誉，因为你没教我任何东西。所以不应该说我毕业于这里。然后还有懒惰。大学期间我玩了很多《英雄联盟》，缺了很多课，我告诉自己，如果学校没教我什么，他们就不该得到荣誉。但实际上我只是在玩电脑游戏。

Maybe. It echoes back to when I was in middle school, not really respecting the system. University was also like that. I always believed that things would work out sooner or later. Why do I need this? And then to the arrogance part: if I become famous, the school shouldn't get credit because you didn't teach me anything. So it shouldn't say that I graduated from this. And then also laziness. I played a lot of League of Legends during uni, missed a lot of class, and I told myself, if the school didn't teach me anything, they shouldn't get credit. But I was actually just playing computer games.

大学毕业后，你在 OnePlus 待了七年，我们简单提过。那是一段塑造性的经历，让你进入智能手机和消费硬件的世界。回顾那段时期，你后来带进 Nothing 的、最具塑造性的教训是什么？

After university, you had this seven-year spell at OnePlus, which we briefly touched on. It's such a formative experience, putting you in the world of smartphones and consumer hardware. When you look back on that period, what were the most formative lessons that you then had to bring into nothing?

我是个很糟糕的人事经理。

I was a really bad people manager.

真的吗？为什么？

Really. Why?

我是说，我以前从没做过，随着团队壮大，我越来越难应对，我为此自责不已。比如，你为什么这么不擅长管理？你为什么不知道怎么做？但回想起来，这没什么。你才 24、25 岁，当然会是个糟糕的经理。你需要慢慢掌握这些真正的技能，需要培训，需要学习。我觉得这对我来说是大事。我总是因为自己是个糟糕的经理而自责。

I mean, I had never done it before, and as a team grew, it just became more and more difficult for me to navigate, and I gave myself a lot of grief for it. Like, why are you so bad at management? Why don't you know how to do this? But I think in hindsight, it's fine. You're 24, 25, of course you're going to be a bad manager. You need to pick up these real skills over time, and you need training. You need to learn. I think that was the big thing for me. I always beat myself up for being a bad manager.

我觉得我们真正关心的另一件事是产品。因为当时我们也以擅长营销著称，因为我们有一个系统，你必须被邀请才能买手机，这病毒式传播了。我们仅通过用户之间的邀请就产生了大约十亿美元的销售额。

I think another thing we really cared about was the product. Because we were also known back then for being great at marketing, because we had a system where you had to be invited to buy the phone, and that went viral. We generated like a billion dollars in sales just through user-to-user invitations.

哇，太疯狂了。

Wow. Crazy.

但我们总是提醒自己，一切都关乎产品。如果你制造了所有这些高期望，大肆宣传却不兑现，那就没人再信任你了。你从哪里获得未来的增长？我觉得从那以后这一直留在我心里。

But we always reminded ourselves that it's all about the product. If you create all these high expectations and hype it up and don't deliver, then nobody's going to trust you anymore. Where are you going to get future growth from? I think that's something that's stuck with me since then.

在管理方面，显然有很多技能可以从中学习。当时对你来说不明显，但后来变得更明显的部分是什么？

On the management piece, clearly there is so much that is a skill to be learned from that. What were the parts that weren't obvious to you back then but have become more so over time?

有很多东西，但我觉得一个核心概念是情境管理。没有一刀切的解决方案。它总是取决于情况。取决于你在公司生命周期中的位置。早期、中期、晚期非常不同。

There's so many things, but I think maybe one core concept has been situational management. There's no one-size-fits-all solution. It always depends on the situation. It depends on where you are in the company life cycle. Early stage, mid-stage, late stage are very different.

这取决于行业。如果我们经营一家软件公司，也许我们会以非常不同的方式塑造它。

It's industry dependent. If we run a software company, maybe we would shape it in a very different way.

更多的灵活性、更多的自由、更高的人才密度，但更重要的是，每个人都应该被区别管理。一种风格并不适合所有人。但当你是个新手时，你只是尝试，把从书上学到的东西拿来实施。

More flexibility, more freedom, higher talent density, but also more importantly, every person should be managed differently. One style doesn't really fit all. But when you're a beginner, you just try and take what you learn from the books and just implement.

是的，有意思。你说过你在 31 岁生日前后辞职，算是给自己的礼物。那是什么礼物？

Yeah. Interesting. You've said that you quit on or around your 31st birthday, sort of as a gift to yourself. What was the gift?

我以为礼物会是某种自由。自由。

I thought the gift would be like some freedom. Freedom.

你在 20 多岁的时候努力工作。30 多岁，是新的篇章，休息一下，好好想想。而你的休息就是那 10 天，直到变得太无聊。那时，我不知道你去了哪里——希腊、撒丁岛、意大利，随便哪里。我想象是一种《白莲花度假村》式的经历。你是知道“嘿，我要回到智能手机、消费电子领域”，还是只是觉得“我干不了这个，我需要去构建我想做的事情”？

You worked hard in your 20s. 30s, it's a new chapter, and take some time off. Have a think. And time off for you was those 10 days before it got too boring. At that point, I don't know where you went—Greece, Sardinia, Italy, whatever. I imagine a sort of White Lotus-like stint. Did you know, 'Hey, I'm gonna go back to smartphones, consumer electronics,' or was it just like, 'I can't do this, I need to be building what I wanted to do'?

我想了很多不同的事情，那 10 天之后我回到瑞典，开始和创业的朋友们交谈。幸运的是，这个圈子很小，也很友好。所以虽然我只认识一两个人，但很快我几乎见到了所有人。我想唯一没见到的就是 King 的创始人 Kenny Crush。

I thought about a lot of different things, and after those 10 days I went back to Sweden and started talking to entrepreneur friends. Luckily, the community is quite small and also quite friendly. So although I only knew one or two people, very soon I got to meet almost everybody. I think the only people I didn't meet were the King founders, Kenny Crush.

哦，是的。

Oh yeah.

因为他们好像搬到伦敦了之类的。

Because I think they had moved to London or something.

好的。

Okay.

还有 Clara，我不知道，就是一直没找到机会认识之类的，但基本上我见了其他所有人。我就问大家：“你怎么创办一家初创公司？”因为在 OnePlus 我们不需要自己融资，而融资对我来说太奇怪了。这看起来很奇怪——为什么人们会给你一百万或几百万美元？如果你把他们的钱都亏了怎么办？为什么会有人冒那种风险？这看起来很陌生。而那是 2020 年，五年前。但在和所有瑞典创始人社区交谈之后，我大概开始了解事情是怎么运作的，我们如何构建、如何面对事情。我记得那也是一段非常困惑的时期，因为我之前在一个或多或少有结构的环境中工作，你知道自己该做什么——但像融资，有太多思考方式。每个人都有自己的策略，取决于他们在建立什么样的公司，以及他们有什么样的价值观。所以这很令人困惑。很多新信息，比如相互矛盾的信息。头两周感觉脑子都烧了。但最终我找到了一个适合我们情境的策略，并在那段时间完成了种子轮融资。

And Clara, I don't know, just never got around to getting the intro or something, but I met everybody else basically. And I was just asking people, 'How do you start a startup?' Because at OnePlus we didn't have to raise our own money, and raising money was so strange to me. It seemed so strange—why would people give you a million bucks or a couple million dollars? What if you lose all their money? Why would anybody take a risk like that? It just seemed very foreign. And this was 2020, five years ago. But after speaking to all the Swedish founder communities, that's kind of how I started to get a feel of how things work and how we structure and how we face things. And I remember that being a very confusing time as well, because all of a sudden—I worked in a more or less structured environment before, you kind of knew what you had to do—but like raising money, there were so many ways of thinking about it. Everybody had their own strategy, depending on what kind of company they were building and what kind of values they had. So it's very confusing. A lot of new information, like contradicting information. The first two weeks were kind of brain-fried feeling. But eventually I found a strategy that works in our context and raised the seed round during my time there.

我确实想听听那个策略。但我在读相关资料时，在很多地方你都说过：“人们告诉我我的演示文稿很烂，而我的演示文稿确实很烂。”它到底烂在哪里？

I definitely want to hear about that strategy. But there was something when I was reading about this, in a bunch of places you were like, 'People told me that my deck was bad, and my deck really was bad.' What was so bad about it?

看起来像高中生做的。

It looks like a high school student made it.

真的吗？

Really?

是的。我不会再展示它了。

Yeah. I wouldn't show it anymore.

哦，你应该把它发布出来。

Oh, you should release it.

我有一个朋友说：“嘿，听着，直接去讲，别展示演示文稿。你会得到更好的结果。”我喜欢人们出于好意而直接。所以我真的很感激那个反馈。我们大概就是这样做的。

I had a friend who said, 'Hey, look, just go and speak. Don't show the deck. You'll get a better outcome.' I like it when people are direct when it comes from a good place. So I really appreciate that feedback. And that's how we kind of went about it.

当你 IPO 或类似的事情时，你应该发布那个演示文稿，看看你走了多远。那么，对你来说有意义的策略是什么？因为这是一个一方面是世界上最大或最大的消费类别之一，另一方面又充满竞争。很多人可能认为没有太多空间给挑战者。那么，你是如何把这些拼图拼在一起进行融资的？

When you IPO or something like that, you should release that deck and see how far you've come. So, what was the strategy that made sense for you? Because it is a category that on the one hand is the biggest or one of the biggest consumer categories in the world, but on the other is all this competition. A lot of people maybe think there's not as much room for an insurgent. So, how did you put those pieces together for the fundraising?

