From college dropout to tech disruptor: How Beijing-born Carl Pei built smartphone brands OnePlus and Nothing

Pei, 36, was the eldest child in a family where both parents were Alzheimer’s researchers. "I was very lucky... I was everybody’s kid... Everybody would buy me gifts all the time," he said in a 2024 interview with Indian newspaper Mint.

His father moved to the U.S. In 1993 for his research career, and the rest of the family followed a year later. But they faced several challenges, struggling financially while Pei was also bullied at school. Pei recalled: "We were starting from scratch in a new country. Back then China was very poor, so we didn’t have a lot of money."

Three years later the family moved to Stockholm, Sweden, where he felt he was treated more equally. "I think I brought that New York toughness with me. A lot of these formative years shape your personality."

Pei’s journey into technology began when a teacher taught him HTML. While others created basic websites with GIFs and used GeoCities for web hosting, Pei built his first site at age 12, providing walkthroughs for Pokémon. He translated Japanese guides into English using the AltaVista search engine and refined the language for his website.

Pei was also an early adopter of emerging technologies. He was one of the first to buy an iPod after its launch and owned the first iPhone among his friends. He was also an early adopter of platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. "It just felt like everything kept improving all the time when I was younger, and it gave me a lot of optimism that the future would become much better," Pei said in a 2023 interview with Swedish venture capital firm EQT Ventures, one of the early investors in his start-up Nothing.

Carl Pei, founder of smartphone companies OnePlus and Nothing. Photo courtesy of Pei's Instagram

He had a drive to make money from an early age. Even while living far from his homeland, he remained curious about China’s booming economy. At 15, after finishing high school, he traveled to Guangdong, China, a hub for electronics and telecommunications manufacturing, to explore the market. With no knowledge of how to register a business, he began exporting items from China.

He told Mint: "We started off by selling on the Swedish version of eBay, and then also eBay—selling to U.S. and Europe. I had one of my Swedish friends move (to China) as well to handle customer service."

Despite his entrepreneurial spirit, Pei’s parents did not see his side business as a "real job" and urged him to finish his studies. In 2008 he returned to Sweden and enrolled at the Stockholm School of Economics. But he soon became disillusioned. In the three years he was there, he did not get to do any lessons on e-commerce or global trade. He passed all his courses but never completed a thesis, and so his LinkedIn profile notes that he dropped out.

In 2010, while still at university, Pei worked for Nokia for about three months. During this time, he created a fan forum for Chinese smartphone company Meizu, attracting more than 70,000 users. The site caught the company’s attention, and Meizu invited him to join its Hong Kong team in 2011. He spent a year there handling international PR and marketing, helping organize the company’s first launch event and keynote.

In 2012, he left Meizu for Oppo, becoming its international marketing director. A year later he co-founded OnePlus with then Oppo vice president Pete Lau in Guangdong to rival Xiaomi's online-only business model. While Oppo followed a traditional distribution model, OnePlus's products were sold exclusively online.

OnePlus’s first device, the OnePlus One, hailed as the "Phone of Dreams" by Time magazine, was a massive success, selling nearly a million units in 2014, far surpassing its initial target of 50,000. In 2015 Pei further gained attention when he launched the OnePlus 2 through a virtual reality video on YouTube. The brand quickly earned a reputation for producing high-quality but affordable smartphones. "OnePlus also had a great product culture," he said. "We always said that the most important thing is to have a great product. Even when things are not going well, the number one thing is to focus on creating a better product."

Although Pei praised his work at OnePlus, he felt that he could not achieve a breakthrough if he stayed. Inspired by a speech from Alibaba’s Jack Ma, who said that in your 20s you should learn from others and in your 30s you should try things on your own, Pei, then 30, decided it was time to leave OnePlus. He quit the company on his 31st birthday. "It was like a birthday gift to myself," he said.

The Nothing (3a) smartphones. Photo courtesy of Pei's Instagram

Initially he planned to travel the world for six months but grew bored after just a week. He decided to start his next venture sooner than expected: In January 2021 he co-founded the consumer electronics company Nothing with the mission to remove "barriers between people and technology to create a seamless digital future." Pei’s motto for Nothing is simple: "If you’re just doing things like everybody else, then it’s not going to be fun. Creativity is very, very important to us."

Nothing’s first product, the Nothing Ear (1) wireless earphone, was launched on July 27, 2021. Its first smartphone, the Nothing Phone (1), launched on March 23, 2022, was praised for its creative design, impressive Glyph lights system, an array of LED lights on the back that respond to notifications and ringtones, and vibrant display at a reasonable price.

Ben Wood, chief analyst at market research firm CCS Insight, praised Nothing for "trying to do something different" in an industry plagued by "sea of smartphone sameness." Speaking to U.S. business news TV channel CNBC, he said: "Bottom line, if you want to sell phones in this more affordable segment, you have to have something that stands out from the crowd."

Pei acknowledged that the biggest challenge since founding Nothing has been the pressure of being responsible for everyone involved in the company. "Even when we started hiring people (for Nothing), I was anxious about ruining other people’s careers."

Now the five-year-old company has 800-900 employees and is on track to earn $1 billion in sales this year, Business Insider reported. Despite the challenges in the smartphone market, he believes he has found a winning formula by targeting Gen Z customers. Nothing’s products resonate with young consumers who want to stand out and have a unique identity when choosing devices. "It's pretty much impossible to be popular among everybody in the world at the very beginning, so we got to pick a lane."

Apple’s brand power remains strong among younger generations, and he does not expect Nothing to outpace the U.S. tech giant anytime soon, he said. He emphasized that pacing is key, and he is thinking about how the two companies could coexist in future.

In the long term, Pei said Nothing’s mission is to live up to the promise of its name: "The name has to manifest: Nothing. It’s technology that’s everywhere, but also nowhere."