我们做的一件事是，在种子阶段我们只接受创始人的钱，因为我的假设是这将是一段非常艰难的旅程，我想要那些做过类似或其他互补事情的人，这样将来事情变难时，我可以打电话给他们寻求建议。我们做的另一件事相当有争议。我们做了一个不设上限的可转换债券。

One thing we did was we only took founder money in the seed stage, because my assumption was that this was going to be a very tough journey, and I wanted people who had done similar or other things, complimentary things before, so that when things get hard in the future, I could call them up and get some advice. Another thing we did was pretty controversial. We did an uncapped note.

哇，真的吗？

Wow, really?

因为这是硬件。硬件非常资本密集，我不想把我和团队稀释得一无所有。

Because this is hardware. Hardware is very capital intensive, and I didn't want to dilute me and the team to like nothing.

是的。

Yeah.

而且很快。

And very quickly.

是的。

Yeah.

所以那引起了一些反对。

So that got some pushback.

我敢打赌。

I bet.

是的。所以我想就是这些。但我认为现在，当我们处于更成熟的阶段或增长阶段时，这不是我们积极考虑的事情，但我的一些朋友在考虑新的结构，比如如果他们有了这家公司，但他们想同时创办另一家公司，你应该怎么做？你做出的一个关键决定是是否克隆股权结构表。如果你克隆了股权结构表，你会失去很多股权。

Yeah. So I guess those were the things. But I think now, when we're in a more mature stage or growth stage, it's not something we're actively thinking about, but some of my friends are thinking about new structures, like what if they have this company but they want to start another company in parallel, how should you do it? One key decision you make is whether you clone the cap table or not. If you clone the cap table, you lose out a lot of the equity.

是的。

Yeah.

但这是非常公平的做法，因为你可能会利用一些资源和自己的时间，加上以前公司的一些资源。这就是我所说的哲学或价值观驱动的答案。

But it's a very fair thing to do, because you're going to probably leverage some resources and your own time, plus some resources from the previous company. That's what I mean by philosophical or values-driven answers.

是的，完全同意。你决定在欧洲，特别是在伦敦创建 Nothing。为什么感觉这里是这家公司的正确地点，而欧洲在最近的记忆中并没有创造出很多伟大的消费硬件公司？

Yeah, totally. You decided to build Nothing in Europe, and specifically in London. Why did that feel like the right place for this company, when Europe has really not created many great consumer hardware companies in recent memory?

所以，我在中国待了 10 年。我亲眼看到供应链和硬件工程变得多么强大，实际上很多功劳应该归功于 Apple，因为我不知道你是否读过《Apple in China》这本书。

So, I spent 10 years in China. I saw firsthand how strong the supply chain and hardware engineering had gotten, and actually a lot of credit should go to Apple, because I don't know if you read the book 'Apple in China'.

不，我没读过。

No, I haven't.

因为他们当时在那里制造，他们必须提升生态系统的能力。所以我当时看到的很多，基本上是 Apple 为了提升一切所做的工作。在创意领域很难找到人才。所以我想换个环境。欧洲似乎是个好地方，因为事后看来，这更像是舒适，因为我对欧洲的了解比美国多一点。所以假设是欧洲应该有很多创意人才，而我在中国生活时找不到这些人才，如果我们找到这些人，并把中国的供应链效率加入其中，那将是一家很难竞争的公司。纯硅谷公司很难获得同样的效率，顺便说一句，我们正在看到这一点，而中国公司也很难创造出——他们更注重效率。

Because they were manufacturing there, and they had to bring up the capabilities of the ecosystem. So a lot of that, what I saw back then, was work that Apple had done basically to level everything up. It was tough to get talent when it came to creative fields. So I wanted a change of scenery. Europe seemed like a good place, because in hindsight it's more like comfort, because I know Europe a little bit better than the States. So the assumption was there should be a lot of creative talent in Europe that we couldn't find when I was living in China, and if we find these people and we add the Chinese supply chain efficiency to the equation, it would be a tough company to compete against. It would be hard for a purely Silicon Valley company to get the same efficiency, and we're seeing that by the way, and it's hard for a Chinese company to create a—and they're more efficiency focused.

所以我们一开始就是这么想的，后来我觉得伦敦也崛起成为了一个不错的人工智能中心。那里有一些很棒的人工智能人才。后来我们发现伦敦也是一个全球金融中心，所以也有很好的金融人才。但核心想法是一样的：我们如何为即将要做或正在做的事情找到最好的人才，无论他们在世界哪个角落？这有点像成吉思汗的例子。我觉得他的创业之旅真正特别之处就在于此。他是个很好的人才侦察员。他在文化上非常开放，因为那时候蒙古文化非常部落化。所以你只信任自己的部落，你甚至不信任其他蒙古人。

So that's how we thought about it in the beginning, and then over time I think London has also risen up as a good hub for AI. There's some great AI talent. Later on we saw that London is also a global financial hub, so there's good finance talent. But the core idea is the same: how do we find the best talent for the things we're about to do or are currently doing, irrespective of where they are in the world? And that's a bit like the Genghis Khan example. I think that's what was really special about his entrepreneurial journey. He was a good talent scout. He was very open-minded in terms of culture, because back in the day the Mongolian culture was very tribal. So you only trusted your own tribe. You didn't even trust other Mongolians.

是的。

Yes.

但随着他们征服，首先他统一了蒙古草原，当他们征服新的土地时，他们发现被征服的人民擅长不同的事情。比如，当时我认为阿拉伯国家和中国——我不知道是不是不同的国家——

But as they were conquering, first of all he united the Mongolian steppes, and as they were conquering new lands, they saw that the conquered people were good at different things. So for instance, back then I think the Arab countries and Chinese—I don't know if it was different countries or not—

那时候是帝国。是的。不同的文明。

Empires at that point. Yeah. The different sort of civilizations.

他们更像是农业社会，而且已经发展出了税收制度。所以当蒙古人征服他们时，他们甚至在金钱方面也非常开放，对吧？比如你信任外人来管理你的钱财，他们把这些人员重新分配到世界各地去帮助他们收税。后来，我认为成吉思汗在发现佛教后皈依了佛教。他非常开放，敢于与不同文化合作，从不同文化中寻找可学习的东西。

They were more like agricultural societies and they had already developed tax collection systems. So when the Mongolians conquered them, they were super open-minded even with money, right? Like you trust outsiders to handle your money, and they reallocated these people to all over the world to help them collect tax. And later on, I think Genghis Khan converted to Buddhism after discovering it. He was super open-minded, daring to work with different cultures, finding things to learn from different cultures.

有趣。这周我和创始人进行了两次关于蒙古帝国的对话，两次都围绕着它几乎是一个被低估的帝国，比如说，它只是一个小部落，对吧？在世界上一个非常荒凉的地方，却能够横跨欧亚大陆。你读过《征服者》系列吗？

It's funny. I've had this week two conversations about the Mongolian Empire with founders, and both are really around how, you know, almost it's an underrated empire, let's say, where it was just this tiny tribe, right? Like in a really inhospitable part of the world that manages to stretch across Eurasia. Have you read the Conqueror series?

没有。

No.

显然那是——我也没读过。和另一个人聊过之后，它现在在我的清单上了。显然是一部令人惊叹的历史小说，重述了整个——

Apparently that's—I haven't read it either. It's now on my list after talking with this other person. It's apparently an amazing historical fiction retelling of like the entire—

是虚构的还是——

It's fiction or—

是历史小说，所以它像故事一样写，但你知道，它确实基于事实。显然——

It's historical fiction, so it's written like a story, but you know, it's really based on the facts of it. That's apparently—

我有一本关于凯撒的大部头书，还没开始读。

I have a big book on Caesar that I haven't started.

好的，所以那大概是下一本。

Okay, so that's sort of next.

我想到成吉思汗的一件事——我没读过这些书，所以我可能会了解更多——显然他出生时手握血块，这是他神话的一部分，非常强大。

The thing I always think of Genghis Khan—and I haven't read these books, so I'll probably know more things—is that apparently he was born clutching a blood clot, and that was part of his mythology, like really powerful.

我不确定那有多真实，但——

I'm not sure how true that is, but—

是的。是的。谁知道呢，对吧？但你总是——我觉得——

Yeah. Yeah. Who knows, right? But you always—I feel like—

这些领导者，总是有这种围绕他们创造的神话。

These leaders, there's always this sort of mythology that gets created around them.

你创造故事来帮助你治理。我认为——

You create stories to help you govern. I think—

至少在过去。

At least in the past.

是的。不，但今天也完全如此，对吧？每个创始人的故事在每次重述中都会多一点神话色彩。对吧。你不觉得埃隆的故事现在可能一半真实，一半神话吗？

Yes. No, but totally today too, right? Every founder story gets in each retelling a little bit more mythology. Right. Don't you think Elon's stories at this point are maybe half true, half mythology?

不知道。我从未见过他，但他看起来是个非常聪明的人。

Don't know. I never met him, but he seems like a very smart guy.

甚至不是他的重述。我的意思是，即使是对这些事情的报道——我认为这只是人性——

Not even his retelling. I mean, like even the reporting on these things—I think that's just human nature that—

我们总是放大。

We always amplify.

也许吧。是的。

Maybe. Yeah.

但我认为有时是故意的，对吧？但就埃隆而言，我不确定是故意的。

But I think sometimes it's by design, right? But in Elon's case, I'm not sure it's by design.

我明白你的意思。是的，我认为这很公平。我认为有时人们更公开地以这种方式神话自己。对吧。

I see what you're saying. Yes, I think that's fair. I think sometimes people are more overtly mythologizing themselves in those ways. Right.

回到 Nothing。我强烈相信的一件事是，每个传奇公司至少有一个濒死时刻。而你很早就经历了一次，对吧？

Coming back to nothing. One of the things that I've come to really strongly believe is that every legendary company has at least one near-death moment. And you had one really early, right?

很多。是的。很多濒死时刻，尤其是在开始的时候。现在想到的是我们的第一个产品，Ear1 耳机。首先，供应链上的每个人都拒绝我们制造手机。他们说：“嘿，过去 10 年里有很多这样的初创公司。我们和几家合作过。他们都失败了。我们都亏了钱。我们不再和初创公司合作了。我们要和像苹果这样的大客户合作。”

A lot. Yeah. A lot of near-death moments, especially in the beginning. The one that comes to mind now is our first product, the Ear1 earbuds. So, first of all, everybody rejected us in the supply chain for making phones. They were like, "Hey, there's been a bunch of these startups in the last 10 years. We worked with a few. They all failed. We all lost money. We're not going to work with startups anymore. We're going to work with big customers like Apple."

嗯。

Mhm.

所以，走开。

So, go away.

对我们来说不值得。

Not worth it for us.

不值得。然后我们说：“好吧，我们做耳机吧。那应该更可行。制造成本更低。”然后我们也遭到了每家耳机工厂的拒绝。他们说：“嘿，亚马逊上有 3000 个无名耳机品牌。这有什么区别？”

Not worth it. And then we were like, "Okay, let's make earbuds. Then it should be more possible. It's cheaper to make." And then we got rejected by every earbuds factory as well. And they were like, "Hey, there's 3,000 no-name earbud brands on Amazon. What's the difference here?"

所以我们最终只和一家愿意与我们合作的工厂合作。那家工厂没有其他客户。这就是他们想和我们合作的原因，因为他们因为过去的产品失败而被主要客户列入了黑名单。所以我们出于必要与他们合作，以创造非常强劲的发布势头，当我们发货时，缺陷率高达 80%。那感觉就像濒死时刻。我们筹集了资金，提高了人们对我们的期望，然后却无法交付产品。我们很快在工厂旁边租了公寓，但我们自己的工程师——我们只有，我不知道，五到十个人——他们成为了工厂经理，管理生产线的每一步，这提高了质量。我们更换了所有缺陷单元，当时我们发了很多免费替换品，因为这些早期消费者在我们身上冒了很大的风险。我们只是换了它们，从那一刻恢复过来。但损益表看起来没有我们计划的那么好。

And so we ended up working with only one factory that was willing to work with us. And that factory didn't have any other customer. That's why they wanted to work with us, because they were on the blacklist of the major customers for having had product failures in the past. So we worked with them out of necessity to create this very strong launch momentum, and as we're shipping out the products, there was like an 80% defect rate. That felt like a near-death moment. We raised money, really up the expectations on us, and then just couldn't deliver on the product. We quickly rented apartments next to the factory, but our own engineers—we only had, I don't know, five or ten people—they became factory managers to manage each step of the production line, and that got the quality up. We replaced all the defect units, and we were shipping a lot of free replacements back then, because these early consumers took a big chance on us. We just swapped them out and recovered from that moment. But the profit and loss statement didn't look as good as we had planned.

是的。也许最近的一次，或者在你后来的历史中，你仍然觉得嘿，这一切都可能消失，你知道这些仍然是风险所在。

Yes. What was the maybe the most recent moment or you know yeah one in your later history where you still felt like hey this could all this could all go away like you know these are still the stakes here.

每天就像坐过山车。或者也许每周。每周都像坐过山车。但我认为最大的可能是 B 轮融资，在 2022 年或 2023 年，我忘了。大概在那附近。

Every day is like a roller coaster ride. Or maybe every week. Every week is like a roller coaster ride. But I think the big one was probably Series B in 2022 or 2023, I forget. Something somewhere in there.

是的。

Yeah.

那是在市场开始有点降温的时候。

It was when the market was beginning to cool down a little bit.

是的。

Yeah.

无法融资。我的日程表每天都排满了投资者会议。那是我唯一的工作。每次会议都非常具有挑战性。比如我会在战略上受到质疑，比如如果这样怎么办，这个呢，那个呢，这个呢？我尽力回答所有问题。

Couldn't raise. Had my calendar filled with investor meetings every day. And that was my only job. And every meeting was very challenging. Like I would get challenged on the strategy, like what if, what about this, what about that, what about this? I tried my best to answer all the questions.

但在两个月的不断质疑之后，我也失去了信心。

But after two months of constant questioning, I also lose confidence.

是的。

Yes.

没有投资意向书，问题不断。而且感觉越来越糟，因为我失去了信心。会议变得更糟。那感觉就像濒死时刻，因为我开始做噩梦，比如凌晨 4 点醒来，再也睡不着。噩梦是关于解散公司的，比如全员大会，说“对不起大家，结束了”。就是那种梦。

No term sheet, constant questions. And it just felt like it got worse and worse because I lost confidence. The meetings got worse. And that felt like a near-death moment because I started having nightmares like waking up at 4:00 a.m. and not being able to fall asleep again. And the nightmares would be about shutting down the company like all hands. Sorry guys, it's over. Like that kind of dream.

然后我打电话给几个朋友，我们去狂欢了一个周末。我想那时我得以从日常的负面情绪中抽身，而且我真的累坏了，累到没力气沮丧，就那样清醒过来了。之后那轮融资其实很快就搞定了。

Then I called up a few friends and we went partying for a weekend and I guess then I got to step out from the day-to-day negativity and I just got really tired, like too tired to be depressed, and kind of snapped out of it. And the round actually quickly came together after that.

哇。那多米诺骨牌效应是怎样的？你是终于找到了一个能理解你的方案或者理解你的人吗？

Wow. What was the domino like? Did you just find someone finally who just got the pitch or got you in some way?

是的，几周后我们拿到了两份投资意向书。也许是因为我心情变好了，不再陷入那种负面循环了。

Yeah, we had then, like a few weeks later, we had two term sheets. Maybe because I was in a better mood and no longer in this negative spiral anymore.

是啊。啊，这些事情会发生真是有趣。从外面看，第一个真正的爆款似乎是 2A 手机。你是这么想的吗，还是说 Nothing 旅程中的重大转折点是什么？

Yeah. Ah, it's so interesting how those things can happen. It seems from the outside like the first maybe real breakout hit was the 2A phone. Is that sort of how you think about it, or like what were the big inflection points in Nothing's journey?

我认为我们的第一款耳机，尽管有我们后来修复的质量问题，我们卖出了近 60 万副。是的。而且那也是在疫情期间，供应链不确定，产品生命周期中段组件成本上升，我们把价格从 99 美元提高到 149 美元。但它仍然保持了势头。所以那是一个很好的证明点。

I think our first earbud, despite the quality issues that we fixed, we sold almost 600,000 of those units. Yeah. So, and this was also in the middle of COVID where the supply chain was uncertain and component costs increased midlife cycle of the product, and we increased the price from $99 to $149. But it still kept its momentum. So that was like a good proof point.

我认为 Phone One，那种没人见过的新设计，获得了大量关注。

I think the phone one, like brand new design that nobody had seen before, got a lot of attention.

从营收角度看，2A 是一款很棒的产品。

From a revenue perspective, 2A was a great product.

好的。

Okay.

这是一款好产品，但不如 Phone One 那么新鲜。那是世界第一次见到那样的东西。

It's a good product, but it wasn't as fresh as the phone one. That was the first time the world had seen anything like that.

是的，有道理。

Yes, that makes sense.

差异化很大一部分来自设计。你曾说过设计有点像最简单的或最好的第一种差异化形式。你是什么时候意识到这一点的？因为今天看 Nothing 可能很明显这就是哲学，但我不认为很多人在想到消费硬件时会自动得出这个结论。对吧？

A big part of the differentiation comes from the design. And you've talked about how design is sort of like, maybe the easiest or the best first form of differentiation. When did you sort of realize that? Because it's maybe obvious when you look at Nothing today that that maybe is the philosophy, but I don't think that's a conclusion that a lot of other people would make when they think of consumer hardware automatically. Right?

一开始我们就很清楚。这就是我们应该做的。我认为背景是，你处于成熟品类还是新兴品类？当你在新兴品类时，你的主要目标是找到产品市场契合，构建人们真正想要的东西。但在成熟品类，在我们的背景下，每年已经有 10 亿部智能手机售出，所以我们知道这种形态有产品市场契合。那么问题就变成如何差异化，如何切入，为自己开辟一块市场。对我们来说，设计是最快的方式。

It was very clear for us in the beginning. This is how we should do it. I think the context is like, are you in a mature category or a nascent category? When you're in a nascent category, your main goal is to find product-market fit, build something that people actually want. But in a mature category, in our context, there was already a billion smartphones sold every year, so we knew that there was product-market fit for this form factor. Then the question becomes how do you differentiate and carve out a wedge yourselves in, carve out a piece of the market for yourself. And for us, design was the fastest way to do it.

其他人有时看着我们，也许也在模仿透明设计语言，但他们处于新兴产品品类，他们应该考虑自己是否在模仿正确的做法。

And other people are sometimes looking at us and maybe also copying the transparent design language, but they're in a nascent product category, they should just think about whether they're copying the right move or not.

是啊。所以，如果你要推出某种特殊的 AI 设备，没人知道是否真的有人会用，决定让它看起来像 Nothing，你就有点抓不住重点了。

Yeah. So, if you're coming up with some special AI device that no one knows if anyone's ever actually going to use that, deciding to make it look like Nothing, you're sort of missing the point.

是的。让它有用就好。

Yeah. Just make it useful.

Nothing 处理设计的方式很大一部分也来自你与 Teenage Engineering 的关系和合作。除了我一直对 Nothing 在做的事感兴趣之外，我总是想，哇，Teenage Engineering 做的任何事都那么有趣。你知道，对于没听说过的听众来说，这是一家瑞典公司，制造非常漂亮的音频产品和其他东西，但他们做的每件事都有非常独特的俏皮设计。这段联系是怎么建立起来的，又是如何变得如此深厚的？

A big part of the way that Nothing seems to approach design also comes from this relationship and partnership you have with Teenage Engineering, which, independently of always being interested in what Nothing was doing, I always thought, wow, whatever Teenage Engineering is doing is so interesting. It's this, you know, for folks that listeners that haven't heard of it, it's this Swedish company that makes like really beautiful audio products and other things, but there's a really distinctive sort of playful design in everything they do. How did that connection come together and how did it become, I guess, such a deep relationship?

早在 2018 或 19 年，一个瑞典朋友想介绍我们认识，我有点不以为然，说那是什么？我们还是个成长中的品牌，需要和更成熟、更可信的品牌合作。比如，你为什么不介绍我们认识 Dior 或 Gucci？为什么要这种超级小众的东西？这不会有帮助。但我被说服还是去见了面，那感觉就是不一样。他们太有创意了，设计太酷了，关系就是从那时开始的。

Earlier on in 2018 or 19, a Swedish friend wanted to introduce us, and I kind of brushed it off like, what's that? We are still a growing brand, we need to work with more established, more credible brands. Like, why don't you introduce us to Dior or Gucci? Like, why this kind of super niche thing? It's not going to help. But I got convinced to still take the meeting, and it was just a different vibe. Like, they were so creative and designs were so cool, and that's when the relationship started.

当我有了创办 Nothing 的想法时，我见了 Teenage Engineering 的 CEO Yasper，那真是一次非常轻松的谈话，40 分钟，握手，我们稍后敲定了协议。

And when I had the idea to start Nothing, I met Yasper, the CEO of Teenage Engineering, and it was just a really chill conversation, 40 minutes, shook hands, we figured out the deal a bit later.

但 40 分钟就握手，像是我们应该一起做点什么。

But 40 minutes, shook hands on like we should do something together.

我们只是握了手，然后我们弄清了商业结构。

We just shook hands and then we figured out the commercial structure.

但达成共识并不难，因为我们已经一致了。我们只是想大规模地做点什么。我当时不知道，但事后看来，Yasper 对我的生活影响很大，因为他曾是广告导演，就像商业导演。所以我成长过程中看到的一些最好的广告，那些经常在电视上播放的，我今天还记得的，都是他构思的。

But it wasn't that hard to get to common ground because we had already aligned. We just wanted to do something at scale. And I didn't know it at the time, but in hindsight, Yasper has been quite influential on my life because he used to be an advertising director, like a commercial director. So some of the best advertising that I grew up with, that was constantly on TV, I still remember to today, were envisioned by him.

那些广告是什么？

What were the ads?

所以，这只有对在瑞典长大的人才有意义，但有一个止痛药广告，里面有个小家伙唱着止痛药的特性。超级朗朗上口，你记得它因为它太抓耳了。还有一个瑞典啤酒品牌，全是关于瑞典夏天的感觉，因为瑞典有大的群岛，夏天非常美。

So, this will only make sense to people who grew up in Sweden, but there's like a painkiller ad with a little guy who sings about the properties of the painkiller. Super catchy, you just remember it because it's so catchy. There's a Swedish beer brand that's all about the feeling of Swedish summer, because Sweden has a big archipelago, very beautiful during the summer.

是啊，比如和朋友一起航行、喝啤酒、烧烤，那种感觉来卖啤酒，不是卖产品，而是卖感觉。那是他做的两个非常标志性的广告。

Yeah, like sailing and drinking beer with friends, barbecue, that kind of feeling to sell a beer, not selling the product, but selling the feeling. Those were two really iconic ads that he did.

你今天如何与 Teenage Engineering 合作？他们可能给你思考 Nothing 的方式带来了哪些感受？

How do you work with Teenage Engineering today? And what are the feelings that maybe they've brought into the way that you think of Nothing?

当我们开始时，我们一起构建了品牌宇宙。比如我们的第一款产品不是硬件产品。

When we started, we built the brand universe together. Like our first product was not a hardware product.

有一本类似品牌手册的书，我们做了这样的思维练习：想象如果苹果不存在，领先的科技公司、消费科技公司会是什么样子？因为太容易被他们吸进漩涡了，因为他们是最大的，而且每当他们做点什么，其他品牌都会跟着做。

There was a book, like a brand book, and we had this kind of thought exercise of, you know, imagine if Apple didn't exist, what would the leading tech company, consumer tech company look like? Because it's too easy to be sucked into their vortex because they're the biggest, and whenever they do something, all the other brands kind of just follow.

在某种程度上，我觉得你知道这里我们在塞尔福里奇百货对面有一家戴森店，有点像苹果店，但全是黑色的。

In a way, I think you know here we have a Dyson store opposite Selfridges, it's kind of like an Apple store but in all black.

我们就是想摆脱那种思维，是的，被影响。所以走出去，从电子以外的不同创意领域，比如电影、建筑、艺术，建立情绪板，通过这个找到我们的宇宙。所以这本书，第一部分就像情绪板，第二部分是为未来 Nothing 产品做的设计探索。这就是我们一开始一起构建的东西，为产品设计和品牌设计定下了基调。

We just wanted to get away from that type of thinking, like yes, to be influenced. So stepping out, taking, building a mood board from different creative fields outside of electronics like movies, architecture, art, and finding our universe through that. So the book, the first part of the book is like a mood board, and the second part of the book are design explorations for future Nothing products. So that's kind of what we built together in the beginning that set the tone for the product design and the brand design.

我们还想着，让我们做一家让人们引以为傲的产品公司。所以有一个真正引起共鸣的画面是，嗯，东京曾经有一个索尼博物馆，他们把所有的产品展示在墙上和桌子上，当客人参观索尼总部时，他们会带客人去那里，自豪地展示他们建造的一切。所以我们想，嘿，希望 10 年后，我们也会有一面大墙，上面放着我们自豪地制造的产品，让我们让它们看起来都来自同一家公司。因为这听起来简单，但很多公司都是在大孤岛中运作。比如每个产品可能看起来很美，但整个品牌缺乏一致性。这就是我们真正想为 Nothing 创造的。所以现在我觉得我们做到了。你知道，如果你看我们的产品，看不到标志，你把几个 Nothing 产品放在一起，你马上就能看出它们是同一家的。

And we were also like, let's make a product company that people will be proud of. So one of the graphics that really resonated was, um, there used to be a Sony museum in Tokyo where they showcase all the products on the wall and on the tables, and they would take guests there when they were visiting the Sony HQ to proudly showcase everything they built. So we were like, hey, hopefully in 10 years from now, we'll also have like a big wall with products that we're proud of having made, and let's make them all look like they came from the same company. Because it sounds simple, but a lot of companies operate in big silos. Like each product might look beautiful, but there wasn't a consistency across the brand. And that's what we really wanted to create for Nothing. So now I think we've kind of done that. You know, if you look at our products and you don't see the logo, and you put a couple of Nothing products together, kind of you can tell immediately that it's the same.

是的。有一种签名，某种 DNA。

Yeah. There's a signature, a DNA somehow.

而今天，你知道，我们确立了品牌。今天我们更像是时不时一起评审设计。我们还有一些特别的副项目。

And today, you know, we set the brand. Today we work more like we review designs together every now and then. And we have some special projects on the side.

当你做那个练习的时候，也许今天仍然如此，你从哪里汲取灵感？当你说电影时，有没有特别的电影或特别的物品……

When you were doing that exercise and maybe still today, like where are the places that you took inspiration? When you say films, like were there particular films or particular objects that...

我记得的电影场景是《太空漫游》里的一个场景。

I think the movie scene I remember is a scene from Space Odyssey.

呃，家具。

Uh, furniture.

我，有太多灵感，呃，来自 60 年代、70 年代、80 年代的家具。我们想创造一些新鲜的东西，永远感觉新鲜。而要创造新鲜的东西，你不能跟随当前的东西，因为当前的东西有时间戳。所以如果我们复制 2025 年的苹果产品到 2070 年，它会感觉过时，因为你记得这来自 25 年。所以通过让自己脱离当前的事物，从过去的事物中寻找灵感，我们相信这样才能建立一种永远感觉新鲜的设计语言。

I, there's so much inspiration, uh, furniture from like the '60s, '70s, '80s. We wanted to create something fresh that always felt fresh. And to create something fresh, you can't follow the current thing because the current thing has a stamp in time. So if we were to copy like a 2025 Apple product in 2070, it will feel old because you remember this came from '25. So by detaching ourselves from current things, finding inspiration from past things, that's how we believed we could build a design language that always felt fresh.

《太空漫游》的那个场景是什么？你还记得吗？

What was the Space Odyssey scene? Do you remember?

好吧，我觉得有两个。一个是宇航员在走廊里。

Okay, there's two, I think. One with the astronaut in the corridor.

嗯哼。是的。

Uh-huh. Yeah.

还有一个是 HAL。

And one with HAL.

HAL 9000。

HAL 9000.

是的。HAL 9000，对吧？是的，我刚看了那部电影。

Yeah. HAL 9000, right? Yeah, I just watched that movie.

Nothing 最近有一个有趣的招聘，我觉得你刚从 LOV 请来了一位首席品牌官，你知道，那是一个奢侈品牌，我想可能最出名的是它的皮具之类的东西。这是一个有趣的招聘，也许暗示了你定位自己的方式。比如，你试图从奢侈品或服装中吸取哪些教训，带入你思考营销和品牌的方式？

There was an interesting hire that Nothing made recently, which is I think you just got a chief branding officer from LOV, which is, you know, a luxury brand sort of I think probably best known for its leather goods and things like that. It was an interesting hire and sort of maybe hints at like the way that you're positioning yourself. Like what are the lessons from from maybe luxury or apparel that like you you're sort of trying to bring into the way that you think about marketing and branding?

嗯，我们一直想摆脱传统的消费电子营销，因为那感觉有点陈腐、不酷，比如在百思买培训某人卖你的产品，我们觉得我们可以创造更好的东西。嗯，我想是的。我们最近招募的这位查理，他做了很多我们即将要做或计划在未来几年要做的事情。我觉得他所做的也非常符合我们的 DNA。比如我们是一家非常设计优先的公司，奢侈时尚行业也是如此。文化上我们相当紧张，因为我们雄心勃勃，而在欧洲，奢侈时尚行业也是一个竞争非常激烈的领域，甚至内部文化也是如此，嗯，因为这是一个竞争非常激烈的行业，而欧洲在这个行业是世界领先的。我们非常关心吸引 Z 世代客户进入我们的品牌，而 LOV 是 Z 世代事实上的选择。当你拿到第一笔大奖金或薪水时，你会去买他们的包。所以这要求我们非常了解市场，非常了解消费者，并且在他们所在的渠道与他们对话，比如他们现在非常喜欢用 TikTok。所以 LOV 非常擅长 TikTok。我们非常关心 TikTok。所以有如此多的协同效应，我非常期待看到我们合作的结果。

Well, we always wanted to get away from traditional consumer electronics marketing because that felt kind of stale and uncool, training somebody at Best Buy to sell your product, and it felt like we could create something better than that. Um, I think so. This guy Charlie that we recently recruited, he's done a lot of the things we were about to do or have plans to do in the next couple of years. I think what he did also really fits our DNA. Like we're very design first as a company, and so is the luxury fashion industry. Culturally we are quite intense because we're ambitious, and in Europe the luxury fashion industry is also a very competitive space, even the internal culture, um, because it's a very competitive industry and Europe is world-leading in that industry. We care a lot about recruiting Gen Z customers into our brand, and LOV is the de facto like choice for Gen Z. When you get your first big bonus or paycheck, you go buy their bag. So that requires us to be like understand the market very well, understand the consumer very well, and also speak to them on channels where they are, like they're very much on TikTok these days. So LOV was really good at TikTok. We care a lot about TikTok. So there was just so many synergies, and so I'm very much looking forward to see what we do together.

你可以看出我对奢侈品牌有多无知，我以为它是 L-O-W 而不是 L-O-V，但……

You can tell how ignorant I am of luxury brands that I thought it was L-O-W rather than L-O-V, but...

谁知道它是什么。这是一个难发音的名字。

Who knows what it is. It's a hard to pronounce name.

是的。你说过营销是关于，你知道，纯粹的效率，找到这些方法来不公平地战斗，尤其是当你对抗苹果、三星和其他任何人时，找到这些方法尤其重要。对你来说，有哪些策略、渠道或启发式方法在这样战斗时是有用的？

Yeah. You've said that marketing is about, you know, pure efficiency and finding these ways to sort of fight unfair, and especially when you're going up against Apple and Samsung and whoever else, that feels especially important to find those ways. What have been the sort of strategies or the channels or heuristics that have been useful for you in fighting that way?

是的，我觉得你知道商业的核心是套利。嗯，所以营销是商业的一部分。因此，营销也应该是关于套利或效率。我认为你可以从创新中获得套利，对吧？因为如果你知道别人不知道的东西，那么这里的竞争就更少，因此你无论做什么，成本都会更低。我记得当我还是个孩子的时候，我在建网站，突然出现了一个叫 Facebook 广告的新产品。第一批学会使用 Facebook 广告的公司都赚了很多钱，因为没有太多竞争在竞标库存。但现在真的很难赚钱，因为从大公司到小公司，每个人都知道这个策略。

Yeah, I think you know at its core business is about arbitrage. Um, so marketing is a part of business. Marketing should therefore also be about arbitrage or efficiency. You get arbitrage from innovation, I think, right? Because if you know something that nobody else knows, then there's less competition here, and therefore you get lower cost for whatever you're trying to do. I remember when I was building websites as a kid, all of a sudden there was this new product called Facebook ads. And the first companies that learned to use Facebook ads all made a lot of money because there wasn't a lot of competition bidding for the inventory. But now it's like really hard to make money because it's a very well-known tactic to everybody from small companies to big companies.

所以我认为这就是营销人员应该寻找的。下一个机会是什么？因为如果我能花同样的钱，获得 2 倍的产出，我认为随着时间的推移，这会非常积极地复利，并成为一个强大的竞争优势。很多人说他们喜欢旧的苹果广告。我认为那些策略在当时的环境下非常好。

So I think that's what marketers should be looking for. What is the next opportunity? Because if I can spend the same amount of money and get a 2x higher output, I think that just compounds really aggressively over time and it becomes a strong competitive advantage. A lot of people say they like the old Apple ads. I think those strategies were very good in that time context.

人们都在谈论 1984 年的超级碗广告。如果现在发布同样的东西或类似的东西，它不会取得突破，因为超级碗也已经成为所有公司展示他们最佳创意的场所，对吧？所以竞争与以前大不相同。所以这不再是一个套利机会。对我们来说，我们从书面媒体、数字媒体开始。数字媒体在 15 年前相当大，今天没那么大了，但我们很擅长通过公关利用数字媒体。所以每当我们有产品时，都会有大量关于该产品的报道。随着时间的推移，我们在社交媒体上做得更好了，因为那是人们转移的地方。我认为在社交媒体上还有很多事情要做。我们在开始录音前谈了一点内容，但我认为在社交媒体上还有更多价值可以挖掘。然后我认为你只需要不断做越来越难的事情。所以是的，我们的营销必须演变。我认为创意在下一阶段将是关键，因为如果你只从纯粹的 ROI 角度考虑，品牌会随着时间的推移看起来有点廉价。但我们也在努力建立品牌的形象和认知。所以是的，创意扮演着重要角色。而 1984 年的事情也是关于创意的，对吧？因为广告时段、媒体时段，很多公司都有，但只有一家公司拥有真正产生影响的突破性创意。所以希望在接下来的几年里，创意是我们真正在营销上取得突破的地方。

People talk about the 1984 Super Bowl ad. If you were to release the same thing or a similar thing now, it wouldn't get the breakthrough because Super Bowl has also become a place where all the companies showcase their best creatives, right? So the competition is very different from before. So it's no longer an arbitrage opportunity. For us, we start off with written media, digital media. Digital media was pretty big 15 years ago, not as big today, but we knew how to work with digital media through PR pretty well. So whenever we had a product, there was a lot of coverage about it. Over time, we've gotten better at social because that's where people are moving. I think there's still a lot to do in social. We talked a little bit about content before we started recording, but I think there's still a lot more value to find in social. And then I think you just got to keep doing more and more difficult things. So yeah, our marketing has to evolve. I think creative will be key in the next stage because if you only think about it from a pure ROI perspective, the brand will look kind of cheap over time. But we're trying to also build the image and the perception of the brand. So yes, creative plays a big role. And the 1984 thing is also about the creative, right? Because the ad spot, the media spot, a lot of companies had it, but only one company had the breakthrough creative to really make an impact. So hopefully in the next couple of years, creative is where we really break through on marketing.

印度是你故事中非常有趣的一部分。我认为显然 Nothing 相对于 Apple 来说是弱者，但我想我读到过你今年有望实现 10 亿美元的销售额。

India is such an interesting part of your story. I think obviously Nothing is an underdog relative to Apple, but I think I read that you're sort of on track to do a billion in sales this year.

我们已经售出了数百万台产品，在很多方面已经真正产生了影响。也许我们只达到了你想要达到的不到 1%，但 70% 的销售额来自印度。

We've sold many millions of products and it's really made a real dent already in many respects. Maybe we're only less than a percent of where you want to be, but 70% of the sales are coming from India.

也许是 55%。

Maybe 55.

好的。所以那已经改变了，或者也许报道有误。

Okay. So that's changed or maybe the reporting was off.

好的。所以这仍然是业务的重要组成部分。那么这是怎么发生的呢？这是你在创立品牌时以某种方式预见的，还是纯粹是突然出现的，你注意到，嘿，出于某种原因，这个地区真的在起飞？

Okay. So it's still a significant part of the business. And so how did that happen? Was that something that you foresaw in some way when you were starting the brand, or was it purely emergent that you were noticing, hey, for some reason this is really taking off in this geography?

所以印度在我们的智能手机产品组合中表现非常好，而美国在我们的音频产品组合中表现非常好。不是 100% 重叠，但对于智能手机，印度是一个巨大的机会。我们从第一天就看到了这一点，因为你看 Android 的市场份额，大约是 90%，而在美国大约是 40%。每个人都已经在使用 Android。转换 Android 用户比转换 iPhone 用户容易得多。

So India is doing really well for our smartphone portfolio, and the US is doing really well for our audio portfolio. Not 100% overlapping, but for smartphones, India is a great opportunity. We saw that from day one because you look at the Android market share, it's like 90%, whereas in the US it's like 40%. Everybody's already on Android. It's way easier to convert an Android user than an iPhone user.

是的。

Yeah.

而在过去几年里发生的变化是，经济已经增长到一个阶段，中产阶级真正变得重要。我认为随着一个国家经济的增长，你会逐渐上升到马斯洛需求层次。过去，可能关乎功能利益。嘿，我的公寓很热。我有空调。你没有空调。因此，我的生活更舒适。我认为这也与地位有很大关系。人们真的很在乎地位。所以过去，空调会给你社会地位。然后随着时间的推移，随着经济的发展，它转向情感利益，比如，嘿，我胸前有一个大标志。你没有。因此，我有更高的地位。然后随着时间的推移，它转向更多的自我实现。嘿，我关心这些相当前卫的社会问题。你不知道它们。因此，我优越，我更好。所以这是潜在的逻辑。即使人们不想承认，我认为这是驱动它的潜在逻辑。我认为印度处在一个非常有趣的空间。它正在从功能性转向情感性。如果我们更早地开始这种以设计为主导的策略，它就不会奏效。但恰好我们在硬件、工业设计、软件设计和品牌方面的能力在这个市场上变得非常重要。这就是为什么我们能够做到我们所做的。

And what changed in the last couple of years is that the economy has grown to a stage where the middle class is really becoming important. And I think as a country's economy grows, you kind of move up Maslow's hierarchy of needs. In the past, it might have been about functional benefits. Hey, my flat is really hot. I have AC. You don't have AC. Therefore, I have a more comfortable life. I think it has a lot to do with status also. People really care about status. So in the past, an air conditioner would give you status in society. And then over time, as the economy develops, it kind of shifts to emotional benefits, like, hey, I have a big logo on my chest. You don't have it. Therefore, I have higher status. And then over time, it shifts to more self-actualization. Hey, I care about these social issues that are quite avant-garde. You don't know about them. Therefore, I'm superior, like I'm better. So that's the underlying logic. Even if people don't want to admit it, I think that's the underlying logic driving it. I think India's in a very interesting space. It's going from functional to emotional. And if we had started with this strategy of being design-led earlier, it wouldn't have worked. But it just happens to be that the capabilities that we have in hardware, industrial design, and also software design and brand are becoming really important in this market. That's why we were able to do what we've done.

你创建了一个，我不知道你是否会称之为子品牌或独立品牌，它利用了相同的 DNA，叫做 CMF。为什么创建一个准子公司是有意义的，而不是仅仅保持，你知道，让一切通过 Nothing 流动？

You've created sort of a, I don't know if you'd call it a sub-brand or a separate brand, that sort of leverages some of the same DNA called CMF. Why did it make sense to sort of create a quasi-subsidiary rather than just remaining, you know, just having everything flow through Nothing?

有一个商业原因，也有机会。商业原因是因为在智能手机行业你需要规模。更大的公司每年出货 1 亿到 2 亿台。我们出货几百万台。我们不可能在成本方面具有价格竞争力，因为他们采购更多。他们有更多的议价能力。所以如果我们想让我们的产品变得更好，有更多的钱投资于技术，我们需要增加我们与供应商的议价能力，因此我们有了这个其他品牌。但这也相当普遍，比如在汽车行业，为不同类型的消费者拥有一个品牌家族，你们都共享同一个平台和相同的规模经济。我认为在 CPG 中也非常常见，对吧？

There's a business reason and also the opportunity. The business reason is because in the smartphone industry you need scale. Bigger companies ship 100 to 200 million units a year. We ship a couple million. There's no way we can be price competitive on the cost side because they just procure more. They have more bargaining power. So if we want our products to get better, to have more money to invest in the technology, we need to increase our bargaining power with suppliers, and therefore we have this other brand. But it's also quite common, like in the automobile industry, having a house of brands for different types of consumers where you all share the same platform and the same economies of scale. I think it's very common also in like CPG, right?

是的，完全正确。

Yeah, totally.

所以在消费类别中我们经常看到这种情况，但我们看到的机会是在我们的行业中。当涉及到智能手机时，公司并不真正关心他们的中端或低端手机。所以他们把最好的团队放在所谓的旗舰、高端产品上，而低端产品的工作他们基本上外包了。产品并不好，但我们认为，你知道，如果我们把同样的精力投入到我们所有的产品层级中，并且更努力一点，我们就能为消费者提供更好的产品，即使价格不是那么高。

So in consumer categories we see this a lot, but the opportunity that we saw was in our industry. When it came to smartphones, companies don't really care about their mid or lower tier phones. So they put their best team on the so-called flagship, the premium tier, and they kind of just outsourced the work on the low tier. The products were not great, but we thought, you know, if we put the same amount of energy into all our tiers and work a little bit harder, we can provide a much better product to consumers even when the price is not that high.

所以 CMF 有效地让你在那个市场部分真正具有竞争力，但保留了 Nothing 作为更旗舰、更优质品牌的感觉，同时也增加了销量，这样你在整个产品组合中拥有更多的议价能力。

So CMF effectively allows you to sort of be really competitive at that part of the market but retains Nothing's feel of being like a more flagship premium brand, but then also grows the volume such that you have more of that bargaining power across the entire portfolio.

是的，拥有两个品牌更复杂，但我认为如果你想拥有智能手机业务，这可能是唯一的方式。

Yeah, it's more complicated to have two brands, but I think if you want to have a smartphone business, this is probably the only way.

嗯。你会不会做一个版本，你知道，比如说另一个更高端的品牌？

Hm. Would you ever do a version of, you know, say another brand that's even more high-end, for example?

在接下来的几年里不会，因为我们有很多其他事情要做，但在稳定状态下，如果没有新技术，是的，我想我们会倾向于像 CPG 家族或酒店集团那样。

Not in the next couple of years because we have a lot of other things to do, but in a steady state, if there was no new technology, yeah, I think we would kind of trend towards like a CPG house or a hotel conglomerate.

是的，这实际上很有道理。

Yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense.

在印度工作感觉怎么样？我知道你们非常重视“印度制造”这一倡议。我想这给你们带来了很多绝佳的机会，但也带来了一些最初可能没有预见到的复杂性和挑战。

What has it been like working in India? And I know there's this sort of Made in India initiative that you guys have really leaned into. I imagine that's brought you some really amazing opportunities but also complexities and challenges that maybe weren't foreseeable when you first thought about it.

这里的能量非常充沛。我 2011 年搬到中国，我觉得现在印度的能量和那时很像。我认为我们会看到同样的故事重演。所以我对印度非常乐观，我觉得如果有任何年轻人愿意现在去那里待上 10 年，很难会失败，因为整个势头——你很难不被那里的势头所影响。但那里确实还在发展中，对吧？所以很多事情远非完美。比如在制造方面，我们的设计是透明的。在早期制造中，我们真的在灰尘问题上挣扎过。如果 iPhone 内部有灰尘，其实没关系，因为消费者不会在意，他们看不到。

The energy is very good. Like I moved to China in 2011. I think the energy in India right now feels very similar. I think we're going to see the same movie play again. So I'm very bullish on India, and I think if there's any kind of young person out there who's willing to move there for 10 years now, it will be hard to fail, because the entire momentum—it's hard to not be impacted by the momentum that's happening there. But it is developing, right? So not everything is far from perfect. When it comes to manufacturing, for instance, we have these transparent designs. In our early manufacturing, we really struggled with dust. If you have dust on the inside of your iPhone, it doesn't really matter because the consumer wouldn't care. They wouldn't see it.

他们不会知道。

They won't know.

但对我们来说，你知道，那很难控制。

But for us, you know, that was hard to control.

是的。

Yes.

我们现在在印度建立了一些非常先进的制造技术，以确保产品无尘。

We built some very advanced manufacturing techniques now in India to make the products dust-free.

另一项发展，感觉在过去一年甚至六个月里，是你们对 AI 的投入以及 AI 与个人计算环境的交互方式。你们是如何思考开始使用这套新技术原语的最佳方式的？

Another sort of development it feels like over the past year, maybe even six months, has been the way that you have leaned into AI and the way that should interface with people's personal computing environment. How did you think about the right way to start playing with this new set of technological primitives?

我们还在纠结一个问题，就是到底要不要提 AI。两者各有利弊，但根本上我相信技术不如用户体验重要，如果我们不以用户体验为导向，我们的技术在市场上也不会成功。所以我更多把它看作一种成分，帮助我们创造更好的产品，最终以某种有益的方式帮助人们。所以我们试图淡化炒作，更多关注我们能提供帮助的用户场景。所以我们只迈出了一小步。我们在手机侧面加了一个按键。你可以用它记录任何想法。轻点录音，松开保存。可以是语音，可以是你正在看的截图，也可以是浏览器里的网页链接，进入空间。然后它帮你总结和组织。它帮助设置待办事项、同步 Google 日历、记录会议笔记——非常注重实用性。我们的产品有很高比例的创意专业人士在使用。所以把它作为整理思绪的工具，希望未来也能帮助他们的创意工作流。这是其中一个产品。另一个产品是我们称之为 Essential Search 的东西。基本上在手机上你可以搜索联系人、文件、应用。我们刚刚也加入了答案。我和我未婚妻总是试图证明自己是对的。所以现在我就用这个，直接给她看答案，而不必去 Google 搜索，因为去 Google 就像浏览器搜索框，搜索，然后试图解读所有信息。这个直接给你答案。而且我认为操作系统原生集成对最终用户总是更方便。

We're still struggling on a topic which is whether we should mention AI at all. There's pros and cons to both, but fundamentally I believe technology doesn't matter as much as the user experience, and if we're not user-experience-led, our technology also wouldn't be successful in the market. So I see it more as an ingredient to help us create better products that ultimately help people in some way that's beneficial to them. So we tried to tone down the hype talk and focus more on user scenarios where we could be helpful. So we've only taken some baby steps. We added this key on the side of our phones. You can use it for recording any idea you have. Just tap to record, release to save. It can be a voice. It could be a screenshot of what you're looking at. It could be a web link from your browser into the space. And then it helps you summarize and organize. It helps set up to-do lists, Google Calendar syncing, meeting note recordings—it's just very utility-first. And we have a high percentage of creative professionals using our product. So making it a tool to organize their thoughts and hopefully in the future also help with their creative workflows. So that's one product. Another product is something we call Essential Search. Basically on phones you can search for contacts, files, apps. We just added answers as well. Me and my fiancée, we always try to prove that we are right. So now I just use this and show the answer to her immediately without having to go and Google it, because going to Google is like browser search box, search, and then trying to decipher all the information. This just gives you the answer. And I think an OS-native integration is always more convenient for the end user.

是的。

Yes.

然后在 Playground 或 Essential Apps 上，更像是设想一个软件真正个性化的不同未来。因为今天你想想操作系统，iOS 有 10 亿用户，Android 有 30 亿。基本上是一个产品面向很多人。当然你必须泛化产品需求以适应所有人。但随着软件的发展，我认为几年后它会是一对一的——每个软件都会是一对一的，甚至操作系统。所以如果那是未来，那么我们能迈出的第一步是什么？这就是 Essential Apps 背后的思考。

Then on Playground or the Essential Apps, it's more like envisioning a different future where software is truly personal. Because today if you think about the operating systems, there's a billion users for iOS and 3 billion for Android. It's basically one product for a lot of people. Surely then you have to generalize the product requirements so it fits everybody. But with where software is going, I think in a few years it'll be one for one—every software will be one for one, even the operating system. So if that's the future, then what is the first step we can take? And that was the thinking behind Essential Apps.

是的，对于没看过的人来说，它几乎就像一个迷你 Lovable，完全融入你的设备，似乎借鉴了 Nothing 现有的设计语言等等，所以看起来非常漂亮，这些版本。

Yeah, and for folks that haven't seen it, it's almost like a mini Lovable that just fits exactly into your device and seems to draw on Nothing's existing design language and stuff like that, such that it looks really beautiful, the versions.

是的，共同点——每个有想法的人都可以基本上只用自然语言创建一个小应用，并让它以你想要的方式放在你的主屏幕上。这对我来说有点神奇，因为我完全不是程序员。就像你写点东西，点击部署，它就出现在你的手机上。

Yeah, the common—everybody with an idea can create a mini app basically just using natural language and have it sit on your home screen in the way that you want it. That's kind of magical for me as a non-totally non-coder. Like you write something and you click deploy and it shows up on your phone.

最近出现的另一件事是，你们一直在尝试在主屏幕上做小广告和一些预装应用，似乎有些人不喜欢这样。你如何看待在不同时刻做出这些权衡，以及什么时候是尝试这类事情的最佳时机？考虑到我认为尤其对于像你们这样的公司来说，这可能很困难，因为你们与消费者直接接触，而且如此以社区为导向，以至于你们每次做任何事，我想都会听到很多反馈，这既是优势，也可能很难。

One of the other things that seems to have come up recently is that you've been experimenting with doing small ads on the home screen and some pre-installed apps, and it seems like some folks don't love that. How do you think about making these tradeoffs in different moments and when it's the right time to experiment with something like that, given that I think especially for a company like yours it can be difficult because you're in such direct contact with consumers and is so community-driven that anytime you do anything I imagine you hear a lot, which is a strength and can also be hard I imagine.

这是一个持续的平衡行为。一方面，这是行业的常见做法。所以如果我们已经不得不为硬件支付更多费用，而我们无法像他们那样从软件中获得利润，那只会让我们处于更艰难的竞争地位。

It's a constant balancing act. On one hand, this is common practice in the industry. So if we already have to pay a lot more for the hardware and we cannot make the margin that they make on the software, that just puts us in an even tougher competitive position.

是的。你的成本结构本质上更差。

Yeah. Your cost structure is just worse essentially.

是的。更差。

Yeah. Even worse.

是的。更差，对吧？

Yeah. Even worse, right?

以前只是硬件，但现在软件也更差。但另一方面，我们有一个非常热情的社区，我认为即使他们在抱怨我们，那也是因为他们希望看到我们成功。这就是为什么他们想给我们这些建议。在最近的这次事件中，我认为我们——这是一个平衡行为——但我认为我们在预装软件上有点过头了。所以我们会稍微回调。这总是在寻找平衡。

Before it was just hardware, but now the software is also worse. But on the other hand, we have a very passionate community, and I think even when they're complaining about us, it comes from a place where they want to see us be successful. That's why they want to give us these suggestions. In this recent case, I think we went—it's a balancing act—but I think we went a little bit overboard on the pre-installed software. So we're going to be turning it back a little bit. It's just always finding the balance.

是的。你必须有点——你完全可以理解为什么一方面人们对这些事情有反应，有自己的看法。另一方面，从商业角度来看，你也需要能够进行这些实验，对吧？看看。

Yeah. And you have to sort of—you can totally understand why on the one hand people react to these things and have their opinions about it. And on the other hand, from the business's perspective, you need to sort of also be able to run these experiments, right? And see.

是的。我们可以坦诚面对。嘿，我们做了个错误的决定。我们正在撤销其中一些。我认为这也能帮助我们赢回那些现在不满的人的好感。

Yeah. And we can just be honest about it. Hey, we made a bad call. We're reverting some of that. And I think that could also help us earn some goodwill back from the people that are upset right now.

是的，完全同意。

Yeah, totally.

你们是一家非常罕见的以社区为驱动的公司。你们在多个时间点邀请社区以与专业投资者相同的估值进行投资，并且你们有一个轮换的社区董事会成员。为什么这对你来说很重要？你是如何让它运作起来的？因为我能想象社区董事会成员可能是一种彻底的噩梦，也可能是一种非常高效的模式。

You guys have been an uncommonly community-driven company. You've invited the community to invest at various points at the same valuations as professional investors, and you've had a rotating community board member. Why has that been important to you, and how have you managed to make it work? Because there's a version of the community board member that I could imagine being a total nightmare, and a version that I could imagine being really productive.

我认为这是关于相信长期主义。当你从长远角度思考时，事情会变得清晰，短期该做什么也就很明确了。即使短期犯错，你也知道北极星在哪里，可以修正航向。但我确实认为我们生活中最大的变化是消费互联网的兴起。现在你不再需要身处硅谷就能成为某个技术领域的专家。你可以住在偏远岛屿上，参加开放课程，在社区里与人交流，写代码，为 GitHub 做贡献，交朋友。你可以从任何地方成为任何领域的准专家。如果这是真的，那么未来公司的组织形式可能会不同。你会从各处找到人才，内部团队成员和社区成员之间的界限也会模糊。这就是长期愿景，我们想不断实验，更接近那个目标。不仅是董事会的事情，最近我们还开始销售社区与我们共同创造的 Bone 3A 社区版。

I think it's about believing in the long term. Things get clear when you think about the long term; then the short term becomes quite clear on what to do. Even if you're making mistakes short term, you know where the north star is and you can correct your course. But I do think the biggest change we've seen in our lives has been the rise of the consumer internet. Now you don't have to be in Silicon Valley to be an expert about a field in technology anymore. You could live on a remote island, take open courses, connect with people in communities, write code, contribute to GitHub, make friends. You could become a near expert at anything from anywhere. So if this is true, then in the future companies will probably be organized differently. You will find talent from everywhere, and the boundaries of what an internal team member is and what a community member is will also blur. So that's the long term, and we want to keep experimenting and getting closer to that. Not only the board stuff, but also recently we started selling the Bone 3A community edition that the community co-created with us.

我相信有很多社区成员也比一般的风险投资家更适合进入董事会。

I'm sure there are plenty of community members that would also be better to have on a board than your average venture capitalist.

这实际上非常有帮助，因为我认为人很容易高估自己，尤其是在事情顺利的时候。但房间里总有消费者的声音在检查我们——嘿，你承诺过这件事，但你没有兑现；社区对此的看法是这样的——这让你保持谦逊，更忠于自己的使命。

It's very helpful actually, because I think it's easy to think too highly of yourself, especially when things are going well. But always having the voice of the consumer in the room checking us—hey, you promised this thing, but you actually didn't deliver; this is what the community thinks about it—keeps you humble and keeps you more true to your mission.

除了那些你们自己做的产品之外，还有哪些设备是你深深欣赏或觉得特别有趣、有创意的？

What are some other devices beyond those that nothing makes that you deeply admire or think there's something really interesting or creative about?

我喜欢保时捷。

I like Porsches.

嗯。

Yeah.

是的，它很漂亮，是标志性的。尽管设计语言随时间演变，但依然非常有辨识度。我觉得在消费电子领域，我们正处于一个不太好的时代。现在没有太多我喜欢的。

Yeah, it's just beautiful, iconic. Even though the design language evolves over time, it's still very distinctively them. I feel like in consumer electronics, we're kind of in a bad era. There's not much that I like right now.

许多 AI 硬件公司都经历了挣扎，很多已经倒闭了。Humane、Limitless、Rabbit 和 Friend 还在，可能还有一些其他的。为什么你认为这个类别如此艰难？因为理论上感觉这个可能性应该被注入新的生命，但我们还没有看到它真正实现。

There's been such a struggle with so many of the AI hardware companies that have come and already passed in many cases. Humane, Limitless, Rabbit, and Friend are still out there, and maybe a few others. Why do you think that has been a category that is having such a hard time? Because in theory it feels like there should have been really new life breathed into this possibility, but we haven't really seen it shake out that way yet.

我认为这些公司都非常勇敢，如果我处于他们的位置，必须发明一些世界上从未见过的新东西，我认为失败的可能性也很高。所以有人去尝试是很好的，而且我认为随着 AI 现在如此火热，未来几年会有更多公司尝试。每个人都想看看这些类别的未来会是什么样子。但我认为大多数产品都会失败，因为这个行业的部分就是关于发现产品市场契合度。当你处于发现阶段时，就像在实验室做研究——很多实验会失败。但让我们把它们看作实验。所以我们也会踏上这段旅程。但是当你做一个实验时，如何控制每个实验的成本和上市时间，以便快速做几个实验并快速学习？我认为这可能是我与那些只有一个想法并坚信它一定会成功、然后把所有筹码都押在上面的人的不同之处。如果它不成功，就很难扭转局面。

I think these companies are all very courageous, and if I were in their shoes and had to invent something different that the world had never seen before, I think there's also a high chance of failure. So it's great that people are out there trying things, and I think a lot more companies are going to try in the next couple of years with AI being so hot right now. Everybody wants to see what the future of these categories could be. But I think most products will fail because this part of the industry is all about discovering product-market fit. When you're in the discovery stage, it's like when you're in a lab doing research—a lot of your experiments will fail. But let's see them as experiments. So we're also going to be on this journey. But when you do an experiment, how can you control the cost of each experiment and also control the time to market for each experiment so you can do a couple of them quickly and learn quickly? I think that's maybe where I think a little bit differently versus having one idea and just believing this will definitely always work and then putting all the chips on that. And if it doesn't work, it becomes quite hard to turn things around.

你认为智能手机在 10 年后是否仍然可能成为我们主要的消费电子产品，还是说那大概是我们开始转向眼镜或其他东西的时候？

Do you see the smartphone as still likely to be our dominant piece of consumer electronics in 10 years from now, or does that feel like roughly the time where we start switching to glasses or to something else?

我认为沿途会有几个大的步骤。最终，脑机接口将取代智能手机。在途中，我不知道 BCI 需要多长时间——20 年、30 年、40 年——沿途还会有另外两个大的类别：一个是电动汽车，一个是人形机器人。但我个人对时间线的看法，尤其是在人形机器人方面，不如一些初创公司乐观。在人形机器人和智能手机之间，还会有一些更大的新形态，这也是我期待探索的。我真的不知道它会是什么；我们会采取研究的方法。

I think there will be big steps along the way. Ultimately it'll be brain-computer interface that will be the replacement of the smartphone. Along the way, I don't know how long the BCI will take—20, 30, 40 years—along the way there will be two other big categories: one is the EV and one is humanoid robotics. But I think my personal timeline is also less optimistic, especially on humanoids, than some of the startups out there. In between humanoid and smartphone, there will be a few larger new form factors as well, and that's something I'm excited to explore. I don't really know what it will be; we'll take a research approach.

嗯。你说人形机器人和电动汽车。

Mhm. You said humanoids and EVs.

是的。

Yeah.

你觉得在那个类别中还有很多我们尚未看到的待完成的工作吗？

Do you feel like there's still a lot more to be done in that category that we haven't seen yet?

我认为电动汽车比人形机器人更成熟。剩下要做的事情是围绕自动驾驶，比如机器人出租车。

I think EV is more mature than humanoids. The thing that remains to be done is around autonomous driving, kind of robo-taxis.

啊，机器人出租车。

Ah, kind of robo-taxis.

是的。还有所有设备之间操作系统的整合，包括手机和汽车。现在除了 CarPlay 和 Android Auto，它们都是不同的生态系统，但还不是无缝的体验。

Yes. And also the integration of the operating system between all the devices, including the phone and the car. Right now they're all different ecosystems apart from CarPlay and Android Auto, but it's not a seamless experience yet.

是的。所以如果你像成吉思汗那样逐步升级，你可能会经历眼镜、电动汽车、机器人和脑机接口。

Yes. And so if you sort of graduate through the steps like Genghis Khan, you'll go through maybe some glasses, an EV, a robot, and a BCI.

也许基于我今天所知，但随着我学习，想法可能会改变，路线图也会改变。

Maybe based on what I know today, but as I learn maybe the idea changes, roadmap changes.

你的一位投资者说你深受东方哲学和禅宗的影响。我想知道这对你来说是从哪里来的，以及它可能如何影响你对自己所构建的东西的思考。

One of your investors said that you are really influenced by Eastern philosophy and Zen. I wondered where that came from for you and how maybe that influences how you think about what you're building.

在我人生低谷的时候，我大量接触了哲学。

In periods of my life when I was down, I took to philosophy quite a lot.

两者都有，我认为斯多葛主义对我影响很大，然后我也读了乔布斯读过的一本关于禅宗的书，那本书挺有意思的。所以我觉得共同点就是遇事更放松一些，看到事物积极的一面，不要试图控制你无法控制的东西，而是控制你能控制的。所以如果有些事情行不通，而你无法影响它，那就放手吧。

Both, I think Stoicism had a big impact on me, and then I also read a book that Steve Jobs read on Zen Buddhism. That was pretty interesting. So I guess the common thread is just to be more relaxed about things, see the bright side, and don't try to control what you can't control, but control what you can. So if there's something that doesn't work and you have no ability to influence it, just let it go.

好，我们最后再聊两个哲学或思想实验式的问题吧。哦，顺便说一句，中学时哲学课是我最专注的课。

Well, let's wrap up with maybe two philosophical or thought-experimenty questions. Oh, by the way, in middle school, philosophy was the class where I paid the most attention.

啊，有意思。你们中学有哲学课，那太好了。我觉得这是个很棒的主意。

Ah, interesting. That's great that your middle school had philosophy. I think that's a great idea.

如果你拥有无限的资源，没有任何运营限制，你真正想做的实验是什么？

If you had unlimited resources and no operational constraints, what's an experiment you would really like to run?

如果是那样的话，我们就会把我们刚才谈到的所有产品都做出来，然后让操作系统把它们整合起来，并投入大量资源打造一个人们喜爱的伟大品牌，扩大我们的零售分销。

If that were the case, we would just do all the products we talked about just now, and then have the operating system integrate all of them, and spend a lot of resources on building a great brand that people love and increasing our retail distribution.

如果你能指定一本书让地球上的每个人都读并理解，你会指定哪一本？

If you could assign a book to everyone on Earth to read and understand, what would you want to assign?

从哲学上讲，我不太喜欢强迫人们学习，因为我觉得不学习也没关系。你不会因为学了东西就成为一个更好的人。但学习也是你自己的责任。即使有人非常用力地推你，而你不太想做，那也是你自己的事。

Philosophically, I don't really like to force people to learn, because I think it's okay to not learn. You're not a better person just because you learn stuff. But it's also your own responsibility to learn. Even if somebody really pushes you hard and you kind of don't want to do it, it's up to you.

你认为学习在道德上是完全中性的吗？

You think learning is totally morally neutral?

学习在道德上是积极的事情，但强迫人们学习不是好事。每个人都有责任学习和进步。比如，谈到人才，我相信人才是被选出来的，而不是教出来的。你明白我的意思吗？那些愿意学习的人，无论在哪里都会学习，你只需要选择他们、提拔他们。如果你不想学，即使我为你买一门非常昂贵的课程，你依然不会学。

It's a morally positive thing, but forcing people to do it is not a good thing. And everybody has their own responsibility to learn and get better. So for instance, when it comes to talent, I believe that talent is selected and not taught. You know what I mean? Like the people who learn, they're always going to learn irrespective of where they are, and you just select them, promote them. If you don't want to learn, even if I buy a very expensive course for you, you're still not going to learn.

是的。

Yes.

所以我不知道人们应该读什么书。让你开心的就好。我读了一本关于普罗旺斯的书，比如在普罗旺斯过美好生活。那本书很让人放松。

So I don't know what book people should read. Whatever makes you happy. I read a book on Provence, like living the good life in Provence. That was pretty relaxing.

是的。太棒了。好，这感觉是个很好的结束点。我很高兴我们有这次机会聊天，我觉得你在做的事情非常酷。我迫不及待想看看接下来会发生什么。

Yeah. Amazing. Well, that feels like a great place to end. I'm really glad we had this chance to chat, and I think what you're building is extremely cool. And I can't wait to watch what happens next.

太好了。谢谢你的邀请。

Awesome. Thank you for the opportunity.

就这样。感谢收听本期《通才播客》。请在 Apple Podcasts、Spotify 或你喜欢的播客应用上订阅。评分和评论能帮助其他人发现这些讨论。所以，如果你喜欢这次对话，如果你能花点时间留下一个评论，我会非常感激。查看所有往期节目和更多内容，请访问 thegeneralist.substack.com。下次再见，我们继续探索未来。

That's it. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Generalist Podcast. Please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast app. Ratings and reviews help others discover these discussions. So if you enjoyed the conversation, I'd be grateful if you could take a moment to leave one. For all past episodes and more, visit us at thegeneralist.substack.com. See you next time as we continue to explore the future.